The roots of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine go back decades and run deep. The existing confrontation is more than one country gaining an advantage over another; It is, in the words of one U. S. official, a replacement in the “world order. “Here are some helpful resources to make sense of it all.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2022 Peace Prize to laureates from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine “for selling the right to criticize force and protect the basic rights of citizens and for striving to document war crimes, human rights violations and abuse of force. “
This is the first time the prize has been awarded to Ukraine in the 121-year history of the Nobel Committee. While the Ukrainian organization that won the award, the Center for Civil Liberties, celebrates, many Ukrainians are dissatisfied with having to share the prize with other countries.
“Neither Russian nor Belarusian organizations have organized resistance to war,” Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior Ukrainian official, wrote on Twitter.
Russia’s victor, the human rights organization Memorial, had condemned the country’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, but protests in Russia opposing the war had been silenced. Belarusian winner Ales Bialatski argued in 2014 that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that year increased repression of Belarus.
Ukrainian journalist Olga Tokariuk joined the refrain on social media, writing that this year’s shared award gives the impression that Belarus, Ukraine and Russia face the same challenges.
“While in Russia and Belarus they are national regimes, in Ukraine they denounce Russia’s violations,” Tokariuk writes.
However, when the Center for Civil Liberties was founded in 2007, few expected the war to explain the long history of human rights in the region. of the then President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, the organization focused on documenting war crimes inflicted by the invading forces. However, the Center for Civil Liberties and the organizations that emerged in its wake continued to pressure Ukraine’s post-revolutionary government to live up to its human rights commitments. .
Reacting to the news that the organization he co-founded won the Nobel Peace Prize, Olexandra Matviychuk wrote that Ukraine can serve as an example for activists in countries pushing for civil rights reform.
“The great mobilization of other people in other countries of the world and their not unusual voice can replace world history faster than the intervention of the United Nations,” he wrote.
Matviychuk congratulated his “friends and partners” in Russia and Belarus.
An earlier part of this story incorrectly referred to the organization as the Center for Civil Rights.