Ignoring war crimes destroys international law, Ukrainian former POW says

Ukrainian journalist and human rights advocate Maksym Butkevych, who spent two and a half years in Russian captivity, told ERR’s “Ukraine Studio” programme that life in prison camps was marked by harsh conditions and systematic violence. He said the international community must ensure war criminals are held accountable to show that the law has not lost its meaning.

Asked about the course of the war, Butkevych said the situation was complex. He noted that Ukraine had resisted Russia’s aggression for five years, despite early predictions that Russian forces would gain the upper hand within days or weeks.

“They still have not managed to establish control even over the territories from which they began their invasion, such as in the eastern part of the country,” he said.

In Ukraine, some people therefore regard Russia’s failure to achieve its objectives as a victory, he said. Those objectives included erasing Ukraine from the map or installing a puppet government.

At the same time, Butkevych described the conflict as a war of attrition that has left Ukraine exhausted. He said the country could not have continued resisting for so many years without international solidarity and support, and expressed gratitude to Estonia, which he called one of Ukraine’s friends and allies.

He said the resources available to Ukraine and Russia were incomparable, including in terms of manpower. “I do not like talking about people as resources, but in wartime there is a shortage of manpower, and that is difficult,” he said.

Butkevych said Ukraine had learned to respond asymmetrically to the shortage of troops by relying on technology. The war had become a drone war and the situation was “almost a stalemate”, he said.

Russian forces were advancing in some parts of the front, including strategically important areas, but Ukraine had also made gains and regained control over a significant amount of territory, he said. The result was a prolonged war with no end in sight in the near future.

Butkevych said Ukraine’s most urgent needs from its partners were military and financial support, as well as equipment. With more funding, Ukraine could produce more weapons, including drones, he said.

He also called for continued pressure on Russia, including coordinated military action at the front and political, diplomatic and economic measures such as sanctions. Russia’s leadership was showing no willingness to end the war soon, he said, adding that continuing the war had to be made too costly for Moscow.

Butkevych said he agreed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s statement that Ukrainians were holding Europe’s frontline, while stressing that Ukrainians were people, not “terminators”, and could not be expected to sustain such a role indefinitely.