Nobel Peace asks Ukraine to stay on Brazil’s political agenda

Oleksandra Matviichuk, founder of the Center for Civil Freedoms, an organization of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, asked Brazilians to help maintain the invasion of Ukraine in the country’s political agenda as part of an international effort for Russia’s atrocities not continuing. Passing through Brazil, she told how the popular movement that led to the deposition of an authoritarian government pro-USCi in Ukraine in 2014 began with the formation of legal support networks to arbitrarily arrested for defending civil freedoms.

The Center for Civil Freedoms has gained the Nobel Peace Nobel for his work of promoting the right to criticize power and defending fundamental rights of citizens in Ukraine from 2007. Since the Russian invasion of Crimea and Donbas in 2014, the organization has documented 89,000 torture crimes, torture, murders, kidnappings and forced deportation of civilians and the bodies as the Criminal Court as the Criminal Court. International, the UN International Inquiry Commission and the Moscow mechanism of the organization for security and cooperation in Europe (treaty that allows the performance of international experts in impartial investigations of human rights crimes).

Graduated in law, Oleksandra’s work in practice is to interview Ukrainians who live in Territories temporarily occupied by Russia in Ukraine, gather evidence and report cases of torture, rape, abduction and murder committed by Russian occupation forces against the civilian population.

Oleksandra passed Brazil in late August on a trip to promote debates on civil liberties protection and dismiss war crimes. In Brasilia, she gave a talk organized by Dom Luciano House of the Catholic Church and the Ukraine Embassy.

The Ukrainian reported how rape is used as a weapon to control the population in occupied territories and how 19,000 Ukrainian children were taken to fields of “russification” and later for adoption by Russian families. THE Gazeta do Povo He chose to direct her questions to political issues and not to the war crimes themselves.

Read the principal trechos of the answers to Oleksandra Matvichuk to Gazeta do Povo and other members of the hearing during the lecture:

Is Donald Trump the right person who can make Vladimir Putin sign a peace treaty with Ukraine?

Oleksandra matviichuk: President Donald Trump said he would stop this war in 24 hours. I still think these are the longest 24 hours in human history. The United States has the power to stop Putin, but I don’t know if they will use that power. But I know what I want from Brazil, the United States, South Africa, India and other countries around the world. Help us at this stage solve urgent humanitarian problems. We know that Brazil has good communication with Russia. You can use it to raise the issue of children illegally deported to press Putin to return them to their homes. It would be a huge help and assistance.

How can countries act more proactively about the invasion of Russia?

Oleksandra matviichuk: I started my morning here in Brazil checking the news. I still have a house to go back? Are my family and my colleagues still alive? This is a ritual that millions of Ukrainians do every day, being abroad or in Ukraine. Because if your hometown was not hit by drones or missiles, that does not mean that the neighboring city has not been hit. And Russia can produce drones and rockets because it still has money. And many countries in the world do not adhere to sanctions. They still sell with Russia. And these countries must be aware that it is not just trade. They are financing this war, because officially 40% of the Russian budget goes to military expenses. It goes to these drones and rockets that Russia uses against Ukrainian civilians to reach hospitals, residential buildings, schools, churches and children. So this is just an example.

Gazeta do Povo – Brazil is a great diesel importer from Russia. We imported more than $ 38 billion in 2024 and continue to do that. What would you say to the people in this country, knowing that our president doesn’t care?

Oleksandra matviichuk: Firstly, I would like to share my impressions with you. I was in Brazil for two days and had several meetings and various public events. And I spoke to the legal public, spoke to students and always felt a warm welcome. So I see that people in Brazil understand what we are fighting and sharing our will and dedication to freedom and human dignity. So there are no obstacles between us. Brazil and Ukraine are distant from each other from the geographical point of view, but we are very close to the point of view of values. This is why I will probably have two messages for people in Brazil.

First, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to people in Brazil who support us at this dramatic moment of our history. We are used to thinking about the categories of states, leaders, political leaders, international organizations, but ordinary people import and do not underestimate the importance of simple human gestures. So when an elderly Brazilian lady hugged me and said to me, “I will pray for you and pray for your people,” it means a lot, because we are human and for me, being here and knowing that we are not alone fighting such a huge power is very important. So my first message is the message of gratitude.

The second message is that we need your help. I am not in a position to tell people what they should do, because they know better what they can do, different people can do different things. But please help us keep Ukraine in the agenda of Brazilian politics. It is very important. I always remember when we sent groups [de investigadores] stop Bucha, for Irpin [cidades que foram palco dos maiores massacres conhecidos da Rússia]for the Kyiv region after the first months of the large -scale invasion. We find bodies of people spread across the streets, in the gardens of their own homes. We found ordinary ditches. We found bodies of people, whole families with children in civilian cars who were deliberately bombarded or shot while trying to escape the danger zone. And I remember I thought to myself, “My God, if the Russians did this horrible thing when the whole world watching, what will happen when the world loses interest on war?” So please help us keep Ukraine in Brazil’s political agenda.

Gazeta do Povo – How did your organization and others manage to gather civil society to fight for freedom before 2014? In Brazil, we are facing a lack of freedom now because of actions of the Federal Supreme Court. How you Ukrainians managed to gather people, civil society, the entities in the process that led to the Maidan Revolution [insurreição popular que derrubou o governo pró-Russia da Ucrânia e convocou eleições gerais em 2014]?

Oleksandra matviichuk: I will start looking at the future with optimism. When we open any opinion polls in Ukraine, we see that Ukrainians place freedom first in the hierarchy of values. This is something in our DNA. When I reflected on this, I realized that for people in Ukraine freedom is not a value of self -determination. Freedom for people in Ukraine is a value of survival, because we were under Russian rule, being part of the Russian Empire for three centuries. This war does not last 12 years. Because the first time the Russians prohibited the Ukrainian language was in the time of the Russian tsar. Therefore, if the Ukrainians were not so stubborn in our struggle for freedom, we would no longer exist. We would have disappeared during these centuries. This is why I look at the future with optimism. But I don’t see that the future will be easy.

In addition, Ukrainians have never had the luxury of having their own state for a long time. We had a very short period when we restore our independence in the 19th century in the 17th century and previously. But all these attempts collapsed. This is why Ukrainians do not have a habit of trusting state institutions, because for centuries it was not our state institutions. They were state institutions appointed and worked by Moscow. This is why we have the habit, when something existential happens, not expecting the state to come and save us. We will organize and do our work. This is a big difference between other nations that have this luxury to depend on sustainable and well -developed state institutions.

Let me tell a story: Freedom was not granted to Ukrainians. Just 12 years ago we were under an authoritarian and corrupt pro-Russian regime. And that’s when the revolution of dignity began. Russia tried to portray this revolution of dignity as a “Nazi blow” or something like that. But in fact, it was a situation where millions of people raised their voice against a corrupt and authoritarian government and took to the streets and manifested themselves peacefully, only for an opportunity to build a country where everyone’s rights are protected, the government is responsible, the judiciary is independent and the police do not beat students who speak peacefully.

Very simple people were requested from the government, and the government responded with a large and systematic persecution. I created a civil initiative at the time and joined thousands of people to provide legal assistance to persecuted protesters across the country. Every day, hundreds and hundreds of people who were arrested, beaten, tortured, accused and with criminal cases manufactured passed by. It was a situation in which we faced the entire authoritarian state machine. They wanted to settle the peaceful protest, even physically. So it was a very difficult situation because we found ourselves in a situation where the law doesn’t work and people started to feel that helplessness.

I remember that a Ukrainian artist made a beautiful series of posters and one of the posters had the image of a drop with the title: “We are a drop in the ocean.” This means that we are not God, we are human beings. Our efforts are modest, but we have to know that even if we cannot change something with our individual efforts, without our individual efforts nothing will be changed. Moreover, together we are an ocean, together we can.