Freedom, humanity and the realities of war - an evening with Maksym Butkevych

Maksym Butkevych places his hands on his chest and bows to the audience, who greet him that evening with standing ovations and prolonged applause. "To be honest, it's not easy being here, especially not after such an introduction and welcome," he explains. The fact that Maksym Butkevych has not lost his sense of humour becomes clear in the coursce of this evening, despite all the heaviness: "I still don't know what to do in situations like this. Especially when I remember that less than five months ago I was still in the penal colony in the occupied part of Luhansk, which is controlled by Russia. If someone had told me back then that I would be here in less than five months and be greeted like this, I couldn't have imagined it."

A pacifist on a war mission

Before joining the military in February 2022, Maksym Butkevych worked as a journalist and human rights activist, including for the BBC World Service and the UN refugee organisation UNHCR. In June 2022, he was captured by Russian forces and sentenced to 13 years in prison. When asked by presenter Oleksandra Bienert how it matches that an antimilitarist and pacifist picks up a weapon and signs up for military service and to what extent the war has changed his antimilitarist position, Butkevych says that it is also a question of definition. If being a pacifist means protesting against war, abhorring violence and trying to avert it, then he is a pacifist. But if it stands for - and according to his observations, this is how it is repeatedly interpreted - that violence must never be used under any circumstances, including in defence, then he is not. Butkevych justifies this stance: "I honestly believe - and this is not just a rational belief, but a feeling that touches my principles - that if you witness a crime that can only be prevented by violence and you do nothing, then you become an accomplice to that crime."

When people call for peace and mean no longer supporting Ukraine militarily, then for him it is also about honesty, both intellectually and morally: "Of course anyone can say: I don't think Ukraine should be supported. That is an opinion. But then they should also say: I don't want Ukraine to continue to exist; I want the Ukrainian population to be subjected to genocide; I am on the side of the aggressor; I support oppressors, war crimes and crimes against humanity, therefore Ukraine should not be supported. Just say that then!

Russian propaganda in the White House

Maksym Butkevych gives a deep insight into the realities of war on this evening. He talks about his experiences as a prisoner, what they did to him and why he fights so tirelessly. He talks about his beliefs and principles and also shares his political observations, for example about Crimea, which has almost completely disappeared from public perception: "The situation in Crimea is probably worse than ever, but the world is no longer following it. If the world, the international and European community, had reacted adequately to the violent takeover of parts of Ukraine by Russia in 2014, we wouldn't be where we are now. We wouldn't have this nasty war. But it wasn't taken seriously and now we are bearing the consequences."

About the current political discourse and the scandal during Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to the White House, he says he was shocked by Donald Trump's rhetoric. His statements are congruent with Russian propaganda, which he is also familiar with from Russian guards from his imprisonment; for example, that Zelenskyy is a dictator and that Ukraine provoked the war. "But when I asked them: 'Which armed forces have invaded which territory? Just tell me!', there was a strange silence," Butkevych recounts. "You can try to manipulate information; you can try to expand and spread a certain point of view, but you can't say that armed Ukrainian forces entered Russia to attack. No, it was the other way round.

Plea against dehumanisation and revenge

While in detention, he has sometimes seen a kind of desire for revenge emerge in some detainees, the faint hope that Russian prisoners in Ukraine might be treated as badly as they are. Butkevych says that someone always disagreed that the crucial thing is that the war does not make them what they are fighting against: "The war is terrible not only because of the pain and suffering it brings, because it takes away our loved ones and destroys our homes, because it floods our country with rivers of blood, but because it takes away our humanity. It makes us confuse justice with revenge." Butkevych is convinced that revenge cannot be the right path, that dehumanisation must have no necessity outside the battlefields. Butkevych has been released from active military service for a few weeks now and is devoting himself primarily to his activist work. However, if push came to shove, he would also go back to the front.