Paul Stevens

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk: Trump promised to end the war in 24 hours. Now he has decided to finance it. These are already the longest 24 hours in human history. Witkoff called putin a humanitarian. I have interviewed hundreds of people released from russian captivity. They were beaten, raped, locked in wooden boxes, had their fingers cut off, their fingernails ripped out, and were tortured with electric shocks to their genitals. One woman described how her eye was gouged out with a spoon. What is happening now is an imitation of a peace process. I met a five-year-old girl in Kyiv. The russians abducted her mother because of her pro-Ukrainian views, tortured her, and repeatedly gang-raped her. They then took her to russia and fabricated a criminal case against her. The girl hugged me, burst into tears, and began begging: “Please, bring my mommy back.” I am a human rights lawyer, but I have no legal tools to force russia to return her. I hugged the girl and promised that we would fight for her mother. Journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna was my friend and colleague. She traveled to the occupied territories to tell the truth about russian crimes. She was abducted, tortured, and secretly transferred to russia. She was held without formal charges and without contact with the outside world. She was denied medical care. She weighed just 30 kilograms. The russians refused to return her body to her parents for six months. When they finally did, several internal organs, her eyes, her brain, and part of her trachea were missing. We still do not know how she died. Viktoriia believed that the truth could save thousands of lives. That people in other countries, once they learned the truth, would make the right decisions. My friend and teacher, Professor Ihor Kozlovskyi, spent 700 days in russian captivity. For months, he was held alone in a small, dark basement cell without windows or fresh air. Rats crawled out of the sewer. He gave philosophy lectures to the rats just to hear a human voice. He was tortured so severely that after his release, he had to learn to walk again. Kozlovskyi told me: “Everything I have experienced does not make me see myself as a victim. The foundation of our existence is dignity. And dignity is action.”