Op-ed by Nataliya Gumenyuk, an Ukrainian journalist and founder of the Public Interest Journalism Lab. The text is based on Ms. Gumenyuk’s intervention at the Helsinki Debate on Europe in May 2025.

Archived version

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Ukrainian human rights defenders and journalists have spent over a decade documenting Russia’s political violence.

Initially, their work echoed the moral legacy of the Helsinki Accords, pressing authoritarian regimes to acknowledge human dignity.

But meanwhile, they increasingly believe there is only one way to protect people in occupied territories: liberation by force. After Russian troops were pushed out of Bucha, Kherson and Izyum, the persecutions of the local population stopped.

Many Ukrainians have come to a painful conclusion: international law cannot stop atrocities. It cannot save lives.

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For us Ukrainians, who live in an aggravated reality, everything around us automatically undergoes a reality check, particularly our values and ideals.

But we also need to consider another recent shift in political reality. Before, the fight against hypocrisy used to belong to idealists. There was a time when autocrats pretended to follow international rules. Today, they boast about breaking them. Instead of hiding their wrongdoings, they commit so many that it’s hard not to be overwhelmed, learning about the scale of atrocities, resulting in a feeling of powerlessness.

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