Season 1 Episode 10

Speakers: Anastasiia Lapatina, John Spencer, Jakub Parusinski & Melaniya Podolyak

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Anastasiia: On August 4th, 2022, Amnesty International published a report, the title cut right to the point: Ukrainian fighting tactics endanger civilians. But the report was fraud from the outset.

Amnesty claimed that they had documented a pattern of Ukrainian forces putting civilians at risk and violating the laws of war when operating in populated areas. The backlash was swift.

Zelenskyy: [Speaking Foreign Language].

Anastasiia: That's President Zelenskyy, saying, there are no conditions, not even hypothetical ones, under which any Russian attack is justified.

He goes on to say that the report equated Russia and Ukraine's actions, that it painted the victim in the same tones as the aggressor.

This report is an example of one of the failures in the international humanitarian response to this war because no organization claiming to be on the side of aid, truth or civilians should have even dreamt of publishing it.

Hi, John.

John: Hello.

Anastasiia: Thank you so much for finding the time for us. I'm really excited to speak to you.

John: No, it's always an honour.

Anastasiia: John Spencer is an author, veteran, professor and one of the globe's leading analysts on urban warfare. He's also my friend, and I know that he's experienced first-hand how war functions in cities.

So, I wanted to speak to him about the report and to debunk its claims by showing how war actually plays out in urban environments. And he didn't pull any punches.

John: Yeah, so I was a little bit infuriated by the report for many reasons. One, that it was just full of ignorance on warfare, full of ignorance on the law of armed conflict and actually false claims.

It was actually reckless because it did have a huge impact on the global stage, to allow other people who aren't just informed on warfare in general.

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Anastasiia: One of the main claims made by the report was that Ukrainian armed forces put civilians in harm's way by “establishing bases and operating weapons systems in populated residential areas, including schools and hospitals.”

This just ignores the reality of urban warfare and well, the fact that the schools they mentioned were actually abandoned.

John: Russia is invading Ukraine with the objectives of all the urban areas. That's how you take a country, you seize the capital; you seize all the important urban areas. In order to stop that, in order to save your populations, you have to be in the urban areas to prevent them from being taken.

And then all the awful things that Russians do when they take the urban ground. The whole reason for the Geneva Conventions in the Post World War II things was to limit the impact of war on civilian populations, non-combatants.

And of course, everybody wants to reduce the impact, reduce explosive weapons and all this in the urban areas, but there's nothing in the law of armed conflict that says it's a violation of the law of war to be in an urban area.

And what Amnesty didn't clarify is like, okay fine, there are protected populations, non-combatants, and there are protected places like schools, churches, infrastructure. If you occupy them, then they lose their protected status. There's nothing that says you can't be in them.

Anastasiia: But even beyond the ignorance of how urban warfare works, the report contained a litany of spurious claims. Let's have a look at them.

So first, the report included the lie in; in two towns, dozens of soldiers were resting, milling about and eating meals in hospitals. This appeared to be the evidence of armed forces operating there. But in war, spaces like this are scarce. Where else were potentially injured, soldiers meant to rest and get food, if not in a medical centre?

The report also contained some interviews with civilians, but there was no methodology laid out at all about who was chosen or how this research was carried out. Another blind spot.

The report later accused the forces of not properly evacuating urban areas or to be precise, it says they were “not aware” if the military had asked or assisted civilians in the evacuation.

Clearly, this was not a report that was published in good faith. And anyway, throughout the war, the Ukrainian government actually has continuously done everything in its power to ensure evacuation of civilians.

John: The alternative from being in the city and being in the field is that you're dead. So, if the Ukrainian military would've been standing in the fields, firing a weapon, they would be dead. It's called counter-battery.

Anastasiia: Can you explain that a bit more?

John: Yeah. So, artillery or big mortars, artillery, multiple launch rocket systems, they need a firing location. And once they fire, they only have a matter of a minute, sometimes even less, to then move away from that area they're in. Because when they fire, they leave a signature, which a radar can pick up. And then the enemy, in this case, Russia, can then fire back and destroy that military force.

The field or the open area offers no protection, that's why war doesn't happen in the open fields. They're in as heavily amount of woods and trenches as possible. Especially when this report came through, Ukraine was doing anything it could, both the Ukraine military and the Ukrainian territorial defences and civilians to just save themselves, to hold the Russians off. Setting up in woods and trenches, that takes weeks and months.

Anastasiia: The day after the report was published, Oksana Pokalchuk, the Executive Director of the Ukrainian office of Amnesty International, resigned with many of her colleagues following suit.

Pokalchuk later wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post, criticizing Amnesty and explaining her resignation. She wrote that the Ukrainian office was not properly consulted or included in the drafting of the report, showing what she described as a total disregard for the principle of international solidarity, proclaimed in Amnesty’s statute and the aim of amplifying local voices.

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John: Urban warfare is a concrete war. Concrete protects your soldiers. Of course, all militaries have an onus to protect the civilian population, but also if they're trying to defend a piece of urban ground, where are you going to put your soldiers? Where they can't be seen and where they're protected from incoming aerial munitions.

Customary humanitarian law says avoid, limit, all that, the use of protected sites like churches and schools and things like that and infrastructure.

Anastasiia: And no one does that willingly, anyway. It's not like they’re searching around for a church or a school. As far as I understand, it's like the best that they’ve got.

John: That's a great point. And that's again, what's wrong with this Amnesty International report. There is intent.

So, there are military who will occupy a protected site because they know it's protected and the other military will limit the use of force against them.

There's nothing in that report that says that's what Ukraine was doing. Like they were purposely going into a school because they knew that Russia would follow law of armed conflict (insert laugh there), and not shoot at it.

Anastasiia: Many of the civilian buildings that Russia has targeted, a list as long as the days the war has gone on, so Kyiv, Dnipro, Polesia, Mariupol, Kherson and the rest have been justified by Russia as being controlled by the Ukrainian army, which is why ignorant reports like this are so dangerous. All Amnesty did was throw Russia a bone, a whiff of credibility to their propaganda.

John: I don't want to do what about isms. But there is law of war in discrimination, to discriminate between a military target and a civilian target.

And from day one, Russia has shown that they won't follow any … they actually target civilians or evacuating civilians like in Kramatorsk, at the train station. They'll target them on purpose, while the Ukrainian military does everything it can to protect civilians. It's so infuriating the claims or the innuendos that are behind this report.

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Anastasiia: Well John, thank you so much for coming in. It was really interesting to listen to you.

John: Thanks for having me.

Anastasiia: Amnesty's response to the backlash was a predictable non-apology. “We want to understand what exactly went wrong and why,” they said, “In order to learn lessons and improve our work in the field of human rights, the conclusions were not conveyed with the delicacy and accuracy that should be expected from Amnesty.”

But despite that, they said they fully stand by their findings. They have agreed to an external evaluation.

The international response to the war in Ukraine has been in the main, one of remarkable solidarity. Few international observers would have predicted that Western Europe, with all of its divisions, populist in the rise in economic strife, would have come together in such a united front to stand up to a country, they so rely on for energy to take an economic hit when already on the brink of recession.

Which is why the failures of humanitarian organizations like Amnesty and others, as we'll see later in this episode, are so depressing.

While probably not done with malicious intentions, there is no room for error when it comes to war. In its ignorance of the realities of urban warfare, in ignoring the voices of Ukrainians and publishing a report then taken up by the Kremlin's propaganda machine, Amnesty gave the Ukrainian people anything but aid and solidarity.

From Message Heard and the Kyiv Independent, you're listening to Power Lines: From Ukraine to the World.

Jakub: In this series, we're going to be mapping the undercurrents and global consequences of the war in Ukraine, beginning in Kyiv and following the roads out wherever they may lead. I'm Jakub Parusinski.

Anastasiia: And I'm Anastasiia Lapatina. This week, we're exploring the role of humanitarian organizations in Ukraine, since the start of the full-scale invasion because maybe surprisingly there's been a fair bit of controversy surrounding many of the major international aid groups and their actions over the past year.

Jakub: One of the biggest shocks I think from the work of the international organization was of course, the report by Amnesty that you spoke to John about.

Anastasiia: Yeah, right. I remember when that report came out, Twitter went absolutely crazy. Everybody was commenting on it. And what was notable is that it wasn't just Ukrainians being upset that their country’s perhaps portrayed in a negative way, which that I guess in the circumstances that we are in would be somewhat understandable.

But it was also a lot of international experts, journalists, lawyers, saying that that report which alleged that there is a pattern, as the report says that the Ukrainian army isn't enduring civilians because of their tactics of urban warfare, that it was just outright wrong.

I'm pretty sure that a UN war crimes investigator said that the Amnesty International got the international law in that case wrong. That's pretty big.

Jakub: Yeah. So, looking at Amnesty and their work, but also more broadly at the international organizations, what I think is kind of worrying is we tend to think about these organizations as the safety net.

Anastasiia: Right.

Jakub: Whether they're helping people or they're reporting about human rights violations or whatever. They're the people who are supposed to catch the wrongdoings that are happening around the world and essentially try to amend them in some kind of way.

Anastasiia: Yeah.

Jakub: But that's not really what they do and that's not really how they're built. Looking at the experience from the war, it feels like a lot of these large organizations are very sclerotic. Like they know how to do a couple of showy tricks, write reports, do videos that make people cry.

Anastasiia: Yeah.

Jakub: But when it comes to actually doing something that leads to change, they're very weak.

Anastasiia: It was a very eye-opening experience for me, the Amnesty thing specifically, because I remember in my work and in my studies, usually when you analyse a particular conflict, of course you take into account the information that, for example, both governments that are involved in the conflict are saying, but you mainly trust the NGOs, whichever NGO that might be.

So, this really made me be even more cautious in all of the work that I do on anything political, frankly.

Jakub: Yeah. When I think about sort of what has gone wrong with the NGOs and all these international organizations, it feels to me like we've seen something that's very disappointing, which is a nice way to call it would be that they're very superficial. Basically, the purpose of Amnesty right now is to exist as Amnesty. It's not actually to change something.

I think there's good people there, but I think as an organization and many of these organizations are unfortunately like this, their core point of existence is to continue their own existence. 

Who did you talk to this week, Nastya?

Anastasiia: So, this week I was really, really excited to speak with Melaniya Podolyak. She's a pretty famous activist here in Ukraine. She's also a YouTuber and a key part of one of Ukraine's most effective and vital aid organizations, the Foundation of Serhiy Prytula.

Like with so many people, when the full-scale invasion began, Melaniya immediately pivoted to aid, joining the Prytula Foundation to run their Lviv charity hub, where they distribute aid donations from abroad to the rest of the country.

And the Prytula Foundation is a really amazing organization. It's Ukraine's second biggest military and humanitarian aid foundation, and they have a number of projects that bring aids to civilians as well as crowdfunding to get weapons to the Ukrainian army.

So, I wanted to start by asking her about how she pivoted to aid at the start of the war and what the response was like in those hectic early months of 2022.

[Speaking Foreign Language]

Alright, let's do a little part of this just about the beginning of the war. When the war began, where were you? What were you up to? And how did you react to the news?

Melaniya: It was very weird because a couple of days before the war, I went on air and I was convincing them that there was no war, that there's no war. Yeah.

Anastasiia: We've all been there.

Melaniya: Yeah, yeah. I was a big war denier-

Anastasiia: Me too.

Melaniya: Just because I guess I was trying to protect my psyche, even though everything screamed, there's going to be an invasion, but I was like, “Nah, come on.”

And then I went home and I had some friends and they were all sleeping over at my place, so I was like, I might as well not go to bed anymore.

And then we had the first Putin speech, the history lesson for the mentally insane, about everything.

And the second speech came, which was very — it was like four in the morning. And I was like, “What the hell did you not say, still? You've said everything.” And then I thought it must be a diversion. So, I thought they're doing terror attacks. Because they probably mined or planted bombs somewhere.

Because nobody in their right mind, you would agree, cruise missiles, unimaginable. Okay, invasion might have happened from the Donbas side and that also happened. True.

But nobody ever thought that they would strike Kyiv with cruise missiles. And I was on air with some other media in America trying to make sense of it all.

And they hear the air raid siren. And I just remember my face. I'm just scared shitless with like tears in my eye and they go, “How does it feel?” I'm like, “It feels really bad. I'm really scared.” They’re like, “Is it an air raid siren? Are you scared?” I'm like, “Yeah.”

And then maybe four hours later we started our first fundraising for the Kevlar Plates. Yeah. For the-

Anastasiia: I was going to say, do you remember what the situation was like in terms of humanitarian aid, in the first few weeks or the first few days of the war? Because I remember it was ridiculously hectic.

Melaniya: No, we were buying up everything we could get our hands on, anywhere. So, for the first maybe two weeks, I still was working kind of solo because the foundation was still getting together. And Kyiv was occupied and there wasn't much I could do, even though-

Anastasiia: So, you were just using your social media?

Melaniya: Yeah, yeah. I had friends in the military and so, we were fundraising for them to buy this Kevlar Plates that my friend Yura, that I didn't know back then. Because he lived in Czech Republic, now he's a friend.

But back then, I just got a call from this guy who said, “You're looking for Kevlar Plates, I have a shop here that has like 80 of them and it costs like 40,000 or something.” And we got that amount in like what? 20 minutes.

Anastasiia: Wow.

Melaniya: Yeah. April, May, even June, it was still ridiculous.

Anastasiia: Why was it so intense? Was it that there were just so much that was needed or there were difficulties with logistics or what was it?

Melaniya: The sheer volume. So, we were receiving aid from both organizations that we had agreements with. So, they were sending out medical aid, food, all sorts of clothing.

But we also had a lot of organizations that just volunteered to send these things. And it was just trucks on top of trucks on top of trucks. And I'm only talking about my logistics division. So, receiving and sending-

Anastasiia: Where it's needed.

Melaniya: Yeah. Where it's needed. So, Serhiy Prytula Foundation was founded in 2019 and had no intention of being a military foundation.

So, Serhiy used to be a volunteer on his own. He used to do his thing, he had his Patreon and he would regularly go to the frontline since 2014 doing his thing, which is great. But the foundation was made explicitly to help in the education projects, all sorts of inclusivity projects, children education-

Anastasiia: Just general-

Melaniya: General, yes.

Anastasiia: Philanthropy.

Melaniya: Philanthropy, exactly. When COVID hit, they helped with local hospitals and whatnot. So obviously, our machinery was not set up as well as other military foundations.

We had to literally invent a military foundation from scratch, even though we had a team, a team of very experienced people and everybody we knew kind of joined. But still, it was a lot of paperwork and a lot of what to buy, where to buy and stuff like that.

So, we were working 24/7 period and it lasted for a good six months. And then also, unloading trucks is something I never thought I would be doing. Because that's 20 tonnes of like food, 20 tonnes of like Kevlar Vests.

Anastasiia: And then you also have to sort it.

Melaniya: Yes, yes. Everything has to be sorted. Everything has to be written down. I'm actually very grateful, it's a good thing to do, especially for a person like me who's been very spoiled and I don't get to do a lot of manual labour, but it was A humbling, B actually necessary. And I felt like I was doing the right thing.

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Anastasiia: I remember discussing the beginning of the war with one of my friends and we talked about the fact that one of the reasons why we did so well compared to the Russians in the first few weeks or month, is because, because the situation was so chaotic, everybody in their own spaces and positions just took the initiative and took the responsibility. And all of their superiors allowed them to do that because they understood that we can't waste time.

And I think exactly the same thing was happening within the civil society. Everyone on my social media, regular people. But it is really true that the initiative to raise just ridiculous sums of money to buy the military aid, to buy food, to buy supplies, power banks, it all came from Ukrainians all over the country. It was so quick. I was stunned.

And now we joke that Ukrainians can crowd fund for pretty much anything, including nuclear weapons.

Jakub: Wow.

Anastasiia: You're not supposed to say wow, you're supposed to be a local in here. This isn't surprising to you.

Jakub: No, I expected you to go with something else than nuclear weapons. But when I think back to those times, it's all of this ground up efforts also led to a very … it was really all over the place.

I remember in the first couple of days as people were trying to buy bulletproof vests and we were all reading up on exactly what kind of protection you need, where and my goodness, I must have watched hours of videos on-

Anastasiia: Right, yeah. I remember.

Jakub: What's a level 3 plate? Level 3a, a four? Why don't they produce ones anymore?

Anastasiia: I remember this was so problematic because everyone tries to help, but these things can save your life, but they can also kill you if you don't know what you're buying.

I remember talking to a large international media NGO and they were asking whether the Kyiv Independent needs any support with the vests. And that conversation was happening at the end of May. Like that's nearly four months into the war.

And it's really surprising to me that that was the reality because the build-up on the border was happening for months. If you are an organization that's monitoring activity and possibly planning for conflict where you would be needed, I would assume they would start doing some preparations.

But it seemed like everyone was caught off guard, as if no one even predicted even remotely.

And what exactly is your job within the Prytula Foundation? What are you in charge of?

Melaniya: A whole bunch of stuff. Okay. So no, in the first couple of months, I was solely in charge of Lviv charity hub. So, Prytula Foundation has hubs in Kyiv, in Dnipro, in Lviv, in Mykolaiv. And so, our hub is almost exclusively designated to humanitarian aid in that sense of no-

Anastasiia: No military.

Melaniya: Military, yeah. However, still used the premises for Kevlar Vests and whatnot a lot of times. But mostly it was humanitarian aid. So, that was going on for a good six months I believe.

But also, we have a project within the foundation called NEST. We're building these modular temporary housing on the de-occupied territories. So, currently we're working in Makariv region, near Kyiv, because only there, there are 585 houses that were destroyed.

And we are only working with private homes. And the land has to be owned by the person. The reason we took that niche is because well, first of all, we cannot afford to rebuild apartment complexes. That's very expensive.

Anastasiia: That’s huge.

Melaniya: And that's not our profession. But also, in terms of legislation, most likely the government will not find a viable solution on how to cover the expenses for the people who lost their private homes.

And so, Makariv, it's a small-ish kind of hromada near Kyiv. 585 families lost their homes. So, that's around $12 million. And in the scale of the entirety of Ukraine, it goes into billions.

So, we cannot kind of do government's work here. They still will have to come up with solutions. But the way every charity in Ukraine works, especially now, is that we are like a helping hand. So, we take care of what we can take care of.

Anastasiia: What are some of the projects and perhaps type of aid that your organization delivered, that maybe were unexpected that that's necessary, but it in fact did have a big effect or some of the projects that you've been most proud of?

Melaniya: So, all of our projects are very important really. And they all make a difference definitely on the battle field, especially when we're talking about military aid.

For instance, reconstructing captured Russian war machines has worked out ridiculously well because we collect money for restoring them. And then we give them to Ukrainian military. I call it Russian lend lease for Ukraine. Yeah.

Anastasiia: That's amazing.

Melaniya: That’s just what it is. They just leave stuff when we just get it, it's fine.

Anastasiia: That's great.

Melaniya: Yeah. But also, in terms of humanitarian aid, we got a bunch of very specific requests during the time we were working in terms of humanitarian aid. So, we got a bunch of dog food once, and I was like, “Who would want dog food? That's weird.”

Somebody heard that we had dog food, and we got a whole bunch of requests for them because all these shelters who are under occupation, that is something that is a real problem. So, animals should be fed as well.

And then the other project, it did not came into fruition, but it was something that I was thinking about. There has been this issue of sex crimes on the occupied territories.

So, we have discovered that after the de-occupation, a lot of women needed the so-called Plan B medication really after the horrifying stuff that took place on the de-occupied territory.

So, I think there should be an organization there somewhere that should be taking care of that because nobody talks about these things. Again, it came as a shock to Europe and to the civilized world because people didn't talk about it before.

And then people would just have babies after being raped by the occupiers and then having to live with that trauma.

Anastasiia: And then they would go to Poland and they would run into issues of abortion being illegal, which is ridiculous.

Melaniya: Yes, exactly. So, it's a whole very, very sensitive topic that also arose after the 24th of February because I am, I like to think of myself as a well-informed person, never — as the same way with dogs, I did not think about that as a war issue. And it is (feminine hygiene), a war issue. So, it touches every single kind of sphere of a human life.

Anastasiia: Existence.

[Music Playing]

Melaniya: Yes.

Anastasiia: So Jakub, you know my mom is a volunteer and she delivers a bunch of aid all across Ukraine into the front lines and also in Irpin in Bucha, which is close to where we live. And there is like this kind of now famous building, for lack of a better word, in Irpin.

It is I think something like six-story high building, a residential building that was under a really, really heavy fire. And it's, I think the most destroyed housing complex in Irpin.

And she, a few months ago, got a message from a mother who apparently still lives in that building. And I remember my mom was so shocked, she went to deliver aid to them and she came back and she was like, “I don't understand how this is possible.”

She was really pissed at the government, like, “How is it the local government is allowing something like this to occur?” This really highlighted this problem to me that I think it's just impossible to keep up with the destruction. Right?

Jakub: Yeah.

Anastasiia: And I also haven't seen any NGOs that are helping with this on a large scale. Like we hear about deliveries of food, deliveries of medicine, but is there some sort of big global rebuilding initiative? I don't think there is.

Jakub: Now that I think about it, I've seen and heard shockingly little. My understanding of the main sort of people who are delivering support to Ukrainians who have lost their homes right now are the people of Poland and neighbouring countries. It's individuals.

Anastasiia: Yeah, that's true. We are housing a person in our house.

Jakub: Exactly. So, my wife's family is from Dnipro. Part of them are not in Dnipro. Part of them unfortunately are still there and there are people staying there because a lot of the people who fled from the eastern side fled to the Dnipro, to Kharkiv, to Zaporizhzhia.

But maybe this is actually something that's so big. I don't think any of the international organizations can even step in to do it. It's beyond them.

Anastasiia: That's really sad. I try to stay positive, thinking that yes, there's all this destruction, but we're going to build better houses, we're going to build better schools, better hospitals.

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And that is true. A lot of this infrastructure that's destroyed is soviet and ugly and not practical and breaks down and we are going to build back better. But I can't even imagine how long it's going to take.

What are your thoughts about the work of international organizations in Ukraine? This is a big part of what we wanted to discuss today because there have definitely been a lot of stories that have been largely criticism of the fact that perhaps some of these NGOs are overly bureaucratic or sometimes slow or for safety reasons, the fact that they're operating abroad, they can't quite reach the communities that are near the frontline, et cetera.

So, have you noticed some difficulties and some problems?

Melaniya: It all boils down to this, Russian-Ukrainian war of 2022 has definitely been the most covered war in the history of the world. And I mean TV, internet, news, bloggers. And because it is so covered, it has shown significant issues in the work of those big famous NGOs. Because usually they would operate very like out of sight, out of mind. They would do their thing.

Anastasiia: Kind of in the background, in the shadows.

Melaniya: Yes. In the background. So, people know what they do. So, people just assume it works fine.

And then these organizations come to Ukraine and some of them show ridiculously good results like World Central Kitchen, God bless these people.

But then also, you can see how the other organizations don't meet those expectations and evidently don't do as good of a work. And people start to question whether these organizations have been effective at all.

And they're not always prepared to bring people what people actually need. There was this very infamous case, I think with the Red Cross where they brought water to Dnipro, bottled water, which was ridiculous because first of all, there was a water shortage problem in a different part of a country, which was Mykolaiv back then.

Second of all, Dnipro is called Dnipro because it has a river, like a huge river flowing right in the middle of it.

In some other situation probably, I wouldn't mind, but people were very, very angry because people were already very tired with the war and war efforts. It was just the frustration and they did not do well in terms of communicating what they meant to with that water.

Anastasiia: So, do you think the problem in many cases is just the lack of communication with the locals and the lack of understanding what it is that people really need?

Melaniya: Yes. And also lack of understanding of the part of the world they're in, because for instance, some of them did not have an understanding of why would we send food to the bread basket of Europe.

Anastasiia: What? That’s stupid.

Melaniya: Yeah. And then I would have to explain that because the bread basket part is occupied currently, so we might have food shortages.

And so, it seemed to me sometimes that some of them did not do much research. I don't blame them because again, it all goes from the higher ups. But then again, I do not know what their big budgets were actually used for.

Not all of them are bad, I swear to God. I make it sound like just they're horrible. They're not, some of them are doing very well. Especially, the World Central Kitchen, I'm a big fan. If you're listening guys, I love you. Yeah. But other than that, yeah, there have been issues.

Anastasiia: Maybe we should talk about Red Cross because there totally have been some quite negative discussions on the Ukrainian side about the work of the Red Cross, about the fact that it seems to me like they almost promise or pledge to do certain things and then underdeliver.

We've heard so many stories from families of Ukrainian soldiers that are kept in captivity who would appeal to the Red Cross to come and visit them in Russian prisons. And supposedly the Red Cross has all the access in the world, but in reality, most often the Red Cross isn't there and has no access. Or if they do, it's extremely limited and it ends up just being not really productive.

So, what's happening there? Is it the problem of the Red Cross or is it the problem of Russia that just doesn't let them do their job?

Melaniya: It's actually both, which is an uncommon position to take.

Anastasiia: That's true.

Melaniya: But bear with me. So obviously, Russia does not want anybody to have access to anything they do. We know that. I don't know even how to call them at this point. It's terrorists, whatever.

They do not want anybody to see anything. So, obviously they will not let anybody in even when they promise, because we know what Russian promise is actually worth, nothing.

However, it doesn't mean that the big organization like Red Cross should come to the figurative gate, knock once, have a refusal and leave. It's not like we tried once and we didn't get access, so we left. No, that's not how any of this works.

You then report these things, you then keep doing these things. It's not even that, maybe they did, but we don't know. And that's where the problem arises. That's why the public gets frustrated.

Because I can't know what they do over there. Even though we've had so many reports saying that they never actually went anywhere, that they did nothing. That people in the Ukrainian side have seen them just stumble awkwardly and then leave with no actual communication and not even trying to get in.

Anastasiia: On the other hand, there have been reports of them working quite actively on the occupied territories.

Melaniya: Exactly. But that also goes underreported from their side. So, we actually don't even get information from them. They cannot even inform us on what they do and what they don't do.

And this is where transparency comes from. This is why Ukrainian NGOs have all the trust and the Red Cross doesn't because if you do something, you report. If you try to do something and you fail, you also report, you have to do it.

You promised you would monitor; you promised you had all these communications with Russians, and we see you operate on the occupied territories. So, please explain to us how is it that then our prisoners of war come back and say, “We've never seen a Red Cross representative, once.”

Anastasiia: Yeah. That's ridiculous.

Melaniya: It's okay to not be able to do something when working with Russia. I know that, everybody knows that. It's just a matter of — because they seem to pretend like it's nothing. And it's not nothing, it's everything, it's everything.

Anastasiia: Like Russia has the right.

[Music Playing]

Melaniya: Yes, yes, yes.

Anastasiia: Okay. So, the Red Cross.

Jakub: Sucks. Sorry, that was-

Anastasiia: So, the Red Cross sucks. Okay. So Jakub, before the war, have you heard anything negative about the Red Cross? Like now all Ukrainians dislike it strongly, but was this an issue before in other countries?

Jakub: I think yes, but it wasn't quite as tangible. But then when you look at how it's working on the ground, I think that's when you get really disappointed.

The thing that is the most amazing for me is that the Red Cross has knowingly or unknowingly, essentially sided with a genocidal campaign to remove Ukrainians and children into Russia and to make them disappear as Ukrainians.

Whether it's being killed in the filtration camps or being Russified, being sent to Russian families. They've had a hand in that.

Anastasiia: You should unpack that because I think the majority of people abroad have no idea. You mean that like they've been present on occupied territory and have provided food and transportation to evacuate people to Russia?

Jakub: Yes. So, since the beginning of the war, Russia has sort of argued that well, Ukrainians actually want to live in Russia, they want to be part of Russia, whether that's in Russia or in occupied Ukraine.

And so, they've played up the amount of people that have been fleeing through Russia, which for a lot of people who wanted to get out of the fighting areas, that was the only option.

All the roads towards Ukraine were cut and they had to flee, a lot of them sort of went all across Russia and then went through Finland or through Kazakhstan or whatever just to get out. But their only escape from the fighting was via Russia.

Anastasiia: And this was completely Russia's fault by the way, because they would either not allow to evacuate to Ukraine or they would literally fire with artillery at the green corridors that Ukraine has arranged with Russians. And a lot of people get killed this way.

Jakub: Absolutely. And there were shootings of civilians were absolutely the commonplace, almost policy by the Russian troops. And what the Red Cross did was to try to essentially open sites on the Russian side, to help with the refugees that legitimize these as humanitarian corridors.

Now, everything that we hear from, I would say, very knowledgeable sources about what is happening on the Russian border is that first of all, there are filtration camps where men and women of military age and physique are either arrested or in some cases disappear. And children who are passing through are taken away from their parents and sent to Russian families.

This is something that falls very clearly into genocide. All the experts are sort of clear about that, essentially removing children from an ethnic group and Russifying them. And there's no two ways about it.

Now, the Red Cross sort of acting and sort of getting involved in that is an element of legitimizing it. And so, it's either extremely foolish on behalf of their leadership or it's just completely immoral.

Anastasiia: Do you remember that whole thing about the Red Cross in Russia, their local Red Cross office fundraising money for the Russian military and for their families? It's preposterous.

Jakub: Yeah. It was just so disappointing to see.

Anastasiia: How is that even possible? How is the Red Cross brand not appalled?

Jakub: It's kind of incredible to think that they went with a campaign called My vmeste, which means we are together at a time that, like let's sort of build solidarity with the troops that are in Ukraine, butchering its people because it's such a tough national experience.

As far as I understand, the international offices of the Red Cross sort of distanced themselves from it and claim that like, “Look all of these national organizations are kind of independent.”

Anastasiia: Well, that's a shitty model of governing an organization, if you ask me.

Jakub: It's called a franchise model. If you want to run a franchise, which is essentially a fundraising franchise and where I'm sure a lot of the national units are fantastic and do absolutely great thing, well you're also going to be paying the price for the worst unit.

[Music Playing]

Anastasiia: Okay. Let's talk about weapons for a bit. Do you think … because in Europe there's and in America probably as well, there's definitely a distinction between helping Ukraine with humanitarian aid and military aid.

For example, in Germany, this divide is very, very vivid. For some reason people can't rub their head around helping the military because that's somehow unethical. But they're okay with sending bandages and food and clothing.

Do you think the world should see military aid as humanitarian, in a way?

Melaniya: Yes. No, absolutely.

Anastasiia: Why?

Melaniya: Because first of all, even when you are donating to a military NGO, you are never directly donating to procure arms, offensive arms. That is almost never the case.

Anastasiia: So, how does it work?

Melaniya: Bulletproof vests, night vision goggles, all sorts of equipment, reconnaissance drones are considered a humanitarian aid. They're there to protect military personnel and help them do their job. Bulletproof vest does not kill another person, it protects the person who's wearing them.

Anastasiia: It actually saves lives.

Melaniya: Yes. When we talk about specific, for instance, like our foundation, yes, we have fundraised to purchase, to procure a Bayraktar, which is a drone that actually is made to kind of change the situation of battlefield, if I may speak that way.

Yes. But that was a special occasion. It was announced very specifically. And of course, if people don't feel like donating to procuring arms, they shouldn't. Even though I keep telling people that if we don't get weapons, there will be no people to supply with humanitarian aid. It's not a matter of either/or.

People seem to think that if Russia occupies the entirety of Ukraine or like some part of it by sending humanitarian aid like food and medicine, that those things would reach Ukrainians on the occupied territories somehow.

We all know that's a lie. It would never, because all of the good stuff that was ever found on the occupied Ukrainian territories, including stuff we were sending there after the occupation, it all ended up in Russian hands and transferred to Russia because that's what they do, scorched or tactic and leave nothing behind. They don't care.

So, it's a matter of Ukraine winning the war because that way you will have somebody to feed, which sounds horrible, but that's true.

Anastasiia: But that's the truth.

Melaniya: That's why Bucha was so important for people to see because they thought that Russians just go to someplace and occupy it and it's a government change, lives go on.

No, it's not. And that's why helping Ukraine procure or advocating for Ukraine to get weapons from our partners is essential in any humanitarian effort. And I know it might feel a bit unethical to donate to something that can and they know help murder a Russian soldier.

But by not donating and by donating to something else, a Ukrainian soldier dies as well.

Anastasiia: Or a civilian.

Melaniya: Definitely, a civilian because Ukrainians don't kill civilians. That's the whole difference.

Anastasiia: Yeah. So, we've gone over the criticisms of the work of international organizations. Do you see some sort of similar criticisms with the Ukrainian NGOs or do you think overall they're performing better?

Melaniya: Overall, Ukrainian NGOs are performing way better. Obviously, we have our issues. We're much more mobile than any other big charity from abroad. We know people on the ground.

We are very well informed of the needs both military and civilian needs. We have every single foundation and even small group of people who just volunteer for a good cause, they have A, this grid of connections, of verification process. These days, everybody's very cautious about who they collect money for, who they donate to.

Anastasiia: Yeah.

Melaniya: Yeah. And then by donating to Ukrainian kind of charities here, you also bring money to Ukraine, which also helps.

On the other hand, we don't have the budgets, we don't have the institutional kind of experience they have, because some of these organizations exist since World War II.

Anastasiia: I was going to say, what do you think they should be doing differently, to do a better job?

Melaniya: They should talk to us.

Anastasiia: And they don't?

Melaniya: They don't, no. And they shouldn't talk to us in a way like, “What do you need?” It's, “How do you guys work?”

Anastasiia: How should we work here?

Melaniya: How should we work, yeah. For a lot of people abroad, we went to United States, a couple of weeks ago, and for a lot of people it was very interesting about, “How do you guys communicate with the military? Like here in the U.S. we don't talk to military.”

But it's doable. It's possible. I have a lot of friends who are volunteers now, who haven't had friends in the military before, so I wish they would just not just listen to us in terms of what we need, but also just listen to our experience. They would find it handy.

So, the scope of work goes so far beyond delivering physical goods to people. And this can also be a charity. This is also for NGOs to do. There is so much more beyond sending canned food. And with the resources some of the international organizations have, I think they should take note.

[Music Playing]

Anastasiia: That's a perfect way to end this, I think.

Melaniya: Yeah, I think so too.

Anastasiia: Melaniya, thank you so much for coming on. It was really interesting to listen to you.

Melaniya: Thank you. Thank you for having me. And thank you for listening to me complaining for an hour.

Anastasiia: Jakub, you are a business person. You know how to run companies. So, if you had a global international NGO trying to do philanthropy and help people, what would you do differently? How would you be different from the Red Cross?

Jakub: It’s a difficult question because I don't think there is a silver bullet, but what I think comes out from what we've seen during the war, there is a lot of power in really bottom-up initiatives that are able to scale.

So, when I think about who should be actually doing it, in times of crisis, you have these great people who rise up and who really address it.

Now, I guess the question that I have is if I'm thinking from the international organization perspective, do I want to be a financing vehicle or do I want to be an operational vehicle? Right?

Anastasiia: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jakub: Do I actually want to hand out the aid myself or just sort of support, like the Red Cross could have given half of the money to Prytula, and he probably would've used it in more helpful ways, right?

Anastasiia: Right. Or if you claim to be somebody like the Red Cross, who we tend to think is like the universal aid organization that helps in conflict. And if you are in a war zone, you can always find the Red Cross and they can always help you. Like maybe if you advertise yourself as that, actually be present in the toughest spots.

Jakub: Exactly. Looking forward at what is the coming decade going to bring to us, I can't help but think that this should be a big lesson for all of the international organizations, that the world is becoming more unpredictable and we need to prepare for that.

And we need to prepare for that in ways where it's not like we build something that is very sclerotic and all over the place, but rather things that are nimble, that can adjust quickly, because that's the challenges that we're going to run into.

And I think there's a lot of fantastic people working in this sector and there's a lot of great organizations, but they need to really think about, “Well, how do we prepare for the unforeseeable? How do we sort of take the learnings of the war and use them to improve who we are and what we do?”

[Music Playing]

Anastasiia: In two weeks in Power Lines, we're starting a two-parter to end our first series. As the year anniversary of the full-scale invasion comes around, we want to look to the future, to see how Ukraine is planning to rebuild itself on two fronts.

First, we'll be looking at the rebuilding of physical infrastructure. Our final episode, though, will explore how the nation will reconstitute its identity after the psychological trauma of war.

Jakub: If you want to support us, you can subscribe to our ad free feed on Apple and by looking up Power Lines + on Spotify.

You can also support the Kyiv Independent by finding us on our Patreon, to get behind the scenes content. Go to patreon.com/kyivindependent to continue helping us report on the most important stories in Ukraine.

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Anastasiia: Power Lines is a partnership between the Kyiv Independent and Message Heard. It was produced by Bea Duncan, Harry Stott and Talia Augustidis. The executive producer is Sandra Ferrari. The theme music is Tom Biddle and Alfie Godfrey.