She associated her name with the demand for justice in war crimes which take place in Ukraine. In her constant appeals through the international media, she explains that the demand for responsibility is not only moral. If the perpetrators begin to get the signal that the international community is aware of this and arranges to track them down, lives will be saved. The fear of punishment will act as a deterrent on the battlefield.

That’s why Alexandra Matvichuk, director of the Center for Civil Liberties, mobilized all her forces to collect evidence of crimes and identify the individuals who committed them. The organization in which the Ukrainian lawyer works took in 2022 Nobel Prize. Same explains today in “K” difficulty, but also the need to restore justice for the victims of war crimes.

– The Center for Civil Liberties was founded in 2007 on the initiative of the heads of the Helsinki Committees from different countries. For the last 15 years we have been defending human rights. To this end, we involve many people in our programs, campaigns and initiatives. After all, if the protection of human rights is left exclusively to lawyers or diplomats, it is difficult to achieve significant changes. The war in our country has changed our priorities.

We were the first human rights organization to send mobile teams to document war crimes in Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk regions. These mobile teams were staffed by volunteers with special training in documentation and security.

The Center for Civil Liberties team is currently working with other organizations to document war crimes as part of the Tribunal for Putin initiative. We have set ourselves the ambitious goal, starting February 24, of chronicling war crimes in even the smallest towns in every region. To do this, we use various methods: personal contact with witnesses and victims, work with open sources and digital tools for recording crimes. The main motivation is to ensure justice for the hundreds of thousands of victims of war crimes.

We are committed to seizing every opportunity to ensure that justice for the victims and the punishment of war criminals are high on the international agenda and upheld by international law.

I talked to people who survived captivity. They told me they were beaten, raped, tortured with electric shocks on their genitals, pulled out their nails, pierced their knees and forced to write with their own blood.

– As a human rights activist, I document war crimes and crimes against humanity in this war that Russia started in 2014. Since the full invasion, we have faced an unprecedented amount of war crimes. Russian troops are deliberately destroying houses, churches, schools and hospitals, bombing evacuation corridors, coordinating a system of camps separating civilians into friends and non-friends, forcibly deporting, kidnapping, raping, torturing and killing people in the occupied territories. .

We see that all these crimes are systematic and were committed in the Kyiv, Kharkov, Nikolaev, Odessa regions and today continue to be committed in the Kherson region, as well as in other occupied territories. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Putin’s tribunal has already recorded more than 38,000 war crimes. To date, the largest number of crimes has been recorded in Kharkiv, Donetsk, Chernihiv and Zaporozhye regions, and 3253 cases have been recorded in Mariupol alone. This is a conscious policy.

Russia uses crime as a method of warfare. Russia wants to break the resistance and take over the country through the excruciating pain of civilians, so we record this pain.

I spoke with a hundred people who survived captivity. They told me they were beaten, raped, tortured with electric shocks on their genitals, pulled out their nails, pierced their knees and forced to write with their own blood. One woman told how her eye was gouged out with a spoon. There is no military justification for such actions. The Russians did it simply because they could.

I work with people who have lived through hell, and I know that in addition to rebuilding their broken lives, their families, and their visions for the future, these people need to believe that there is justice. Even if it is delayed in time. And this is important not only for Ukraine, because this is not a war of two countries, but of two systems – authoritarianism and democracy. Putin is not afraid of NATO. Putin is afraid of the idea of ​​freedom.

These crimes should not remain only in our archives or in the records of international organizations. War turns people into numbers. The sheer scale of international crimes is so vast that it is impossible to tell all the stories.

I’ll tell you a story. Shortly after the invasion began on February 24, 62-year-old civilian Alexander Selipov was killed by the Russian army near his home. The tragedy was widely covered in the media only because it was the first trial of Russian war criminals since February 24th. In court, Alexander’s wife Katerina stated that her husband was a simple peasant, but for her her husband was the whole universe, and now she has lost everything. Therefore, we must ensure justice for all victims of international crimes.

Regardless of who they are, their social status, the type of crime and brutality they suffered, and whether the media or the public cares about their cause, we must give people back their names. Because everyone’s life matters.

– When a large-scale conflict began in the region, we united many regional organizations and created a Ukrainian network of local documentation groups. And that’s why we have local crime scene documentation when something happens. These groups take their own photos and videos, talk to people and gather testimonies.

Of course, it depends on where the crime is committed. When we talk about the part controlled by the government of Ukraine, which is far from the war zone, it is easier for us to send people to work on the ground, but when we talk about documentation in the occupied territories, this is a very difficult job. because these people who collect evidence are in danger of being arrested and tortured.

“Hold the leadership of Russia to account”

– We record a huge number of crimes that the Russian Federation continues to commit. And this makes us very upset, because when you interview a person who survived captivity, and she shares with you the terrible things that happened to her, what she saw, you understand that she

right now the same thing is happening to other people and you can’t stop it.

To effectively investigate such a large number of crimes, Ukraine needs the support of the international community. First, the UN and its member states must reform the international peace and security system to create guarantees for all countries and their citizens, whether they are members of military alliances or forces. Russia should be expelled from the UN Security Council for systematic violations of the UN Charter. Second, the UN and its member states must close the “accountability gap” and ensure that hundreds of thousands of victims of war crimes have a chance at justice. Without this, sustainable peace in our region is impossible. This requires a comprehensive justice strategy and an international tribunal to bring Putin, Lukashenko and other war criminals to justice.

I count on the support of the international community in our pursuit of justice. After all, it is not only about the future of Ukraine. This war has a value dimension. Putin is trying to convince everyone that democracy, human rights and the rule of law are a sham and only physical violence matters. We need to demonstrate that the rule of law is a “value” that works.

The International Criminal Court has no right to judge Russia for the crime of aggression. An additional international mechanism is needed to hold the leadership of Russia and Belarus accountable. Therefore, Ukraine calls for the creation of a special court to consider the crime of aggression against Ukraine.

– In the 21st century, justice should not depend on the strength of Putin’s authoritarian regime or the cessation of hostilities. We don’t have to wait. When you work with people and they talk about the heinous crimes committed by the Russian military, you understand that in addition to restoring their poor health, their families and their outlook on the future, they must also restore their faith in the possibility of justice. even if delayed.

Order for Putin

“I welcome this arrest warrant. The decision of the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova is a historic decision because it is the first decision in the history of an international criminal court against a person who is currently a head of state, a member of the Security Council and has nuclear power. This is a message to the world that the rule of law matters and must prevail over the brute force and logic that Putin is trying to propagate.