Steve Sachoff: Oleksandra Matvichuk, thank you very much for joining us on Weight of the World. We're very happy to be able to speak with you today here at GlobeSec. I wanted to start off a little bit on a personal note and to ask you just how you got involved to begin with in political activism. 

Oleksandra Matviichuk: I don’t define myself as a political activist. I'm a human rights lawyer. And I decided to be a human rights lawyer when I was a child in school. The time I was in school and got acquainted with the Soviet dissidents. And suddenly I appeared in the circle of fantastic people. People who say what they think and do what they say. People who had bravery to stand up their voice against the entire Soviet totalitarian machine.

They were severely oppressed. Part of the people were killed, part of the people were jailed, part of the people were locked [up] for forcible psychological treatment, but they didn't give up. And being a child, I was so inspired by this example that I decided myself that I will study law and I will continue this fight for freedom and human dignity.

Can I ask you as a child, when you were growing up, did you have any thoughts of America at this time, at a young age, was it on your radar at all in terms of how you, this decision to become a human rights lawyer or just your general impressions of America in the world at that point?

I was born in the Soviet Union and luckily, the Soviet Union collapsed when I was seven years old. So I got the chance to study real history in school and university, not the artificial version, which was created by the Soviet Union and now Russia. And what I know is that America is a country of freedom-loving people. This is what I know from my childhood.

And then to get a little bit more specific, I was wondering if you could tell me a bit about the Euromaidan SOS project that you were the founder of, as I understand, and the motivations for that and what that was exactly.

I launched the civil initiative Euromaidan SOS as a response to the brutal dispersal of peaceful student demonstrations. And we united thousands of people and worked 24 hours per day to provide legal assistance to all persecuted protesters throughout the country. The reason for the protest was the illegal decision of a pro-Russian authoritarian corrupt government to stop the Eurointegration process. So people went to the streets and they peacefully demonstrated just for a chance to build a country where the rights of everybody are protected, [where] government is accountable, [where the] judiciary is independent and police do not beat students who are peacefully demonstrating. And they paid a rather high price for this, because as I mentioned before, the Russian authoritarian government started large-scale and systematic prosecutions [of demonstrators]. So every day hundreds and hundreds of people who were beaten, arrested, tortured, accused and fabricated criminal cases passed through our care.

And the concrete results of this initiative? What are the things you're most proud of from that?

[That] we all succeeded. We were just one initiative, and it was hundreds and hundreds of such self-organized initiatives because it was a real people’s movement, and the authoritarian regime collapsed. The Russian [-backed] president escaped to Russia and we got our chance to [establish] democratic institutions and to move on the path of genuine democracy. But in order to stop us on this way, Russia invaded. Russia occupied Crimea, part of the eastern regions, and four years ago extended this war to the large-scale invasion. So when someone says that this is a war about NATO, I say, no, no, what are you talking about? In 2014, Ukraine was a neutral country. It was a statement in our constitution, a provision in it.

Putin started this war not because he was afraid of NATO. Putin started this war because he was afraid of the idea of freedom.

You mentioned these self-organizing initiatives like this, and Daisy and I have talked to several people over the course of our first season of the podcast, and one question we ask at the end [of every episode], which I will ask you [later], is for some advice for Americans. Several of our guests have pointed out Ukraine as an example, and this social ability, to organize at the social level, in the most dire circumstances. So I was wondering…It's really something to me that [seems] in a way unique to Ukraine. Why are you so successful at being able to do this kind of organization?

Because people are not indifferent, either in Ukraine or in the United States, [or] in all other countries, they are not indifferent. The problem sometimes is that people don't believe that their efforts matter. They lose this feeling of their agency. And this is not something which is going on in Ukraine for obvious reasons, because we have not developed democracy, not yet. We are moving [towards doing so].

We are a nation in transit. This means that we can't rely on sustainable state institutions. And this leads to another pattern of thinking and pattern of behavior. If something happened, like the Russian invasion, or some challenges to community, people don't rely on politicians. They're not waiting for rescuers. They start to self-organize.

The source of the resilience of Ukraine is not in a centralized vertical, but in local democracy, in freedom of speech, in grassroots organizations, in the agency of ordinary people and their belief that their efforts matter, they can change history.

Yes, well, I agree with you. That's true. They're certainly not indifferent in Ukraine. I think sometimes, I do wonder, the level of indifference in Western countries, in the United States, whether we're responding at the same level of intensity. I wanted to also ask you about, so you're head of the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine. And of course, much of your work focuses on upholding the principles and values of human rights, and the rule of law. So when you're working to support these values and [see] the attacks on them, do you find that there is a uniform playbook that all authoritarians are working from to undermine these values?

Yes, let me focus on something very essential. I know that people start to understand that the war is going on only when bombs fall on their heads. But war has not just a military, but [also] informational dimension. And this is a battle where the party is struggling for the hearts and minds of people.

This battle has no limitation in national borders. And modern authoritarian regimes, they have no common ideology, but they promote common narratives. They attack the truth. They try to present democracy as something as weak and inefficient, and autocracy as something strong and effective. They criticize and attack humanistic ideas like freedom of speech, independent court, human rights. They ruin trust between people and society and their link with reality. 

And the problem is that we live in a post-informational era and we all spent a lot of time in digital reality, which is overloaded with fakes, disinformation, propaganda. People are very vulnerable to such external manipulations, they even don't notice it. And it has led to a situation [in which] people start to lose the ability to distinguish between truth and lies. They really don't know how to make this [distinction]. And now we have a situation when the residents from the same small community, they no longer have a shared picture of reality. But without a shared picture of reality, how can these people [take] common actions? Without common actions, people can't protect their freedoms, their democracy or respond to the global challenges.

When you look around outside of Ukraine today, what's your level of concern or alarm in terms of the erosion of these values in the U.S., in Western Europe?

The global storm is approaching. We have seen the different signs of it. The first is that the world order based on the UN Charter and international law has collapsed. This system was created after the Second World War to prevent wars and mass violence, to protect people against authoritarianism, against war crimes. But now it's just stalling. It's reproducing ritualistic movements.

For obvious reasons, even my smartphone has an expiration date. The system has never been reformed. So it's easy to predict that such fires like wars will emerge more and more often in different parts of the globe because the international wiring is faulty and sparks are everywhere. And plus, we are losing freedom in the world. Eighty percent of people in the globe live in non-free, or [only] partially free societies. This means that people who have a real right to vote for whom they want to vote, who have a real right to say what they want to say, who have a real right to love [whomever] their heart loves, these people are in the minority. And the problem is not just in fact that in authoritarian countries the space for freedom is shrinking to the size of the prison cell. 

The problem is that even in developed democracies like United States, people start to put into question the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There are reasons for this. The current generations in well-developed democracies, they inherited their freedoms from their grandparents. They have never fought for them. They became consumers of democracy. They start to take this for granted.

They consider freedom as a possibility to make a choice between different cheeses at supermarkets. This is what freedom is for [some] people. They forget that freedom is very fragile. You can't attain your security, your human rights, your democracy once and forever. You make your own choices every day, [and these choices are what] will define your future.

How concerned are you when a country like the United States, for example, which in the past, no matter how imperfectly, was at least publicly based on values, or that these were at least discussed, and now we have an administration in place which is purely transactional, and the idea of a moral dimension to any[thing] or to their support for the rule of law is really by the wayside, how do you push back against that?

I think the transactional approach doesn't see humans as a value. They see human beings just as objects to be controlled. And the transactional approach denies people their rights and freedoms because they care only about interest and it's not the interest of these people, I'm sorry.

Let me tell you, two years ago, when President Trump took office, it was the anniversary of the large-scale war on Ukraine. And on February 24, the General Assembly of the UN  was voting for a resolution to support Ukraine. It's like a tradition. And I would never, ever imagine to see on a screen of the UN General Assembly that Russia, Eritrea, North Korea, Belarus voted together with the United States.

When I look at this line, [I thought] my God, what can be similar between North Korea and the United States? Why did they vote together for this pro-Russian resolution? This is the result of this transactional approach. I think it's a very huge mistake because, yes, we are human beings. People want their future as a credit card. But if you want your future on your credit card immediately, you have to be aware that sooner or later you will pay the loan with interest. And if you base your political decisions only on economic profit or some security interest or your political career, even if you benefit in the short term, we will all await a catastrophe in the long term because values matter, freedom matters the most.

And are you actively, when you travel to the United States or in Western Europe, are you working actively in terms of lobbying for Ukraine or what kind of work are you doing in that area?

I know, according to social surveys, that a majority of Americans, both those who voted for Democrats and those who voted for Republicans, they support the Ukrainian struggle for freedom. But despite this very visible and high-level support of people of the United States, the presidential administration is [following a] completely [different] policy. So I, frankly speaking, stopped traveling to the United States, because I didn't know how I can influence it.

Well, that's sad thing to hear, but I understand. If you were, very briefly to tell an American who is not particularly tuned in, who is focused on their credit card and their choice of cheese in the supermarket, why, is Ukraine important right now for the average American?

Don't expect from me some arguments in this transactional logic. My language is a language of values, and I understand that some people can think that this is a very naive language, but it's a very ancient language, from the Bible's time. It's something which makes us human. I will tell you this. You can't build a paradise, even being an island with a beautiful ocean, as President Trump likes to say, if another part of the globe is bleeding. Because we live in a very interconnected world. And only the spread of freedom makes our world safer.

A lot of your work has involved documenting crimes against individuals, civilians, attacks on civilians or organizations, activists. Why is this kind of documentation so important to do?

It’s important from different points of view. Let me start from the human dimension. This war turns people into numbers. We have in our database more than 100,000 episodes of war crimes. It's not just violations of the Geneva Conventions. There are human stories and human destinies behind these numbers. So while this war turns people into numbers, we are returning people their names. Because people are not numbers. The lives of each person matter.

Right. And this issue of accountability, why is accountability important? I mean, how does that play into how you might see generally…if things are resolved in Ukraine, how important is it to hold people accountable for what has already happened?

Because it's a precondition to a sustainable peace. All this hell which we faced in Ukraine is the result of the total impunity that Russia enjoyed for decades, committing horrible crimes in Chechnya, in Moldova, in Georgia, in Mali, in Libya, in Syria, in other countries of the world. They have never been punished. They believe they can do whatever they want. So we must break this circle of impunity, not just for the people of Ukraine, but in order to prevent the next Russian attack on the next nation.

Right, so basically to maintain this rules-based order, and I'm wondering, do you feel like the world still lives in a rules-based order?

I think that last year we made a significant step back[wards] to the past. And let's be honest, this past wasn't great. because it was a world that was based not on rule of law but the will of the strongest. And this is a very fragile world. It's a world that is very dangerous for people. Even if you are the strongest, you [consider] yourself as a big power, it's dangerous for you as well, because you have always proved that you are in the top of the hierarchy of violence, so you have to send your citizens to fight in wars in different parts of the globe, to demonstrate strength. And [have] no illusions, a world that is based not on rule of law but on the will of the strongest, we know from history. It's always a world of wars and mass violence. 

And while we made this step back to such a type of world, I still hope that this decision is temporary, that we will manage to change course, for the future which we want for us and for our own children.

You've spent some time in America. You were a visiting scholar at Stanford. You met many academics, policymakers, activists. I wanted to know what your evaluation is when you look at American civil society today, or let's say also the legal approach where people are taking the administration to court, the level of efficacy or effectiveness. When you look at [what is happening in] America, is it the level you've expected? 

Your people are great. When I was studying at Stanford University, I was amazed by the different experiences, different examples, different lessons learned from your history, about your vibrant civil society. So I took a lot to reflect on, to try to create in Ukraine as well.

Look, I can't judge because I'm not in the United States. I'm a foreigner. I look at the situation from a distance. But what I know is that people have a much greater impact than they can even imagine. I believe in people. I know that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

Just to push a little bit more on that point, of course, you are not American, but that's part of the reason we're talking to you. You have a certain distance. We live abroad. I also feel like, as an American, this distance gives you a perspective. So I was wondering, how do you think people can make this impact, [even] if they're not aware, how do you wake up that knowledge or that consciousness in a society that is not used to maybe facing these kinds of challenges?

It's not an easy question to answer. The problem is that we can have a country with a huge population, but with [a smaller] number of citizens, like Russia. And there is a difference between [the] population and citizens. Citizens, it's not just people with passports, it's people with responsibility. So the question is how to remind people that they have responsibility for this country, for the future, for their own children, because it's about the world which we create for our own children. And in Ukraine, we built civil society as a way, as infrastructure, like our experience of Euromaidan SOS. We had legal assistance, but in parallel, it was self-organized initiatives who provided medical care or who did logistical jobs, where other kinds of tasks which were needed during the Revolution of Dignity. And I'm sure that Solidarity is infrastructure as well.

True. Yes. And so, our last question, and this is something we ask all of our guests that we speak to on Weight of the World, is to give some advice to a country which is not used to facing these kinds of challenges. And in a lot of cases, people, a population which really has a hard time believing anything bad can happen in their country. So what kind of advice would you give to Americans who know there's something wrong, who want to do something, but are unsure where to even start?

I don't think that I have to give you advice. You are the country with a huge history of civil participation. I will just remind [you of] something: When you have no other instruments, you always have your own words and your own voice. And eventually, this is not so little.

Thank you very much. We really appreciate you speaking with us.

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You can listen to this conversation by following Weight of the World on Spotify and Apple. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.