Ukrainian journalist and human rights activist Maksym Butkevych, who spent more than two years in captivity in Russia, gave an interview to Euronews.
Maksym Butkevych, Ukrainian journalist and one of the most eminent human rights defenders in the country, has spent more than two years in captivity in Russia.
He joined the Ukrainian army in February 2022, when Russia began its large -scale invasion of Ukraine. He participated in the defense of Kyiv and, when the Russian forces were pushed back from the capital, he was sent to eastern Ukraine.
In June 2022, he was captured by the Russian army near the occupied cities of Zolote and Hirske in the Louhansk region, in eastern Ukraine.
The Russian media reported its capture on June 24, by publishing a propaganda video. In September of the same year, the Russian Defense Ministry officially recognized its detention.
In March 2023, the authorities appointed by Russia in the occupied regions of Louhansk and Donetsk in Ukraine condemned Maksym Butkevych to 13 years in prison.
On October 18, 2024, he returned to Ukraine as part of an exchange of prisoners of war.
After a brief rehabilitation of four weeks, Maksym Butkevych returned to what he always wanted to do: defend human rights. He focuses on the protection of the rights of illegally detained civilians and prisoners of war, and on the fight against Russian propaganda and hate speeches.
Euronews spoke with him in Brussels the day Russia and the United States had their first one-on-one meeting about a possible agreement on Ukraine-without Ukraine, “What goes in the direction of Russian ideology”according to him.
According to the former prisoner of war, “The modern Russian ideology, which I have observed from the inside, in prison and in captivity, is as follows: everything is decided by the state and the leaders of the state. People are consumable materials, Tools that have no own will.
According to him, Russia tried to make believe that Ukraine and the Ukrainians were “A tool controlled by Americans and Europeans.”
For him, at the same time, Russia thinks that Ukraine belongs to Moscow and tried to take it back under its control “And the instrument, this tool, suddenly showed its will. The instrument has suddenly become independent, active and said that it was a community of people who wanted to be free.”
The human rights defender explains that according to him, this reality is so incompatible with the ideology of “Russkiy Mir”, Or “Russian world”, that she even provoked anger in the way Russian prison guards treat Ukrainians “The fact that it is the people who make the decisions, the people who are in charge of their own future, provokes the misunderstanding and anger of those who captured us and those who kept us.”
And it is, according to him, why all meetings on Ukraine without Ukraine fall into the same flaw “I fear that other international actors who treat Ukraine in this way today will show the same imperial approach that deprives Ukraine and the Ukrainians on their own subjectivity”.
This is why he says that Ukraine cannot be forced to any territorial concession. “If we accept that parts of the territory currently occupied are given to the aggressive state, we will in fact defeat the security system which was created in Europe after the Second World War.” It would be a case “successful“where a state invades the territory of a neighboring state, “Kill many people, take parts of the territory and keep them for him, and everyone agrees with this”.
But for Butkevych, whose war name is “moses”, it is not the greatest fear, which is in reality the fate of the millions of Ukrainians who live in these territories.
He was detained in a penitentiary colony in the Louhansk region, occupied by Russia, and judging by what he has seen, in particular with regard to civilians held by the Russians, “All those in the occupied territories are hostages of the Russian regime”.
These people live in conditions as they can be deprived of freedom at any time and that their rights can be violated. “This can happen at a systemic level and these people do not benefit from any protection“. In addition, human rights protection mechanisms can be and will probably be diverted and used against them.
Inhuman rights in Russian captivity
More than 90 % of Ukrainian prisoners of war are not visited by international institutions, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the conditions of detention are therefore not controlled.
The Office of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General revealed last year that up to 90 % of all the prisoners of repatriated war said that he had been tortured in the Russian prisons.
Maksym Butkevych says that he and other Ukrainians detained in the same penitentiary colony were informed directly, in particular during the first six months of their detention, that no one had access to them, with the exception of the prisoners . “They use it to undermine our morale and explain to us that they can do anything to us. Nobody would know, let alone ask them for accounts. And we knew it was true because it is was true “.
In the summer of 2022, just after his capture, he met a representative of the United Nations Mission for Human Rights. Before this visit, the Ukrainians had received instructions and threats to “What would happen to us if we suddenly say something wrong.”
He never met the representatives of the Red Cross International Committee, which he said that prisoners of war had initially hoped for the arrival “It was probably the only non -governmental organization whose mandate was included in international humanitarian law and which was supposed to visit us. And that never happened”.
According to the Ukrainian defender, the Russians only mention the Geneva Convention as a “I bullying tool and false accusations”.
Butkevych himself heard about it twice; He remembers: the first time, when he was transported with the other Ukrainian prisoners of war to the penitentiary colony of the Luhansk region. “Russian officers told us that we were not prisoners of war for the moment, that we have just disappeared in the war zone and that we would become prisoners of war when we would be brought to our destination, which means that we could simply disappear if we behave inappropriately “, he said.
For the second time, he explains that he had heard of the Geneva Convention when he was wrongly accused of having raped her. “This is the second time that I have seen a reference to the Geneva Convention, but the fourth time I have heard of the treatment of civilians in the indictment of the case mounted from scratch against me and in the verdict “he adds, “In other words, I was accused of having violated the Geneva Convention, which earned me to be declared and condemned as a war criminal. This is the only thing they use the Convention from Geneva “.
Civil prisoners in the hands of the Kremlin
Completely returning to his activities as a human rights defender, Maksym Butkevych told Euronews that his number one objective and priority were the Ukrainian civilians in captivity in the territories occupied by Russia.
“If you take into account all those who seek their loved ones and fight to find them, hundreds of thousands of people are affected by the need to release our civilians who are in captivity in the territories occupied by Russia. They should be released from as possible, through an exchange or another way “he said.
Until then, an independent control mechanism should be set up to verify the conditions of their detention “Because, unfortunately, I know the conditions of first -hand detention, by my own experience”. He expressed this experience in the European Parliament in Brussels.
His message to Europe is no longer considering that this is a local Russian-Ukrainian history “Russian activity today aims to confirm and destroy the foundations of fundamental values and what remains of the international humanitarian law system and the international security system, which is important for all other countries in the world”.
This is why, according to him, Ukraine must help protect the values of this system.
Three years ago, most countries around the world gave Ukraine that a handful of days before it fell into the hands of Russia. However, according to the defender “Ukrainians have already surprised everyone on numerous occasions and have huge resources to continue to surprise all those who have short memory “
But there is another point, according to him, which is less optimistic, especially when it comes to certain European countries. If Ukraine fails to achieve its goals without external help, it will mean according to Butkevych “May the” Russian world “come to them, and they will be surprised, but it may be too late”.