Maksym Butkevych, a Ukrainian journalist, human rights activist, and Ukrainian Armed Forces volunteer who has been in Russian captivity for almost two and a half years, visited Berlin for the first time since his release. What did he tell the 300 residents of the German capital who came to meet him? We decided to publish the direct speech of our colleague, who surprised many with his decision to join the army three years ago, as Maksym has always called himself a pacifist.

“I was always and still am an anti-militarist and a pacifist, but we need to define what exactly we mean here. To be a pacifist is to be pro-peace and against war, to do everything to prevent it, right? But if you are attacked and you have no right to use force to defend yourself because you are a pacifist... well, then yes, I am a slightly different kind of pacifist. It's hypocrisy to say “I'm for peace, I'm against war, so the US and Europe should stop supporting Ukraine and supplying weapons,” because for me it essentially means “I want Ukraine not to exist, I'm on the side of the aggressor”

I am an anti-militarist, yes, and I am against the senseless use of force when force is used simply because it is there and someone wants to use it. While we were left with no choice, we were put in a situation we never wanted to be put in, and we had to use all means, including force, to defend ourselves. As an anti-militarist, I believe that military methods are generally very limited for solving any issues, but we cannot ignore the fact that the Ukrainian army today is much more than just a military machine. The forces of the Territorial Defense and the National Guard represent modern Ukrainian society, it is not an army of professional soldiers who have been specially trained in military affairs and gained combat experience. No, the Ukrainian army today is yesterday's teachers, car mechanics, IT specialists, etc. All of them did a completely different job yesterday, so the Ukrainian army today is the people.

...I joined the Armed Forces at the end of February 2022, almost immediately after the full-scale invasion, and on June 24 I was captured and taken as a prisoner by Russia. When I talk about my experience in captivity, I say that I had not two years of captivity, but two years of field research in Russian captivity. For the first time in my life, I was glad that I was overweight. Yes, we were given food in captivity, but in very small portions and it was not very tasty, to put it mildly. I lost 20 kilograms that way. The worst part was that we didn't have any hygiene products, not even toilet paper. So we had to be very creative. Also, there were no nail scissors, so we had to file our nails on the walls.

...During my first interrogation, when I hadn't even been charged, the Russians said:  “You're not a prisoner of war here, you're just someone who disappeared on the battlefield, and you have a few options: you sign that you agree with the sentence (which they hadn't even determined at that time, so I had to say that I would sign anything they would give me later) or you declare that you refuse to cooperate. And then we go out into the yard and shoot you. We will write that you tried to escape. Or we will throw you into a cell with those who will force you to cooperate, and you will very quickly regret not choosing the first option right away.” This interrogation lasted several hours. I was severely beaten, so much so that when I was returned to my cell, I could no longer keep my head up. Later, I was charged with violating the Geneva Convention. It was some kind of absurdity. The people who torture prisoners, who didn't give a damn about the Geneva Convention, accused me of violating it. And what's terrible is that the Russians don't torture for the sake of obtaining some military secrets. They torture mostly for the sake of getting a confession to something you didn't do. Or just for fun and humiliation. A particular favorite is to torture a person and make them say something like “Ukraine is a Nazi country run by a drug addict clown” on camera.

...I often talked to the guards in captivity, who ridiculed the fact that I was not just a journalist, but also a human rights activist, because they did not understand the concept of “justice”. For them, the one who has the power is right, and “this war is not against Ukraine, but against the West, against their liberal degraded world, and it is the task of the Russian soldier to remind them all in the West of traditional values!” I was shocked at how brainwashed they were by Russian propaganda. And even more shocked by how openly they talked about some things, for example: “Well, the SVO didn't go according to plan - Russia was supposed to destroy Ukraine in a few days and then move further.” I asked them, “Move where? To Poland? The guard smiled and replied: “Why would we limit ourselves to Poland? We will go further”.

...The worldview of those guards is based on contradictions and a lack of critical thinking, they can say something like “Luhansk was at its best during the Ukrainian times, but Putin is a cool guy!” They keep repeating it: Ukraine doesn't exist as a state, Ukrainians are just spoiled Russians, Ukraine is a Nazi country, a puppet of the US, and so on. The Pax Russica (Russian world) is destroying the system of humanitarian law. This is a distorted worldview in which the state, including its main character, is everything, and an individual is nothing, his or her life is worthless. This worldview is not based on critical thinking but on the defense mechanisms of the psyche, where the desire to be part of something big and powerful and the belief that everyone is afraid of Russians and therefore respects them prevail. What a stupor these guards were caught in when I told them that fear is not equal to respect, more often than not, it is the other way around.

...My great-grandfather was executed in 1938. I found his case file in the Poltava archives, the record of the case was very short, and I now understand very well why. First, they “offer” you to confess, you say you have no idea what they are talking about, then they beat you for hours, and after that, you confess to anything in a blackout. My great-grandfather was forced to confess to something he didn't do, but it still didn't save him. After 84 years, history repeated itself, and his great-grandson was forced to confess to something he didn't do, but I was more fortunate - although I was sentenced to 13 years in prison, I survived. And I believe that we just have to destroy this killing machine, otherwise, we risk that in another century our children and grandchildren will not have to face it.”