A week ago, I travelled from Kyiv to Johannesburg as part of a Ukrainian civil society delegation to South Africa to spread the word about what is happening in Ukraine and to build partnerships to help bring Russia’s war against Ukraine to an end. I left behind a country fighting for its very existence. Every day, Russia’s forces bombard our cities, killing civilians and destroying our infrastructure. In the territories occupied by Russia, they are kidnapping, torturing and murdering ordinary people — men and women. Thousands of Ukrainian children have been ripped from their families and stolen away into Russia. Every hour that I spend outside my country is hard, because I know that back home, my fellow Ukrainians are suffering and dying.
It is hard to make sense of the pain Ukraine is enduring, to understand why one country would inflict such torment on another. On Tuesday, the readers of the Pretoria News were served up an explanation by the Russian ambassador to South Africa, Mr Ilya Rogachev. Reading his article, I was shocked that such a tissue of lies, distortions and misdirection could be presented as fact and am gravely concerned that this is what South Africans are being told about the war. As someone who is living through Russia’s war and seen first-hand the atrocities they are committing, I’d like to set the record straight.
First, Rogachev devotes remarkably little space in his article to talking about Ukraine and doesn’t touch at all on what Russian forces are doing there right now. He prefers, instead, to focus on the actions and motivations of Western countries. He would have you believe that this is a proxy war that has been inflicted on Russia by Nato. But it is not Nato that is fighting in Ukraine. It is not Western soldiers bleeding and dying on the battlefield. It is ordinary Ukrainians, men and women, who have left behind their ordinary lives. Taxi drivers, builders, lawyers — people from all walks of life — are now soldiers, forced by Russia to take up arms and defend their country.
In 2014, it was Russia that started the war against Ukraine by invading Crimea, illegally annexing the province and sending troops into Donbas. Rogachev does not mention this, focusing instead on Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity, the popular protests that pushed former Ukrainian president Yanukovych from power. Russia describes this as a “coup” — a nefarious plot by the West to pull Ukraine into its sphere of influence. Well, as someone who stood in Independence Square in Kyiv, voice raised in anger at the corruption and abuse of power of the government, I can tell you that this was a wholly Ukrainian revolution. What Russia did not like was that it was a stand for democracy — a dangerous concept for an autocracy like Putin’s.
At the time of the Revolution of Dignity, before Russia invaded our sovereign territory, Ukraine was a non-bloc country — aligned neither with Russia nor the West. Support for joining Nato was negligible — about 12% of Ukrainians, according to polling. And why would we have wanted to join? There was no need. In 1994, after the break-up of the USSR, Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum, a historic agreement by which Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal (the third largest in the world) in exchange for security guarantees from the US, the UK and Russia itself. All parties promised to respect the Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty in the existing borders; refrain from the threat or the use of force against Ukraine; refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate, to their own interest, the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind; seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they “should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used; and refrain from the use of nuclear arms against the signatory”.
Moscow’s unprovoked and illegal invasion has betrayed most of the legally binding promises it made in Budapest, and with Putin’s threats of nuclear strikes against Ukraine, they may yet break them all. Russia’s duplicity tramples on the UN Charter and makes a mockery of international law.
OLEKSANDRA ROMANTSOVA | Ukraine’s fight for survival — and how SA can help
Putin is the only person who can end the war, and to do so would be simple
A week ago, I travelled from Kyiv to Johannesburg as part of a Ukrainian civil society delegation to South Africa to spread the word about what is happening in Ukraine and to build partnerships to help bring Russia’s war against Ukraine to an end. I left behind a country fighting for its very existence. Every day, Russia’s forces bombard our cities, killing civilians and destroying our infrastructure. In the territories occupied by Russia, they are kidnapping, torturing and murdering ordinary people — men and women. Thousands of Ukrainian children have been ripped from their families and stolen away into Russia. Every hour that I spend outside my country is hard, because I know that back home, my fellow Ukrainians are suffering and dying.
It is hard to make sense of the pain Ukraine is enduring, to understand why one country would inflict such torment on another. On Tuesday, the readers of the Pretoria News were served up an explanation by the Russian ambassador to South Africa, Mr Ilya Rogachev. Reading his article, I was shocked that such a tissue of lies, distortions and misdirection could be presented as fact and am gravely concerned that this is what South Africans are being told about the war. As someone who is living through Russia’s war and seen first-hand the atrocities they are committing, I’d like to set the record straight.
First, Rogachev devotes remarkably little space in his article to talking about Ukraine and doesn’t touch at all on what Russian forces are doing there right now. He prefers, instead, to focus on the actions and motivations of Western countries. He would have you believe that this is a proxy war that has been inflicted on Russia by Nato. But it is not Nato that is fighting in Ukraine. It is not Western soldiers bleeding and dying on the battlefield. It is ordinary Ukrainians, men and women, who have left behind their ordinary lives. Taxi drivers, builders, lawyers — people from all walks of life — are now soldiers, forced by Russia to take up arms and defend their country.
In 2014, it was Russia that started the war against Ukraine by invading Crimea, illegally annexing the province and sending troops into Donbas. Rogachev does not mention this, focusing instead on Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity, the popular protests that pushed former Ukrainian president Yanukovych from power. Russia describes this as a “coup” — a nefarious plot by the West to pull Ukraine into its sphere of influence. Well, as someone who stood in Independence Square in Kyiv, voice raised in anger at the corruption and abuse of power of the government, I can tell you that this was a wholly Ukrainian revolution. What Russia did not like was that it was a stand for democracy — a dangerous concept for an autocracy like Putin’s.
At the time of the Revolution of Dignity, before Russia invaded our sovereign territory, Ukraine was a non-bloc country — aligned neither with Russia nor the West. Support for joining Nato was negligible — about 12% of Ukrainians, according to polling. And why would we have wanted to join? There was no need. In 1994, after the break-up of the USSR, Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum, a historic agreement by which Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal (the third largest in the world) in exchange for security guarantees from the US, the UK and Russia itself. All parties promised to respect the Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty in the existing borders; refrain from the threat or the use of force against Ukraine; refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate, to their own interest, the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind; seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they “should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used; and refrain from the use of nuclear arms against the signatory”.
Moscow’s unprovoked and illegal invasion has betrayed most of the legally binding promises it made in Budapest, and with Putin’s threats of nuclear strikes against Ukraine, they may yet break them all. Russia’s duplicity tramples on the UN Charter and makes a mockery of international law.
Rogachev says Russia had no choice but to launch its special military operation against Ukraine (to call it a war in Russia is illegal) because Ukraine was carrying out violence against civilians in Donbas. The irony of this barefaced lie is only too apparent when you look at the devastation that Russia’s forces have wreaked on eastern Ukraine, reducing cities to rubble and killing thousands of the people who live there. From 2014 onwards, Russia poured tens of thousands of troops into Donbas covertly. The violence Rogachev describes was the Ukrainian army defending against this stealth invasion.
The Russian ambassador also says Russia “had to launch the special military operation in Ukraine for the purpose of its denazification and demilitarisation”. While briefly noting the absurdity of the claim that Ukraine is led by Nazis when our own president, Zelensky, is Jewish, we need look no further than the Kremlin’s own publications to ascertain the true motivation for Putin’s invasion. Far from denazification, the Russian government has rather called for the de-Ukrainisation of Ukraine. State-owned Russian news agency RIA published an article in April 2022, proclaiming the need to rid the world of “Ukrainism.”
President Putin has repeatedly stated that Ukraine is not a separate country from Russia and the Ukrainian people do not exist. This is nothing less than a statement of intent to commit genocide. And this is why we will win — because we have no choice. If we stop fighting, we face oblivion. Russia aims to swallow whole our country and our national identity, so we can never surrender.
Let me be clear, no-one wants the war to end more than Ukrainians. We yearn for peace. But we cannot negotiate while Russian troops occupy our territory, committing war crimes, bombing our cities and killing our people. President Putin is the only person who can end the war — and to do so would be simple. Withdraw his troops from Ukraine, stop the killing. Then we can negotiate a peace that lasts.
South Africa can contribute to this lasting peace, using its influence as the current president of Brics to nudge Russia to take some initial steps that will help set conditions for future negotiations. These small de-escalations could include the withdrawal of troops from Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, so reducing the risk of nuclear disaster. Also, the return of Ukrainian citizens forcibly deported to Russia — let these innocent people return to their families. And also, commit to the long-term renewal of the Black Sea Grain Initiative — the deal that allows the safe export of grain from Ukraine, vital for the food security of the entire world. Such displays of goodwill will not by themselves end the war but are tangible steps on the path to peace and I call on South Africa to play their part in moving us nearer to this goal.
Finally, to allow them to see clearly our daily reality, free from the distorting prism of Russia’s propagandists, I invite the South African government to send a delegation to Ukraine where we will receive them with the same warm hospitality that I have experienced this week in your country.
* Oleksandra Romantsova is the executive director of the Centre for Civil Liberties. The Centre for Civil Liberties is a Ukrainian NGO which has been documenting crimes committed by the Russian army in Ukraine since 2014 and advocating for establishing accountability mechanisms, including international ones for these crimes. The Centre for Civil Liberties was recently awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.