Ms. Oleksandra Romantsova on Ukraine and Putin

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2023/09/01

Ms. Oleksandra Romantsova is the Executive Director (2018-present) of the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 under her and others’ leadership in documenting war crimes. This will be a live series on human rights from a leading expert in an active context from Kyiv, Ukraine, to complement live on-the-ground war coverage in the war zones from Romanian humanist independent journalist Remus Cernea. 

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today is August 5th. We are here today with Sasha Romantsova, the Executive Director of the (Ukrainian) Centre for Civil Liberties. 

Oleksandra Romantsova: Before me, about 2018, we did not have such a position. It was too small for that. So, I took about 10 years to go from volunteer to Executive Director. In 2018, I took this position. 

Jacobsen: What inspired you to get involved in human rights? You stated in the World Congress that human rights are your religion. 

Romantsova: Exactly, I worked at the bank, a huge international financial institution. Like 7 years, changed 3 departments in this business, but in 2013 I was really bored. I was thinking about changing some system. At that moment, we had the Revolution of Dignity in 2013. Some of my friends were beaten. That was one of the points, that I wanted to do something about it. I wanted to get my old contacts. During university, I was in the student movement. It was a huge movement in 2006, 2007 in Ukraine. This was all buried by Yanukovych’s state management system. I was trying to find who was organizing something useful. I found Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties. She told me that we opened a hotline – Euromaidan-SOS. This hotline had one purpose. It needed to be pro bono work by lawyers who are supporting people. We started from that. But after this, it started to work, like informal the Center for Information about Maidan demonstrations. From the opening of the hotline on November 30 until its closure in May 2014, after the victory of the “Maidan”, we accepted more than 16,000 calls. At that moment, I worked in the bank in the morning from 8 to 6.  From 7 p.m. I work around CCL`s office, and translated for some journalists. Because really quick, some journalists find out what we do, get true information. 

At 12 (midnight), I took the last train at the Metro and slept a few hours. At 4, I take a taxi, in the am, to take time at the hotline, then I go back to 8 at the bank. That was my schedule for three months. After such a situation, when you are sitting at night, not always the night has something happening, I am sitting at the moment. There were a lot of books I read about the human rights situations in different countries. I started reading them. But I can’t sleep. So, I have to do something about it. Exactly that, it’s something I do, human rights. My personal dream has come true with my system of work. After these three months without proper sleep and nerves, we did not plan – then Covid escaped. I wanted to work all of my life in this situation. I quit from the bank and asked Oleksandra Matviichuk if she has some position for me. She says, “No, but you can have a place to work”. I say, “What do I need to do to have this place for work?” She said I need some projects. So, I did a first project for UNDP. It was a project for war crimes on Crimea and Donbas. I didn’t have any experience in that. But we see that problem started to happen there. So, we needed to document in writing what happened. In 2014, that was my first project: “I am going to Donbas to the frontline to document it and the people were detained, killed, tortured”. The first indication of that, we had after a few months. Before that, we didn’t have any indication of that. Human rights defenders from other countries proposed that we have some education in this experience. In Croatia, during the study visit, we even found graves, after 20 years. After this, we started to be more professional. Since then, we have documented war crimes. The main idea: Justice, if it can happen now, then it is important to keep the information, so it doesn’t happen in the future. 

After that, I had a new task – international advocacy. Although I have certain public speaking skills, I have dyslexia. So I make a lot of mistakes in English. But it was important to do it, so no one paid attention to the number of mistakes in my speeches. My task was to go internationally to different organizations like the UN, Council of Europe, OSCE to talk about the East of Ukraine and Crimea. It was fun. It was 2015. I was 30. The people around me were mostly guys, respectable persons after 50. People in ties. When you talked about Donbas Frontline, you say, “Yes, yes, I was there”. But there were bombings, and people kidnapped. They were glad that they didn’t need to go there to get information. I found one European parliamentarian from Latvia – Nelia Kleinberga. She came with me to Donbas, so, a courageous woman, and made the first international report on the situation there. I was not at the office at all. I was either at the East of Ukraine or near Crimea, or somewhere in Europe, to give this information internationally. We needed to ramp up to cover all the tasks. 

We looked for institutional support. They told us, “It can happen. You need structure and some responsibility”. That was 2018. We changed the structure and made the position for Executive Director. I was the first to take it. 

Jacobsen: Since 2018, what has been the evolution of that position as the annexation-invasion has become full-scale on Ukraine?

Romantsova: Look, we always work in two directions: to stop violations of human rights outside and inside Ukraine. It is not only war, what happened. It happened around the standards of human rights. The Ukrainian state is not the same as Russia. Russia violates human rights because they actively do something. They kidnap people. They make falsification at trials. Police beat people or something. Or they are trying to destroy any peaceful movement, organization, or journalists. Another type of human rights violation is widespread in Ukraine  – the state does not sufficiently organize opportunities for people to realize their rights and freedoms. For example, a new category of people has appeared – IDP – to ensure their rights in a new situation the State needs to create something, write some law – but it doesn’t do that. Our work inside Ukraine was to push the State to do something, which we need, which human rights are needed.  That’s why We have these two main directions, inside and outside. 

But at that time we devoted a lot of time to what was happening in our biggest neighbor – Russia. Russian human rights defenders said that things in Russia were getting worse and worse. Rights are cut more every year. That means, in one moment, they will only have one answer: War. When you don’t have freedom inside the society, the society starts to become non-flexible. They have feelings. They have emotions. They need to put these somewhere. So, it is logical. If human rights don’t work, because human rights prevent, then the system will result in war. 

We didn’t know exactly who would be the victim. Not only Ukraine, it could be Georgia. At that time, they did not have politicians who wanted friendly Russian-Georgian relations. According to another version, it could be Northern Kazakhstan. Northern Kazakhstan has a large Russian-speaking region near the border with the Russian Federation. 

There is a law in Russia, if you speak Russian, they call you “Co-Father-Lander”  and have the right to “protect” you with their troops, even on the territory of another state.

Jacobsen: It sounds like Motherland. 

Romantsova: It is de facto “Compatriot”. Literal translation “Co-Father-Lander”.

Jacobsen: In a way, in North America, people will say, “You are my brother”, to build ethnic solidarity, but a national version of it. 

Romantsova: This is not about solidarity or diplomatic dialogue – they are starting to defend Russian speakers with weapons. So every time you speak Russian, “they will protect you” and maybe you will be killed during this “protection”.

We need to grow up. We need to speak much more on the international level for explaining all of this. We collaborate with a lot of international human rights groups. We take part in the International Federation for Human Rights, solidarity around the ICC, different NGOs, and speaking about the human rights situation in Ukraine relating to Russia, and the human rights situation in Russia.

In Russia are human rights defenders who did not accept Crimea annexation, who did speak about all the violence inside of Russia and Belarusian society. All of them under the pressure. People were prosecuted politically, put in jails, and physically attacked sometimes. 

We felt that it was becoming more and more, and we were preparing. So when that happened, the invasion happened, I just packed my things and went to work in the office.

I am natively from the South part of Ukraine, from Mykolaiv. A lot of people hear about Mykolaiv. Before that, I had to explain that Mykolaiv is somewhere between Odessa and Kherson. But now…

Jacobsen: People hear about Ukraine altogether.

Romantsova: [Laughing]. Yes, yes, yes.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Romantsova: We were joking yesterday. Before 24 of February 2022, you need to explain, “Ukraine is somewhere between Poland and Russia somewhere”. Now, we say, “Varenyki from which region of Ukraine do you like more?”

[Laughing] 

Jacobsen: The same thing happened with the American invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. People could point to it on the map and name particular areas of it. 

Romantsova: Previously, you knew the regions of Ukraine only if you had relatives there, or there was a large nuclear power plant there – like Chernobyl, or, for example, you were interested in native parks and unique animals. By the way, in the Mykolaiv region, we had native parks and unique animals that were destroyed by the explosion of the Kakhovska dam. 

So, before the invasion, only my mother was left to live in my hometown. I have only My sister, my Mom, and I, – we are small family. My sister, moved to Kyiv before. 

My mom had an intuition, “I come to you” – she told me over the phone on Monday

“Why?” 

“I don’t know. I have a feeling.”

She did that, she arrived on Wednesday. The Thursday, in the morning, the invasion started. It was perfect intuition. I sent out both of them from Ukraine at beginning of March, because it is dangerous. My family home place and organization can be destroyed. From that, we work. I think that in 1.5 months; you can plan anything. Do you need to plan fighting underground? Or do you need to plan – I don’t know – collecting the body? Or, maybe, tomorrow, all of this will be finished because people in Russia will go into the streets. You don’t have any idea how tomorrow will find you, at which point or in which situation. But we still continue to work. Because of our work in the international community know about human rights in Donbas and Crimea. A lot of journalists which covered Ukraine were really good. When they found out we stayed in Kyiv during all of this, we started to give 12 interviews in a day. Every time an interview finishes, they say, “Stay safe!” How can we manage it? [Laughing]  Because it is rockets going. That was really interesting. My main concern is collecting human rights and war crimes. When Russia Army was started to pushed out of North part of Ukraine, we were there and started to go out into the field and collect evidence and testimonies at the crime place. We systemize all of this at our common Data Base. 

Jacobsen: Who is the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC now? Before, I know it was Fatou Bensouda. 

Romantsova: Currently, the international prosecutor’s office is headed by Karim Khan. We appealed to the ICC in 2014 because of these 16,000 calls that we accepted. We prepared a submission to the ICC about crimes against humanity. Because the state “militia” (that’s what the police used to be called) and internal troops attacked peaceful protesters who supported the European integration course, not only in Kyiv, but also in all regions of Ukraine. Some of these protesters were even killed, for example in Donetsk in March 2014.

Jacobsen: As an addendum, I have two last questions. One, from those who live and know the region and know the political contexts of themselves and the contiguous nations, what were the motivations of the original annexation and invasion of Crimea and the Donbas from the point of view of Vladimir Putin?

Romantsova: I don’t know. He’s a mad guy. I don’t know. I think it’s main points inside his head. He is a guy from Soviet Union. He still believes the falling of the Soviet Union is a tragedy. Exactly, it is under the consciousness. He believes USSR – is the best model. And also, the times of the “Cold War” are his prime time. Because, in that model, he knows what he needs to do to be the best, the elite, at the top. Again, as I talked about in my presentation during the Congress, he will not find a place for himself in Democracy. When you look at him, he is quite gray, a person who is not a charismatic leader, which can be popular in a democracy. He truly believes that it will be fair for Greatness Russia – to be feared and considered equal in terms of development and importance in international relations. And he wants to achieve this by seizing territories and establishing control there. It is logical of the 18th century: “If I kept more tyranny, I will be cooler. I will be better. We will be a stronger country, State”. But it is not good for all of us, and not good for Russian population. It is not working like this for Russian citizens. For Russians, this strategy does not lead to an improvement in the quality of life. Most of them have to urbanize, because they do not have even basic infrastructure outside the big cities. But they won’t do that. Half of the population does not have access to gas in their homes. Biggest exporter of gas in the world. Half of the population does not have access to this service. Same with toilets. Half don’t have toilets inside their homes.

Jacobsen: Parts of the world live in third world circumstances. 

Romantsova: Human rights defenders, who show the true situation, humiliate him. I know how many people are dying. It is like two positions. He wants to show exactly how strong the next version of the Soviet Union is. From the other side, nobody from the power circles of Russia cares to stop him. So, he believes anyone he kills; he kills for Russia. But which, de facto, has political and civilian disabilities, he does nothing for the people of Russia. If you look at the Russian war, or the wars over the last 20 years, they destroyed everything in the territories they captured. There, people live separately from their state and have no opportunity to influence the rules by which they live: Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya, Transnistria, Obkhazia, South Ossetia.

That’s why when they did this with Donbas and Crimea – the population lost control over their lives. Before that, Putin was really popular in that region, Russia invested a lot of money in propaganda there. They really want Crimea because, strategically, it is the best place to control Europe. The question, to shoot Kyiv or to shoot Warsaw, Berlin, Paris or London is a question of a couple of degrees of correction of the course of missiles from military facilities in Crimea.

Therefore, by militarizing the peninsula, they de facto replaced the population of Crimea. They displaced people who are loyal to Ukraine and the indigenous population: Crimean Tatars, Karaites and Krymchaks – and bring many military personnel and people who work around the military, their families. With a population of 2 million in Crimea, about 100,000 were pushed out and about 300,000 were brought in from the regions of the Russian Federation. So they actually made one large military base in Crimea with the support of the population. The Russian Federation is doing this in Crimea. He did it in the Balkans, in Bessarabia, in the Caucasus. Even the guys who implemented this scenario in various places of interest of the Russian Federation are the same. I think this is an old Soviet scenario. They provide these “experts” with money, weapons, political and propaganda support. Putin can afford it because he has money. When Europe and other countries included Russia in the international economic system and bought oil and gas, they supported the financing of this system. Only human rights activists have been talking about this danger for the last 20 years.

So, I am not sure what will happen with Putin. I think he will not survive because he created a culture of violence. Liquidation and terror, which happened during the Soviet Union time, that was an idea that if you don’t like someone: how they thought, how they act; you just ‘clean’ society of them. That’s what they thought. They clean from aristocracy after the fall of Tsarist power. They killed not only Ukrainians who wanted independence, but also other peoples who found themselves on the territory captured by the communists – for example, Finns or Latvians. Since 2018, they just clean Russian society from journalists, human rights defenders, activists, oppositionists and other free people. They push them out, put them in prisons, sometimes kill them, like Nemtsov.

Jacobsen: Garry Kasparov…

Romantsova: Garry Kasparov is the guy who is like, “I told you! I told you.” I don’t like him [Laughing]

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Romantsova: He is not productive. You can talk. And what? For 20 years, he has prepared for this situation. People said, “We cannot go out to some streets with demonstrations because they will kill you.” Yes! But create new forms of resistance! Ukrainians do that. You can try new strategies every day.

Jacobsen: From his perspective, at a prior time to the full-scale invasion, he was noting the Putin regime requires high oil prices. And if the oil prices decline sufficiently, that’s going to be a major hit to the regime. On a similar line of thought, what are sort of the points at which Vladimir Putin is weakest or vulnerable to democratic forces – either within his own society with Russian citizens or externally from the international community?

Romantsova: Good question. Do you know? We don’t have any sanction from the UN. 

Jacobsen: Neither from the Human Rights Council or from the Security Council?

Romantsova: None.

Jacobsen: How far has the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council, and the Security Council, gone?

Romantsova: Exactly, the problem, we know about embargo, it is one of the tools that the UN Security Council can use to limit the aggressor. We start this process, but Russia and China are there – they impose a veto. So the process of imposing sanctions in the UN is totally blocked. Russians have sanctions from the European Union, the closest economic partner – but this is not enough. Russia also blocked the OSCE decision. It means OSCE is the biggest organization in the world that makes observation of democratic elections – it cannot even approve the budget for the second year. It means they can’t plan, but individual offices of this organization try to find grant money. It is one of the examples of how all of these are challenges.

The issue for Russian economy… Elvira Nabiullina is the head of the Russian central bank. Each post-Soviet country has a central banking system. So, she is the head of the central bank and minister of the economy. She is really talented. She knows about the economy. But she worked for war criminals and has the prospect of continuing her power. And I think it will be, finally, stopped with a total embargo. If we talk about some tools, economic tools, embargo can stop war. Oil, gas, agriculture, fertilizer… they always have India and China as clients to buy it. Only a total embargo will work. 

Jacobsen: Russia is turning to China. 

Romantsova: I think India looks to China more. Look at the examples, is it possible to act like that or not? For both of them, it is a big experimental platform. 

Jacobsen: It seems more so for China because there is more of a unified voice in their autocratic system. Within India, you have so many subsystems, socially and politically, that it is a much more complicated system, not just the Hindu Nationalist…

Romantsova: I think India will have much more problems inside, but it will be a huge tragedy because it is the biggest population in the world. But China has a lot of outside purposes, issues. So, for Ukrainians, we are in the middle of the world. It was a big surprise for us to learn how important we are for the grain market. So, we know that we produce a lot of agriculture. But we never think that half of the world will be hungry because we can’t sell. We not even give, but sell. Without selling our grain, they can no longer eat because they have no more bread. 

Ukraine has always tried to build connections with other countries in Europe, North America, but very rarely with such countries as Brazil, for example. Now Ukrainians feel this responsibility. We know that we need to fight, not only for ourselves. Even tomorrow, if Zelenskyy says it is seen as a bad idea, we don’t have enough support, strength. The population would say, “That President is broken, bring me the next”. Seriously, he cannot stop the people. When Zelenskyy tried to explain to Putin that we need a referendum for any decision, Putin cannot understand, “What?” Yes, because nobody will stop, nobody can stop the normal population (Ukrainians). That’s a good thing in a way. We try to find examples. We try to find some, maybe in some other countries, where something like this happened. Most people don’t have 18th century war in 21st century terms. Middle Age with internet, fucking shit!

Jacobsen: Another aspect is digitalization, where you have misinformation and disinformation. 

Romantsova: We have a new kind of war crimes in cyberspace. Russia is trying to destroy all of our state databases. Imagine your State has no information about you tomorrow. Your passport, bank, taxis. They are trying to do that as part of warfare. They are trying to destroy our entire system. So, now, exactly, we have a cyberwar. Ukrainians and Russians both really are high-level hackers, teams. But now, inside the dark net, they have a huge party from all over the world. I don’t know a lot about that, only a little from those who hold this front in Ukraine.

Jacobsen: The Ukrainians and the Russians, they remind me, in one particular way, about Indian culture, where it is highly tech-savvy and electronic and software savvy. There’s just a culture of people who get computers, love to work with them, and use them for actual real-world purposes, not just for playing games or developing an application. 

Romantsova: It is a joke, but it really sticks. In the 90s, we did not have personal computers at home. So most of us had clubs, internet clubs. Children came there to just play, play all night. All the relatives – and the parents and the teachers – tell about how “we’ll have a whole new generation – they don’t know life, only games, what will grow out of them?” when it is a new generation of drone operators. Nobody knew that it was specially preparing for protecting the country. Our world has changed. Our international humanitarian law, the whole structure, needs implementing new mechanisms to protect us. The modern international system does not even cover half of the things going on.

Jacobsen: Do you think the human rights mechanisms, even up to structures in the United Nations like the World Health Organization, the Human Rights Council, the Security Council, are stuck in a moment in time?

Romantsova: I think we have to believe that we common people are a lot more sensitive. Now, I think the big problem with the OSCE after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was a club of social democracies. Countries who talked about instituting democracy. That was their place. The whole region showed this. It is not only Russia. It is Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan… in almost all these countries there are political prisoners. So, only Eastern Europe is going more to Western Europe and democracy. Hungary, it is in the middle of Europe and is manipulated. Poland, I really appreciate what they do for us, like open the border. But there is always the question of the independence of the courts. This kind of thing. It is a big example for us, and for our generation. We can complain about what the previous generation did not do, but, now, it is our task. 

Jacobsen: You mentioned earlier. You don’t believe President Putin will survive.

Romantsova: Yes, I think he will be killed.

Jacobsen: By who or in what manner, or what timeline, would you speculate?

Romantsova: You want me to give you my plan how it’s going to happen! [Laughing]

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Romantsova: Why do I think so, tell that?

Jacobsen: Yes.

Romantsova: For me, the best version, he is sitting in the cage in the court in The Hague. We have a full process with all the arguments and testimonies, and the evidence, about his guilt. But I don’t believe in that in reality. Nobody exactly was convicted by being in the position of President… Putin is one of the leaders of the world. It’s true. 140,000,000 people and lots of resources. But – He created a cult of violence inside society. So, when it will be exactly, when his rounds have fewer and fewer profits from this war, at one moment, they will think about Putin as the main guy who keeps the information about all of them on this process. That’s why I think they will kill him.

Jacobsen: Sasha, thank you for the opportunity and your time.

Romantsova: You’re welcome.

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