Ukraine's victory is also the victory of the
other Russia,
which today fights and resists — inside the country and in exile — against the increasingly repressive regime of Vladimir Putin.
That
other Russia
—plural and dispersed—organizes itself to be effective during a war that may be long;
and also scans the nebulous options of a post-war future.
Behind this abstract and apparently ambitious statement there are concrete projects and real people, who for three days, from February 1 to 3, have participated in a seminar in Madrid.
The organizers of this event, sponsored by the European Union, were the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain and the CIDOB and Rafael Del Pino foundations.
The seminar brought together the management team of Memorial, the organization formed in 1989 in Moscow to investigate Stalinism and defend civil rights.
In 2022, Memorial was outlawed in Russia and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway.
More than twenty people, nearly half of them residents in Russia, attended the Madrid meeting, where they debated with representatives of Ukrainian civil society and exiles from Belarus after the failed 2020 protests against the dictatorship of Aleksandr Lukashenko.
In Russia, Putin is supported by the majority of the population, but there is also a minority, at least 5%, who opposes the regime and who, at the risk of being jailed, helps Ukraine in various tasks, including the return of Ukrainian civilians who were driven to Russia by the circumstances of the war.
This was stated by Evgeny Zakharov, head of Memorial in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
Zajárov works on the preparation of lists of war crimes, which have already documented nearly 32,000 cases.
His activities are listed on the T4pua.org website.
One of the pressing problems today is the evacuated Ukrainian children, who are
lost
in Russia, where they are allegedly given to individuals or families for guardianship.
There are no reliable data on the number of these cases, although figures of thousands of children are in danger of losing their roots to be integrated and indoctrinated in Russia.
International humanitarian entities should be more tenacious and demand the creation of a database that allows these children to be identified and reunited with their families or returned to their country, said Svetlana Gánnushkina, a Russian refugee activist.
Despite all the information censorship, the Russians can know what is happening in Ukraine today and, if they don't, it is "because it is more comfortable for them not to be aware of it," said one of the participants, and to continue supporting or letting themselves be drawn into it. the official narrative.
Over the years, the West was slow to react to signs that the situation in Russia was worsening.
And now, with Moscow out of the Council of Europe, it has fewer leverage levers.
Due to its characteristics, the UN Security Council is a limited instrument;
however, repeated convening of that body to discuss the atrocities being committed in Ukraine could be useful.
The Russian veto would be inevitable, but the very request for a call would keep the conflict alive before international public opinion, another participant pointed out.
The Putin regime, contrary to what it might seem, still cares what the world thinks of its actions and, therefore, transgressions and violations of human rights in Russia must be given visibility.
Without international resonance or protest, there would be even more repression in Russia, several activists opined.
The seminar also discussed the need to try those responsible for war crimes and what would be the appropriate and possible court to do so, given that neither Russia nor Ukraine are members of the International Criminal Court.
The war provoked by Putin has produced chained migratory flows.
Several thousand people who went into exile from Belarus in the direction of Ukraine in 2020 have been forced into exile again, this time from Ukraine to other countries such as Poland or the Baltics.
Belarusian partisans
and
cyberpartisans
help Ukraine against Russia, some on the ground, on the battlefield, and others on digital networks.
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