Nobel Peace Prize winner slams Putin’s Ukraine invasion

Oleksandra Matviichuk of the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties dismissed calls for a political compromise that would allow Russia to retain parts of Ukrainian territory it had illegally annexed, saying “fighting for peace does not mean submitting to the pressure of aggressors, but rather protecting people from Cruel to the invaders.”

“A country under attack that lays down its arms cannot achieve peace,” she said, her voice shaking with excitement. “It will not be peace, it will be occupation.” Matviichuk reiterated her earlier appeal to Putin and Belarus’ authoritarian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, who made his country’s territory available for Russian troops to invade. Ukraine – Facing an international court.

“We have to demonstrate that the rule of law does work and that justice does exist, even if they are delayed,” she said.

Matviichuk was named co-recipient of the 2022 Peace Prize in October, along with Ales Bialiatski, director of the Russian human rights organization Memorial and the Belarusian human rights organization Viasna. Later on Saturday, other Nobel prizes will be officially awarded at a ceremony in Stockholm.

Bilyatsky, who is being held awaiting trial in Belarus and faces up to 12 years in prison, was not allowed to speak. When he met in prison with his wife, Natallia Pinchuk, who spoke on his behalf at the ceremony, he shared some thoughts.

“In my homeland, the whole of Belarus is in prison,” Bialyatsky said in a speech delivered by Pinchuk – referring to a siege of the opposition following mass protests over a fraudulent vote in August 2020. A sweeping crackdown, the rule Lukashenko had used to extend his term. “This award belongs to all my friends who are human rights defenders, all citizen activists, tens of thousands of Belarusians who have experienced beatings, torture, arrest and imprisonment.” Bialiatski is the fourth person in the 121-year history of the Nobel Prize to be in prison or Those who were awarded while in custody.

In a speech by his wife, he saw Lukashenko as a tool of Putin, saying the Russian leader was seeking to establish dominance over former Soviet territory.

“I know very well what kind of Ukraine suits Russia and Putin — a country dependent on dictatorship,” he said. “Just like in Belarus today, the voices of the oppressed people are ignored and disregarded here.” The triple peace prize was seen as a strong condemnation of Putin not only for his actions in Ukraine but also for the Kremlin’s crackdown on domestic opposition , supporting Lukashenko’s brutal suppression of dissent.

Russia’s Supreme Court closed a memorial in December 2021 to one of Russia’s oldest and most prominent human rights organizations, widely praised for its research on political repression in the Soviet Union.

The Russian government had previously declared the group a “foreign agent” – a label that implies additional government scrutiny and carries a strongly pejorative connotation that could discredit a target group.

Memorial’s Jan Rachinsky said in his speech that “the tragic state of Russian civil society today is a direct consequence of its unresolved past.” He specifically condemned the Kremlin’s discrediting of Ukraine and other former Soviet states history, statehood and attempts at independence, saying it “became an ideological justification for waging an insane and criminal war of aggression against Ukraine”. “One of the first victims of this madness was the historical memory of Russia itself,” Laczynski said. “Russian mass media now refers to unprovoked armed invasions of neighboring countries, territorial annexation, terror against civilians in occupied territories, and war crimes as justifiable acts of anti-fascism.” While all winners unanimously condemn the war in Ukraine, there are Some notable differences.

In particular, Matvichuk declared that “the Russian people will be responsible for a shameful page in their history and their desire to forcibly restore the former empire.” Raczynski described Russia’s aggression against its neighbors as a “huge burden.” , but vehemently rejects the notion of “state guilt”. “It is simply not worth talking about crimes by states or any other collectives — the notion of collective crimes is contrary to fundamental human rights principles,” he said. “The collective efforts of our movement’s participants are based on an entirely different ideological basis — based on an understanding of past and present civic responsibilities.”