Ukrainian activist says victims must have a say in peace talks
The current peace talks on Ukraine need to pay greater attention to humanitarian issues, Oleksandra Matviichuk, whose Center for Civil Liberties was awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, told dpa in Berlin on Monday.
"We not just focus on geopolitics - we must speak about people affected by this war," Matviichuk said.
The human rights lawyer backs participation in the current talks in Geneva by civil society. The "format of this peace talk is contracted in a way that it's very difficult to reach a path to sustainable peace," she said.
The voices of victims of Russian war crimes have been "excluded," Matviichuk said.
She cited as examples the abduction to Russia of 20,000 Ukrainian children, according to her estimates, and the maltreatment of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians in Russian captivity.
Matviichuk highlighted the position of millions of Ukrainians in Russian-occupied zones. "Russian occupation, it's not just changing one state flag to another. Russian occupation means enforced disappearances, torture, rape, denial of your identity, forcible adoption of your own children ... and mass graves," she said.
She noted that the peace plan under discussion included the exchange of all prisoners and the return of Ukrainian children, but said the information made public to date lacked detail.
Matviichuk described sentiment in the population enduring its fourth winter of war as extremely concerned. "Russia has already destroyed the vast majority of energy infrastructure, which put millions of people in Ukraine in situations that they will fade this winter without heating, electricity, light, water," she said.
But she also saw no alternative to continued resistance, saying that if Ukraine stopped fighting, Russia would occupy the country. "We will cease to exist because this war has genocidal character," Matviichuk said.
The Center for Civil Liberties, which she heads, was awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with a Belarusian activist and a Russian rights organization.