Ignacio de Casas, academic secretary of our Faculty of Law, was in Ukraine, invited by the Ukrainian chapter of the international organization PEN. He was part of a delegation of intellectuals and journalists who traveled to that country to learn firsthand about the consequences of the war on the people and culture of Ukraine.

Ignacio de Casas was in Ukraine during the last week of June. To get there, he flew to Warsaw, Poland. From there, he took a train to the Polish city of Chelm. Finally, a second train took him to Kyiv, Ukraine. He arrived as part of a group of journalists and intellectuals, including Hinde Pomeraniec (Infobae), Alejo Sánchez Piccat (Escenario Mundial), James Gatica Matheson (24 Horas-Chile), and the writer María Rosa Lojo. 

During their stay in Ukraine they passed through the cities of kyiv, Irpin, Bucha and Borodianka, as well as the village of Yahidne, in the Chernihiv region. 

From the Communications Department of the Faculty of Law, we spoke with Ignacio de Casas about his experience in this country in conflict since the Russian invasion in February 2022.

Were you afraid at any point during your stay?

No, I'd say I was more nervous than scared. Especially because of the uncertainty of the unknown. I remember the first day we arrived. They took us to the hotel, we had some initial meetings with the people from PEN at their headquarters, and then they took us to dinner at a restaurant. While we were at the restaurant, the first air raid siren sounded. At that moment, we were with a government official and a military officer, and they looked for their phones, checked the information, and confirmed that it wasn't a bombing raid, but a plane that was just passing by.

We had two more alarms during those five days. One went off while we were at the hotel, late at night. I was in my room when the alarm went off, and along with the alarm, a message in Ukrainian, which I didn't understand, came over the hotel's loudspeakers. Since the five of us were connected in a WhatsApp group, we communicated and decided to go to the refuge. 

That's when we realized how people have kind of normalized it, because we asked the hotel concierge if we should go down to the refuge and he answered "maybe." And the concierge didn't even go to the refuge. We went, and the only ones there were the Argentinians. And after, I don't remember if it was 20 minutes, half an hour, since nothing was happening, we decided to leave. 

And the third alarm went off at night, and I never heard it. I was asleep and didn't hear it. I realized it the next morning when I checked my phone and saw the messages. Although the threat in the city seemed to be far away, today they bombed a children's hospital 15 minutes from the hotel where we were staying.

If you had to choose what impressed you most about the trip, could you pick just one thing or were there several? 

I can give you two types of impressions. One is an emotional impression of a place, and the other is more of a conclusion, an analysis.

One place that particularly moved me was the school we visited in the village of Yahidne, in the Chernihiv region. There, the Russians occupied the village and imprisoned 360 people in the school's basement for almost a month. 

There we spoke with one of the survivors, and he told us that while they were locked up, they were kept in the dark, and when someone died, they weren't allowed to remove the bodies. So they kept the dead in a corner of the room, next to children who were 10 years old or younger. When you hear that, from that freezing basement, despite the summer heat outside, it makes a strong impression on you. And that's saying something, because I had already heard that story and had seen a documentary about that school.

On the other hand, a more general impression, if you will, as a conclusion to everything I saw, has to do with the tremendous transformative power that war can have on an entire social, labor, and personal reality, because everything we saw has been transformed by war. I mean, people try to go about their lives, and then the alarm sounds, and maybe they don't pay attention anymore, or you go to restaurants and they're packed. Actually, these are changes in habits, because it's not that people were doing this all the time, but now they go out more because they don't know if they're going to live. Or when they greet each other, they greet each other with a hug because they don't know if it's the last time they'll say goodbye. Just as people's way of being changes, so does their mentality. For example, the human rights lawyer becomes a warmonger because he distrusts the courts and says that the only way to win this is by force of arms. One day in an interview with Oleksandra Matviichuk, director of the Center for Civil Liberties, an organization that won the Nobel Peace Prize, she argued that the only way for this to end is by giving more weapons to Ukraine. 

You wouldn't imagine a Nobel Peace Prize winner saying that the solution is war. That's what's striking, how war transforms people's minds and their very being. And you notice an underlying resentment—I don't know if I'd call it hatred, because hatred is too strong—but people have a terrible feeling toward Russians, and it's going to last a long time.

So, they don't forgive them, and they won't forgive them for a long time. That's permeated all of society. And people, like I said, even educated people, people who have studied abroad, from cultural organizations, from human rights groups, stop being pacifists. They might be seen as pacifists from the outside, but the victims and those who suffered aggression are unlikely to be pacifists. They're not willing to surrender, to forgive, or anything. It's, like I said, a resentment, a very deep-seated feeling toward the Russians, toward all Russians.

How is the search for justice being approached in Ukraine today?

There are many fronts. On one hand, the government, through the Attorney General's office, which is the head of the prosecutors, is documenting the crimes, investigating, and recording everything possible to prosecute war crimes and other serious human rights violations in Ukrainian courts. Many NGOs are also doing similar work, documenting, collecting testimonies, and systematizing other types of evidence, such as videos. They are gathering all of this to prepare and document cases, including more complex evidence, such as the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam on the Dnieper River, which caused pollution, devastated productive land, displaced mines, and affected the drinking water supply for 700.000 people. 

So, today, to obtain justice, you have to hold trials, and for trials, you have to prove the crimes that were committed. Therefore, there are many teams working on this, made up of lawyers and specialists with the support of international organizations. These trials will be held before Ukrainian courts or international tribunals, such as the International Criminal Court. There is also the dimension of justice that encompasses not only the personal responsibilities of a military officer or a head of state who committed a crime in their own name, but also the international responsibility of Russia, as an aggressor state, for the aggression, or for genocide, given that there are different types of crimes.

But if you had to rank the main offenses or crimes that are being tried to prove, what would they be?

There are basically two main groups. War crimes, which are violations of the rules of war. Armed conflicts have rules that go beyond the discussion of whether or not someone had a legitimate right to use force. 

Once an armed conflict begins, it must adhere to a set of rules established by international law. These rules are set out in international treaties called the Geneva Conventions. When you use force, there are things you can and cannot do. Attacking the civilian population is never allowed. So, in a war, you can kill soldiers, but you cannot kill civilians. If you capture soldiers, you must treat them with respect and uphold their dignity. Killing a soldier on the battlefield is not a war crime. Killing children or attacking an ambulance or a hospital is a war crime.

And then there's the other major crime, which is very difficult to prove, but which Ukrainians are convinced is being committed: genocide. Genocide is the total or partial destruction of a national or ethnic group, as such, of a people as such. That is, it's not simply killing... but killing these people because they are Ukrainian. That is genocide. So, it requires a specific intent, which is genocidal intent. From a technical point of view, it's like a specific act of malice aforethought, which is killing because someone belongs to this group.

This may sound a bit harsh, but when a population is this large, it's impossible to annihilate it. How do you kill 40 million people? So, to demonstrate their genocidal intent, the strategy they've chosen is to showcase all the attacks on Ukrainian culture and show that behind it all lies a long-term plan to eliminate Ukrainians.

Organizations like the Lemkin Society have been doing extensive documentation work. The name is interesting because it refers to Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide, first used at the Nuremberg trials.

So, this organization that bears his name is precisely trying to gather evidence to prove that what is being committed in Ukraine is genocide. And they do this by demonstrating that cultural assets are being attacked. For example, the destruction of museums, the destruction of libraries, statues, things that… Well, obviously their destruction doesn't provide a significant military advantage to whoever does it, but it conceals that systematic genocidal plan.

In other words, it's better to destroy a tank than a statue of Taras Shevchenko. But you look around and all the statues of Taras Shevchenko are riddled with bullets. Or you go to a town, like we went to Irpin, and the Irpin cultural center is bombed. And nobody died when they bombed it. What was the point of destroying that? Destroying the culture, the language… So they, the Ukrainians, feel that the Russians are precisely trying to eliminate their culture. And they tell you this with historical justifications; that is, they're following the same playbook as the Soviets.

Did the trip change your understanding of the law? 

Yes, it made me more sensitive, especially in my approach to international humanitarian law, which is the law that applies in armed conflicts. Before, international humanitarian law was more theoretical for me; I taught and explained it. But now I've been able to experience firsthand how the consequences of war affect a civilian population and a country. Having witnessed crimes—not while they were being committed, but the consequences of war crimes and genocide—and seeing bombed and destroyed homes, seeing a mass grave where civilians were buried, it definitely makes you see things differently. So, in that sense, it changes you. It's not that I saw things as good before and now I realize they're bad. You always knew they were bad, but now you realize just how bad they are and how much damage they cause, and you also realize how long that damage will last. It's not something you can just turn the page on and forget. 

What do you consider you brought back from Ukraine? 

Well, these experiences I was just telling you about, and then I also made friends. For example, when we found out about the bombing of the children's hospital in Kyiv on July 8th, both in the WhatsApp group we five Argentinians who traveled there had, and in the group with the PEN organizers, we exchanged messages and photos. So, what impressed me is that I now know the names of some people in the city where they were bombed, and they're now my friends. I mean, you know that a few blocks from where they were bombed are Maksym, Anna, or Tetyana, people I lived with for five days while I was there, and now I know that something could happen to them, and I worry about it.