The president of the Open Dialogue Foundation, born in Sevastopol, believes that “no one in Ukraine should be blamed for speaking Russian.” And that although “Ukraine will win, the trauma of this war will remain part of our history.”
Ukrainian activist Lyudmyla Kozlovska has chaired the Open Dialogue Foundation since 2009 and runs campaigns to prevent the abusive use of anti-money-laundering laws by authoritarian regimes — one of the main topics of the World Liberty Congress, held last weekend in Berlin. She took part in the Orange Revolution in 2004 and, regarding 2014, she stresses that “Maidan was not a coup, it was not orchestrated by George Soros or the U.S. State Department,” but was carried out by thousands of Ukrainians: “It was me, it was my family, it was my friends, students who were even giving up their scholarship money… and the diaspora did the same in 2022.”
With the war entering its fourth year, she says she is “in favour of elections in Ukraine, but the number-one question is how to protect them.” She warns that “the use of data as a weapon — a Russian cyberattack supported by other regimes — makes it very difficult to secure the process and the results.”
Born in 1985, when the USSR was living its last sunrise under Gorbachev’s Perestroika, Kozlovska grew up between Ukraine and Poland. She began her activism very young, after clashing with the cultural and administrative rigidity toward the Ukrainian language in her native Sevastopol, where the presence of a Russian naval base meant Moscow’s control over public spaces.
She remembers a childhood in which she felt somewhat foreign in her own country. Sevastopol (Crimean Peninsula) was — according to the map — in a country called Ukraine, but in daily life only Russian was spoken. “There were no Ukrainian books, no library… and I just wanted to read poetry, to organise meetings to discuss literature, and in Sevastopol that was almost impossible.” Moscow’s oppression runs deep in her family: “My grandmother was labelled an ‘enemy of the state’ and was sent to Arkhangelsk and to the Karaganda labour camp; she escaped and reached Sevastopol to survive, changing her surname. I grew up with that memory.”
Sevastopol remains a persistent image in her mind. She is aware that in Europe the idea has taken hold that, whatever happens, Crimea — her home — cannot be recovered. “It’s a question of when, of geopolitical capacity, and we saw how many repressions there were,” which for her is revealing: “If there is repression, it means something alive is being repressed.”
The return of these territories to Kyiv’s control — aside from requiring military victory over Russia in each of them and a treaty enabling it — could meet resistance from part of the local population. “Everything depends again on language policy,” Kozlovska explains, favouring a flexible approach: “Just because someone uses that language, I don’t think it is right to blame them.” She knows that “for many Ukrainians this may be very controversial, but the moment will come when we will have to address it — not now.” For now, in many contexts, “it is embarrassing to speak Russian… Not because Ukraine discriminates, but because no one wants to associate themselves with Russia’s atrocities.”
For a long time, “the Russian language was a weapon associated with atrocities. But it is still a code,” valid like any other. In fact, Kozlovska uses Russian “to talk to people from Central Asia: if I want to document sanctions evasion and support activists helping Ukraine, many of them don’t speak English.” So both sides use this language “as a tool to build bridges.” She adds that “in the occupied territories, people cannot be blamed for using Russian. Everything will depend on language policy.”
She knows that one day she will again walk through Europe without fear: “I don’t go to Ukraine for security reasons. In 2018 I was labelled a ‘threat’ in Poland, Kazakhstan and Moldova. At one point up to 18 people were following me, with constant death threats.”
Overall, her country will never be the same. Even with peace, life will remain uphill: “War leaves physical and psychological traumas that will become part of our history. But we are defending ourselves, and I am convinced that Ukraine will win.” But afterwards “there will be generations that will have to go through a rehabilitation process… it is inevitable.”
Source: elmundo.es
