This text is about how in inhuman conditions one can remain human, how responsibility is born, and how love becomes the highest expression of freedom. Reflections that go far beyond personal experience are about all of us and the choices we make every day.
Maksym Butkevych is a Ukrainian human rights activist, public figure, and officer in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He was held in Russian captivity for more than two years, convicted on trumped-up charges. In October 2024, he returned to Ukraine as part of a prisoner of war exchange.
Since then, he has testified about his experience of captivity in Washington DC, Brussels, Strasbourg, Munich, Vienna, Leipzig, and Copenhagen, as well as at a special meeting of the UN Security Council in New York. And in 2025, together with Hanna Pochtarenko, he registered the charitable organization Principle of Hope, founded to help military personnel and civilians released from captivity.
We invited Maksym to the Green Academy 2025 to share his reflections on democracy and the state, the role of freedom, and the limits of human responsibility.
Below is his direct speech with minimal editing. Although the text may seem long, we highly recommend reading it—we promise you won’t regret it.
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The choices and the first days in captivity
The most important thing in captivity is to know that you are being remembered.
If people talk about you, the prisoners, and fight for your release, then, in principle, you can endure almost anything.
When the full-scale invasion began, I realized that human rights protection, which had been my life’s work, ceases to exist for as long as Russia controls the territories it occupied.
Human rights protection would simply not exist in these territories, because the very concept of human rights is absent in the modern Russian world, the “Russkiy Mir” [Russian World].
And in late February 2022, the only way to protect human rights in Ukraine, at least for me, was to pick up my AK-74 [Kalashnikov rifle, 1974 model] and join the army. There was no other tool to protect human rights from those who threatened them the most.
I served on the front for 3.5 months before my capture, and on June 21, 2022, unfortunately, my comrades-in-arms (I was a platoon commander) and I were captured by the Russians in Luhansk Oblast.
And for the next two years and four months, I can say that I was engaged in field research into human rights violations, the right to freedom from torture, and many other different rights.
During the first few weeks, between interrogations, we were held in a cell, 24 people for 22 beds. In general, these were even good conditions, because other cells were more crowded.
On the second or third day, I remembered one of my wishes, a cherished one that had been with me even before the full-scale invasion. I wanted to find the time and space to reflect on what I was basing my activities on, what my main priority was, and to think without any distractions.
In short, I wanted to think about fundamental things; but of course, I didn’t plan to do that in Russian captivity. “Well,” I thought, “I should have formulated my request slightly more specific.”
Then I started reflecting on the things we were dealing with every day: violence, pain, and fear. This was the atmosphere in which we lived, and after a while I realized that I had been interpreting the concept of violence incorrectly.
About violence
For me, violence was a concept associated with another person: with causing harm, pain, breaking someone’s spirit, or hurting them.
In captivity, I realized that violence is primarily about objectifying a person. When one creates conditions and a situation in which you can do absolutely anything you want with a person. Whatever you tell them or force them to do, they do it. If you wish so, they stay in a stretch position. If you want, they do push-ups or squats until they faint. If you want, they sing the Russian anthem. Or conversely, they say nothing at all.
Turning a person into a puppet—dehumanizing them—is violence. If this object suddenly begins to show any signs of agency, self-will, or desire, then the mechanisms of harm are activated. The first and foremost of which is the creation of an atmosphere of fear.
On fear and death
For me, fear was primarily an expectation and anticipation of pain.
When you’re sitting in a cell and you hear them approaching yours, the opening of doors to adjacent cells, people being dragged out, forced to do push-ups, squats, beaten, and shoved back in—and all this is getting closer, closer, closer.
Nothing has started yet and you don’t know what would happen to you or your cellmates. But you look at them and at yourself and realize that you are sitting there paralyzed with fear. This is a premonition of pain. Both physical and psychological pain. You are about to be turned into an object, and you do exactly what you are told.
Pain indicates that death came closer, a few more steps closer.
I suddenly realized that this whole atmosphere of captivity, this machine we were swallowed by, it all was a manipulation of death. Death was a tool used to dehumanize you.
Humanity is inextricably linked with freedom of choice, with the ability of agency, and with the possibility of one’s own action. If there is no freedom, there could be no humanity. Even if a person looks human, and is aware of being human, they are not fully human.
On interrogations as work
We were interrogated by Russians, and we were simply work for them. While local collaborators sometimes displayed an emotional attitude—some radiating hatred, others quietly sympathizing—the Russians mostly treated us as a job. For them, we were mere objects: made to sign what they wanted, say what they wanted, when they wanted, and then, at their command, keep quiet.
They could give us cigarettes, or they could kick us in the liver. Or they could do one and immediately after the other. But even with those who gave us cigarettes, I realized that if it became necessary tomorrow, they would break us without a second thought.
About the locals who went to fight on the side of Russia
In the colony, after my conviction, we were in a mixed group: 50 convicted Ukrainian soldiers, illegally detained civilians and several hundred more people convicted of criminal offenses. This group included professional criminals, and also those who were simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in the wrong company, and in the wrong state of mind.
At some point, they started taking people out of the colony, voluntarily, to the “SVO” [Special Military Operation], to staff the units with convicts. The paradox was that most of the volunteers were locals, and they usually had quite good relations with us, the Ukrainian prisoners of war. And they had them right up until the evening before their departure.
I asked them, “Why are you going there?”
In general, of course I understood the motivation. For example, when they took a young “plant” [distributor of illegal psychoactive substances through an online store] in his early twenties, who was sentenced to 15 years, and presented him with a choice: either rot here or go to the “SVO”, get a lot of money and gain other benefits. Unsurprisingly, people chose the latter.
There were also those who said they didn’t want to participate.
But those who volunteered were constantly preoccupied with their fate—whether they would or would not be killed. Once, I asked one of them something like, “You keep talking about whether you will survive or not, but does it concern you that you might have to kill people who have done nothing wrong to you? And you will be killing while being on the obviously wrong side of this war.” He replied that no, he was not concerned by this at all, and he was not responsible for it.
Conversations like that repeated in various forms. These people did not feel a sense of responsibility for what they were about to participate in. This was because, as they themselves stated, they had no influence on the course of events. “We don’t decide anything anyway,” they would say.
On the state as a foundation
“Nothing can be changed.”
“They will do what they want anyway.”
“Our task is to keep quiet and listen. And then maybe they won’t beat us, and maybe they will even feed us.”
“We cannot change anything.”
“The authorities decide everything themselves anyway.”
“The state is paramount, and the individual is disposable.”
These are the phrases that I heard in different variations from some guards and from people who had been living for more than 10 years under occupation.
This is a picture of the “Russian world.” In this picture, the state is the basis and foundation, and the individual is a derivative of the state.
When we were forced to sing the Russian anthem, I suggested that my cellmates, Ukrainian prisoners of war, reflect on the lyrics. It is all about the state and the homeland; it is saturated with this. There is only one vague mention of the individual, “the years to come open up a wide space for dreams and for life”, implying that things will eventually be good, but only much later.
And then, “Our loyalty to the Motherland gives us strength; it has always been so, it is so, and it will always be so!” In other words, the state’s strength is not a result of our loyalty; rather, our strength exists only as long as we are loyal to the state. The moment we stop being loyal, we become powerless, we can do nothing. The State is the source, and we are the derivative
This was, perhaps, the most fundamental conflict of worldviews that we encountered in captivity. We tried to explain that for us, it is the reverse. The individual is paramount, and the state is merely a tool.
And no, it is not they, the authorities, who dictate how we should act; we decide how we want to act. If they disagree, they will feel the consequences. This reality never truly sank in for the Russians. They simply did not understand.
On responsibility and freedom
In the colony, I came across a small collection of works by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and re-read it, in particular, the essay “Letter to a Hostage.” This text was addressed to a friend of the author who was living in Nazi-occupied territory, while Saint-Exupéry was already fighting against the Nazis.
In this text, he wrote:
“A totalitarian tyranny could satisfy our material needs. But we are not cattle intended for fattening. Prosperity and benefits are not enough for us. For us, who were brought up in the spirit of respect for human beings, simple gatherings that sometimes turn into amazing holidays mean so much.
Respect for human beings! Respect for human beings! Here is a touchstone! When a Nazi respects only those who are like him, he respects only himself. By rejecting creative contradictions, he destroys all hope for the transformation of man and for a thousand years establishes a robot in an ant hill instead of a human being. Order for the sake of order disfigures man, depriving him of his basic gift of transforming the world and himself. Life creates order, but order does not create life.”
I was reading this, and I had the impression that I was reading my own thoughts, only precisely expressed.
Respect for the individual is impossible without freedom. This is, first and foremost, the freedom to choose one’s future path, options for responding to challenges, and strategies for behavior and reactions.
Freedom is inseparable from responsibility, because responsibility is about responding. It’s about the response one gives to the question of why they did something or did nothing.
Inaction entails the same degree of responsibility. Why, what is the reason for your action or lack of it?
When we make a choice, responsibility comes with it, it is impossible to avoid.
For me, this is the core viciousness of the ‘Russkiy Mir’ [Russian World]. It is a deal with the devil. He comes and tells you, “Surrender your freedom, and I will relieve you of your responsibility.” But this is a deception, as the devil’s deals always are. He takes away your freedom, but the burden of responsibility remains.
The concept of the “Russian world” has other “perks”, as well. One of my fellow criminal prisoners once said, “I realize that we live in shit. In Luhandonia, we live in shit. And our children will live in shit. But we still can’t change anything. But I belong to such a power – Mother Russia, feared and therefore respected by everyone.”
I said that respect and fear are different things, sometimes diametrically opposed. Being feared is not equal to respect. A monkey with a grenade is also feared.
He didn’t know how to respond and changed the subject. It was a classic reaction.
In Russia, you are a cog in the state machine, and from this, you derive a certain satisfaction, because you align yourself with a purpose greater than your own individual existence. If your freedom and responsibility seem to be absent, and if you evade the efforts of creating tomorrow’s world, you are left with the only option for satisfaction – belonging to something larger than yourself; to a monstrous state machine.
On democracy in wartime
The first book that I got in the detention center by accident, after a few months of imprisonment, was the New Testament and the Psalms. I read it probably 15 times, because there was nothing else to read. Each time I read it, I discovered something new. Reflecting on the Ten Commandments, I suddenly realized that perhaps the most underestimated commandment is the prohibition against idolatry.
Effectively, it prohibits people from creating something artificial and then worshipping and making sacrifices to it. For me, this is the essence of the Russian state.
The state that emerged as a mechanism for regulating coexistence, as an instrument, eventually got drunk on blood, proclaimed itself to exist separately from people, and began to demand human sacrifice.
And the people who came to us with weapons [invaded Ukraine] are happy to make these human sacrifices. And at the same time, they appear to bear absolutely no responsibility for this, because they delegated it to the state.
It is the state that put them in conditions where they had no freedom. And they accepted it.
Paradoxically, the tools, like our overseers, were turning other people, that is, us, into tools, as well.
This is the landscape of the “Russian world,” which instrumentalizes and dehumanizes people. But this does not mean that these people are relieved of responsibility.
That’s why what we are doing now is especially important to me: defending ourselves at the front, working in the rear with our communities, going out to protest and protecting the space of law and freedom. There is a sense of agency in what we do. It is important for us to constantly reflect on why we do what we do, whether it is our conscious choice, and whether we maintain respect for human beings.
On finding own meaning
In captivity, I rediscovered Viktor Frankl [Austrian psychiatrist and psychotherapist, author of “Man’s Search for Meaning. A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp,” a 1946 book based on his own experience in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II].
Those who retained a sense of purpose in their lives felt more psychologically intact. Conversely, those who began to lose that purpose struggled significantly.
Almost everyone’s purpose was tied to other people, but in different ways. For me, it was extremely important to know that I was being remembered. Everyone in captivity experiences moments of depression and emotional decline. I was lucky, I never had a single moment when I doubted that I was remembered. I simply placed all my hope in my family, my loved ones, my colleagues, and my friends.
I was practicing an exercise that began intuitively, and which I later continued consciously. I remembered the people I had met in my life. I remembered situations, looks, smiles.
Eventually it became obvious that I could not remember everyone. There were so many of them. In that moment, I felt absolutely happy that I had been lucky enough to have met so many wonderful people. And I simply placed all my hope in them.
I realized that what I am, who I am, what I think, and how I formulate what I think—I owe this to other people. I owe my language to other people: to those who lived before me and those who are alive at the same time as me. And finally, I became free because of other people.
My freedom is not freedom from others; it is freedom because of them.
And this is where love comes in. Love is the total acceptance of the other. It is like saying, “I want you to exist.” This is the maximum affirmation of the other’s being. It is not an emotion, but an action. It is an action affirming others in their existence, and this is my sense of meaning.
Accordingly, hatred is not a desire to destroy, it is a denial of existence. Like, I don’t want you to exist at all – never to exist, so there is a blank space where you are.
You can see how much home-grown philosophy I’ve developed in two years and four months.
On freedom
Ihor Kozlovsky [a Ukrainian philosopher and religious scholar who survived Russian captivity] said that freedom before captivity feels different from freedom after captivity. Before captivity, people take it for granted, like air; it is simply there.
Freedom after captivity becomes the highest value. The highest after love, he writes. And this is something that needs to be protected.
This thesis helped me a lot during my advocacy trips to the European Union. I told some Western Europeans, “You think that freedom is something that was always there and will always be, but sometimes freedom needs to be cherished, guarded, defended, and protected.”
If you think that freedom will always be there, there will be those who will prove that it is not. But it will be too late.