Ukraine series: life in a war zone

This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: ‘Ukraine series: life in a war zone’

Gideon Rachman
Hello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I’m Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times. This month will mark a year since Russia invaded Ukraine. With the fighting still raging, we’re going to devote the next three additions to the war in Ukraine. My guest this week is Lesia Vasylenko, a Ukrainian MP and an international lawyer who’s using her skills to try to hold Russia to account. So can Russia be made to pay for its war crimes in Ukraine?

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Lesia Vasylenko
We must end this war by summer, this year, and we must end it with Ukraine’s victory. Because the victory of Ukraine is the victory of the democratic free world. And it’s also a victory of the Russian people as human beings. The way to do it is to mobilise all possible efforts, especially military efforts, and concentrate them around Ukraine.

Gideon Rachman
That was Lesia Vasylenko explaining her view of what’s at stake in this war. And as you’ll hear, she’s doing her part by pursuing legal avenues to prepare the way for war crimes trials and to get Russia to pay for the rebuilding of Ukraine. She even has a plan to get Russia booted out of the UN. Like most Ukrainians, she’s having to do all of this against the backdrop of a life turned upside down by war. So I started our conversation by asking Lesia for her recollections of February 24th, the day that Russia attacked.

Lesia Vasylenko
In Ukraine, we started calling February the shortest month of the year, but one which never ends. And it certainly feels like that. Five in the morning, I received a call. Well, actually, it wasn’t me, it was my husband who received a call from an ex-colleague of his. And immediately I knew something was wrong because this lady, she would never call us in other circumstances than in a state of complete emergency. By the time I picked up my phone, it was already red. It was messages, was missed calls, and the next thing I knew, I was putting on my make-up on complete autopilot and had two colleagues of mine picking me up from my building to go to the parliament and vote. And we had one question on the agenda. It was martial law. Somehow I ended up being in the convocation of the Ukrainian parliament, which had the responsibility to vote for the introduction of martial law in the whole of the country, meaning that war had started.

Gideon Rachman
Had you anticipated that that was going to happen? Because I remember the weekend before the war, being in Munich and going to a dinner with some Ukrainian MPs who didn’t actually believe that the war would happen.

Lesia Vasylenko
We couldn’t believe that the war was going to happen. During the Munich Security Conference, I wasn’t at that event, I was in New York at the UN headquarters. I had the same questions. The war is about to happen. What are you guys doing? We were in total denial. We were saying that we have seen this time and time again. Russia has been amassing troops and then calling them back along the Ukrainian border for the last eight years since 2014. Nothing is going to happen. Because what choice did we have? Starting to do what? Panic. Be scared. Evacuate people. Evacuate families, cause chaos, and havoc in the country. That’s one of the options on the table. And also, there was no option of getting Ukraine armed to the teeth and ready to fight back the Russians. Because every time we were asking at the Munich Security Conference, at the UN in London, Paris, Washington — will you give us weapons? Russia is amassing those troops. The numbers are growing fast. Your intelligence is showing very dangerous movements. Will you give us the weapons, the ammunition, the tanks, the fighter jets to fight them off? And the answer was, of course, “No, don’t be ridiculous!”

Gideon Rachman
Yes, I remember at that conference the Germans were still at that point talking about sending helmets, and that was it.

Lesia Vasylenko
Well, the helmets came much, much later on. It was 5,000 helmets and it was ridiculous. But the point is that every single western ally at that point was concerned. They knew what was about to happen, but none was ready to arm Ukraine. The assumption was that Ukraine should just give up, and I won’t be surprised if that will become known in several decades that bets were being placed and how many hours or how many days Ukraine will fall and Kyiv will fall and there will be not just a Russian invasion, but a Russian occupation.

Gideon Rachman
That was the assumption. I mean, nobody was happy about it, but they thought Ukraine would fall within a week.

Lesia Vasylenko
Those weren’t pleasant talks to have. It was very much intimidating in terms of feelings. I remember feeling disappointed, angry of sorts, and a lot of the time even helpless, knowing that, OK, we are here stuck to our own resources. And also going back to your question as to while you were all in denial — yes, we were all in denial because this is how your psyche, your brain copes with the situation. If it hasn’t happened yet and you don’t have the means to prevent the situation from happening, then you sort of live in the now and you take it day by day. And of course, when crisis hit, when the Russian fighter jets and the missiles started flying over Ukraine when we had news of 17 special forces fighter jets about to descend in Hostomel, which is a small municipality just 20 kilometres from Kyiv. Of course, at that point, Ukrainians, the military, the president, government, parliament all were mobilised in an instant just like this.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah. And now it’s a year later, impossible to cover the whole year. But just give us a sense of what happened to you both as a person and as a politician over the course of the last year.

Lesia Vasylenko
I think like many Ukrainians, I discovered dimensions of myself I didn’t even know I had. Resilience is one word to use. As a nation, we proved to the world and to ourselves, first of all, that we are more than strong, that we value freedom, and that we know the taste and the feel of freedom, and that we are prepared to go to very big sacrifices for that freedom. As a person, first of all, I’m a mother. I have three children. The youngest is about to be 20 months old, and I’ve lived this year in separation from them most of the time because I’ve been able to spend maybe two weeks, maybe one week per month with them.

Gideon Rachman
They’re here in London?

Lesia Vasylenko
They are here in London in the UK for safety reasons, but also for reason that the older children — who are seven and nine — would have been completely lacking in education if they had stayed in Ukraine. Because you have to understand that was the air raids. There is disruptions in the education process, was dangerous of attacks all the time on the table. Many of the teachers have left. With the missile attacks sometimes ongoing for several days. Was the attacks on the energy infrastructure. It means that there’s no power, there’s no electricity, so even the online education becomes impossible. So of course, when and if there is a choice, you make that choice for the future of your children. And of course, the question that I have asked myself as a mother on the 1st of March, that is the day when I evacuated my children, was would I be able to forgive myself if at any point a missile falls, a drone attacks, shrapnel wounds happen to my children? Will I be able to live with this and forgive myself, if anything happens to them, knowing well enough that I had the opportunity, the resources and the possibility to take them to safety? The answer was no.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah. So you continue your life as a politician in Kyiv, but also as an international advocate for Ukraine, travelling around the world and somehow get to London when you can once a month.

Lesia Vasylenko
I come from a diplomatic background. My father was ambassador to several countries — the UK included. So diplomacy sort of runs in the family line, in the blood. And I do enjoy it. I do enjoy parliamentary diplomacy. I sit on the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe delegation from Ukraine on the Interparliamentary Union delegation. I co-chaired the UK-Ukraine Friendship Group, so clearly I like it. But as of the 24th of February, my role has changed significantly. It’s almost as if I’m on a mission to make sure that the world keeps talking about Ukraine and not just talking, but that the leaders of the world keep acting on Ukraine. So it was in the first two weeks of the escalation of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, together with a group of other female MPs, I managed to secure meetings with the British prime minister, Boris Johnson at the time, with the French president, Emmanuel Macron. We had meetings with the leadership of the European parliament, Roberta Metsola, and we have managed to maintain the relationships with key officers around the globe and it was key parliamentarians to make sure that Ukraine stays on the agenda, that Ukraine’s needs are addressed. Of course, our embassies, our Ukrainian embassies across the globe have made a huge effort, but every little helps in this war that Ukraine is fighting.

Gideon Rachman
Give us a sense of what it’s like in Kyiv now, because, again, from the outside, there’s been a rollercoaster. There was the horrible period when it looked like the Russians might enter, then they get forced back. But now there’s these attacks on infrastructure. How liveable or unlivable is normal life in Kyiv?

Lesia Vasylenko
The abnormal has become the new normal. And it’s very sad to have to state this because it suddenly became normal to go to a restaurant where you know that all your food is being prepared off a generator. It’s suddenly very normal to hear people say that we won’t be serving this dish because there’s an issue with the deliveries. To see how businesses — small and medium businesses, especially in big cities in Ukraine — survive by being extremely creative and adapting to providing basic services like haircuts, manicures, other beauty services in the half-dark with torches on the heads. It’s funny in a way, but it also shows the resilience of the people. And it’s absolutely abnormal, but it’s become the norm. Just going to the supermarkets and hearing an air raid and at that point, subconsciously, your brain still makes the decision, do I run and hide or do I just continue with the shopping list? Most of the time you just continue with the shopping list and you just played by ear. And it’s also become the norm when I take my children back to Ukraine, when there’s an air raid, you don’t go out into the park. You sit in the corridors with them because it’s one thing when it’s about you, yourself and your life and the way you choose to live but it’s a whole other thing about the lives for which you are responsible. What I don’t get, though, is this term I started hearing — as of Davos actually — luxury war. Luxury war in reference to Ukraine.

Gideon Rachman
Meaning?

Lesia Vasylenko
Meaning that, “Come on, it’s not that bad for them. There’s no refugee camps, there’s no food shortages, there’s water. People go to restaurants, people go to get their nails done. Look at them, it’s . . . they’re not suffering enough.” And OK, fair enough. But this is a war happening in the middle of the 21st century, in the middle of Europe, in a country that is no different from the UK or France in terms of the benefits of civilisation. So the picture that I guess some people would like to see of this immense human suffering all the time, 24/7, is just not there. But every day in Ukraine people die. Every day in Ukraine, children die.

Gideon Rachman
Absolutely. And I mean, I know that the exact toll on the Ukrainian military is not openly discussed, but I mean, you must know many people who’ve died in this war already.

Lesia Vasylenko
Unfortunately, I cannot reveal the numbers, but the toll is huge. And this is a consequence which Ukraine will have to deal with after our victory. After our victory, the war will not be over because we will have to rebuild. And the rebuilding starts with demanding of people’s lives, of people’s souls, of people’s psyche. The soldiers — men and women who are going to be coming back home — they will need all the support they can get. They will need all the understanding they can get. The families who have lost. As a society, we will need to continue standing in the same kind of solidarity you see now, when Ukrainians are fighting off Russian aggression. We will need to continue those solidarity efforts for our nation to keep together and for our nation to recover into a stronger country.

Gideon Rachman
Yes. And I guess that everybody contributes in the way they can. And you have a particular legal expertise. You’re very involved in the legal lawfare, some might call it, against Russia. What do you think the most important things or the most important campaigns that you can do to use the law, international law against Russia?

Lesia Vasylenko
Well, that’s the beauty of international law: the rules are there. The key is about applying these rules. And unfortunately, that key is not being used much. I feel, as an international lawyer, a frustration of sorts that there is no political will to be applying those instruments so clearly set out. It’s clear that Russia is the aggressor state. It matches all the criteria on the definition of what aggression is. Having said that, there’s very slow movement — although there is movement — on the setting up of a special tribunal on the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. There’s even slower movement on the fact that sanctions need to be applied. I mean, sanctions are applied. Yes, of course, the economic sanctions in ways, but they are not nearly as enough and don’t have such an effect if there would have been a political will to make use of the frozen assets that sit in central banks in the US, in the UK, in France and Switzerland, especially. So far, only two countries, Canada and Estonia, have adopted laws allowing for the seizure of Russian frozen assets. I think the world can do better than this. There’s a lot of debate around this topic, but not much action.

And finally, a big one for me is isolating Russia from international platforms. So far, the Council of Europe has excluded Russia and has been the first international organisation to exclude Russia from its membership. But the obvious one is the United Nations, the UN. Russia being the biggest aggressor, the biggest threat to international security, sits on the UN Security Council. It holds veto power there as a permanent member. Essentially, Russia abuses that veto power to hold the UN hostage. And it’s absolutely ridiculous because everybody knows this. Another fact that is very well known to every single member of the UN is that Russia has acquired membership illegally by not following procedures. Russia is the only country in the UN that has not ratified the UN charter. So, of course, such principles in that charter as prevention of conflicts, as ending wars, ending Russian, they mean nothing to the Russians or to the Russian government at least who has not ratified it and has no intention of ratifying it.

Gideon Rachman
So the British pragmatist in me says, “Well, those all sound great, but you know, you’re not gonna get anywhere probably with any of them.” But that would be maybe a defeatist. So let’s go through those three areas. You talk about the war crimes, getting hold of Russian assets and finally, the UN. On the war crimes, I’ve no doubt they’re being committed, but how do you actually get to the point where you have Russians in the dock, given that most people don’t believe that this war will end with a complete defeat of Russia in the way that, say, Nazi Germany was completely defeated? If there’s some sort of cessation of hostilities, can that involve war crimes tribunals?

Lesia Vasylenko
It is involved. So far, we have the ICC, the International Criminal Court, which is dealing with the war crimes cases and the cases of crimes against humanity. There’s a group of over 40 investigators, all of them from different countries, who are working on gathering the evidence, on arranging it in a systemic way and of preparing the cases. But you’re absolutely right. It’s hardly going to be like it was with Nazi Germany, that there will be an actual invasion of Russia like there was of Germany. And as a result of it, there was the Nuremberg trials and the tribunals. But with Russia, there’s no interest to invade that country, not from the Ukrainian perspective, not from anyone else’s perspective. We’re just hoping that we will be able to push out the Russian military by mid of this year from all of the territory of Ukraine, Crimea included, and that at the end of the day, there will be enough international political will and political pressure to make sure that not only the act of aggression itself ends, but that there’s sanctions against it.

Gideon Rachman
And I suppose one way one could think about how it might happen is if there was a change of political regime in Russia, then the new government might want to hold the people who launched this war accountable.

Lesia Vasylenko
Well, you see, that’s another very interesting conversation we could be having as to what happens to Russia. There’s also sudden reluctance in the political media to talk and to imagine what happens to Russia after Ukraine’s victory, after the democratic world’s victory. I always say that there shouldn’t be a fear of imagining Russia losing because Russia, as it is now under Putin, with Prigozhin and with all of these other semi-terroristic structures in place, this kind of Russia losing will actually mean a victory for the human lives and for the people of Russia who will finally get a chance at freedom. And with Russia losing there comes a whole line of different changes and reforms that needs to happen for Russia to become a safe space, a safe neighbour, a safe member of the international community. There needs to be clearly a demilitarisation of Russia. There needs to be a denuclearisation of Russia so that nuclear cannot be used as a threat. There needs to be probably a certain defederalisation, so break-up of Russia, so that it doesn’t have these imperialistic ambitions and aims. Clearly, the number one to start with is the de-Putinisation of Russia because under the current regime none of this will happen. And of course, going back to the crime of aggression which Russia is committing since 2014 against Ukraine, and which Russia was committing against Georgia in 2008 against the Republic of Ichkeria, Chechnya, we know it in the ’90s. So for that crime of aggression to not repeat itself, there needs to be a punishment. There needs to be sanctions as a guarantee of non-repetition, of the crime of aggression.

Gideon Rachman
And I must say, although I do suspect it won’t happen, it’s interesting that it does come up even in Russian public discourse. People occasionally talk about The Hague. So it’s clearly something that concerns them.

Lesia Vasylenko
I mean, depends who you talk to in Russia, right? I wouldn’t say that the tribunal would need to be in The Hague. I would much rather see that tribunal set up in Ukraine where the crimes were actually happening, where there’s the evidence base to be collected, where the witnesses are present, themselves. I think it would be right. It would serve justice. It’s about also getting those war criminals on the dock and it’s about making sure that they sit during those trials, listening to the witnesses, listening to the victims, and listening also to the final sentence and bearing the responsibility for their actions. It’s part of the restoration of justice.

Gideon Rachman
Before we get to that stage, there are many other things that you want to see happen. And one of them you mentioned is trying to get hold of the frozen Russian assets and handing them over to Ukraine, which obviously has a continuing huge budgetary problem because you’re fighting a war while your economy has been crippled by a war. Again, tell us where that’s at. How likely do you think it is to advance and what would be involved?

Lesia Vasylenko
Well, you know, as the normal has become the new normal in Ukraine, the impossible has become possible many times for the rest of the world. At the moment it’s a question of political will and it’s a question of several countries at the same time adopting national legislation allowing for the seizure of confiscated assets. I’m more confident about the confiscation of sovereign assets, the ones that sit in national banks such as the Bank of England, which presumably has somewhere between 18 and £26bn of Russian money sitting in the reserves. Very slowly it’s advancing and the UK, particularly government, is being overly careful, mentioning things like possible cases being argued in courts. But again, this is the reality when we’re talking about private money, oligarchic assets that are frozen in the UK. But when we’re talking about the money of a country that is recognised as an aggressive state at international level by UN resolutions, then it’s a whole different story. There’s the crime of aggression and there is a sanction against the crime of aggression because who must pay for all the damage and all the losses caused? Surely it shouldn’t be the British taxpayers. It should be the Russians and the Russian taxpayers who are responsible for that regime, Putin’s regime wreaking havoc, destruction, pain and death on all of Ukraine.

Gideon Rachman
It sounds reasonable to me, but I’m not a lawyer, and I’m sure if I were, that I would immediately come up with three objections as to why it’s impossible. So what are the arguments you’re having to face down?

Lesia Vasylenko
Well, one, I’ve mentioned already that the minute such legislation is adopted, there will be companies of legal firms, of lawyers marching into the courts arguing on precedent law in the UK, that it’s abuse of property rights. I trump that argument by saying this is oligarch money you’re talking about. When it’s a sovereign state, it’s a different kind of situation. The second argument, the political argument, would be that there’s not just Russian state money which sits in the central banks of different countries, but it’s also . . . 

Gideon Rachman
All sorts of other countries that . . . 

Lesia Vasylenko
It’s a matter of trust. And if you can do that to one country, then where is the guarantee you won’t be doing that one day to another country simply by changing your national legislation? Again, I trump that argument by saying that we’re dealing with an aggressor state, and if we are all still part of this international community that is bound by rules on respect of the sovereignty of states, respect of national borders, the UN charter, which tells us about a duty to prevent aggression, wars and conflicts, then we must act accordingly when the concern is an aggressor state, which Russia is.

Gideon Rachman
So, OK, let’s move on to possibly your most ambitious project, the UN. Again, you know, it seems to me it’s almost a circular argument. They shouldn’t be a member of the UN Security Council, but actually they are. And therefore, that determines what’s internationally legal. So they will have a veto and if they don’t, China will. So it’s not gonna happen. And even if you take it to the General Assembly, you know, notoriously the global south, as we now call them, there’s a lot of sympathy or at least neutrality there. So how is it gonna happen?

Lesia Vasylenko
I’m a firm believer that it will happen. First of all, although when I started first talking about this topic of expelling Russia from the UN, I had these really weird looks. Both I and a number of my colleagues who were mentioning it were considered as some kind of marginal crazy group which is just talking complete nonsense. But at this point in time, there’s already negotiations with several governments who are supporting the idea and picking up the documents back from the ‘90s and realising that in fact procedurally, Russia has no right being a member of the UN, let alone the UN Security Council. They acquired membership essentially by switching around nameplates. One day it was the USSR, next day it was the Russian Federation.

Gideon Rachman
I remember actually, now you mention it, have you spoken to Lord Hannay, the British ambassador to the UN at the time?

Lesia Vasylenko
I haven’t, but it’s an interesting point.

Gideon Rachman
You should because he said to me, basically it was his idea to do that. And he said if we hadn’t done it in the weekend, it might never have happened.

Lesia Vasylenko
And you know what weekend it was? It was the new year’s weekend. It was all happening on the 30th of December when everybody was busy already celebrating, partying. Nobody was paying much attention to what was going on in the UN. And then it was kept quiet for 30 years or so.

Gideon Rachman
So you’re saying the seat belongs to the USSR, not to Russia?

Lesia Vasylenko
Yes. The USSR, an entity which ceased to exist before the Russian Federation was formed.

Gideon Rachman
And the Russians made the mistake of not ratifying it, you say?

Lesia Vasylenko
They haven’t made the mistake. They just didn’t ratify the UN charter, just like they chose at one point to deny the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights and step out from the European Convention on Human Rights.

Gideon Rachman
OK, so legally, I can see where you’re going. Politically, though, non-starter.

Lesia Vasylenko
Politically, actually, no. Politically, it must become the new reality. It’s about time we correct mistakes. If a mistake was made, living with it for so many years doesn’t make the situation right. I believe that we are part of a generation and we live in the world which has the courage to go back in time, look at what was done, why it was done, realise that it was a mistake and correct that mistake. I think we owe it not just to ourselves but to the future generations that are to come. Because with Russia that mistake is today costing the lives of thousands of Ukrainians. It has already cost the lives of Georgians, it has already cost the lives of Syrians, and there will be more wars to come unless that mistake is corrected and unless the record is set straight. And as I said, this year has proved that a lot of the impossibles can become possible.

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Gideon Rachman
That was Lesia Vasylenko ending this edition of the Rachman Review. Please join me again next week when I’ll be talking to Professor Hein Goemans, an expert on how and why wars end. Before you go, we’re keen to hear more from our listeners about this show. We’d like to know what you’d like to hear more of. So we’re running a survey, which you can find at FT.com/rachmansurvey. We’ll put the link in our show notes, and if you complete the survey, you’ll be in with a chance to win a pair of Bose QuietComfort earbuds. We appreciate your feedback. So thanks for listening and please join me again next week.

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