Putin's goal is...

About

Video interview

by Denys Volokha
Original article

by Denys Volokha
Video subtitles

Tanya Karliychuk, Maria Krykunenko
The work on the MOMENT

Ilona Batulina

About

John Hall is a professor of law at Fowler School of Law in Orange, California, specialising in international law and art law.
In the summer of 2023, he came to Ukraine to volunteer with the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. To help in any way possible, as well as to collect material for his research work on the destruction of cultural heritage..

‘When I was a lawyer before, we were taught to be objective - to try to look at the law from a certain distance and not to take sides...

But I was shocked by the enormity of the Russians' crimes during the occupation. It was not just the bad behaviour of soldiers in combat or post-combat situations. It was a systematic torture of the Ukrainian people.’

And attempts to destroy Ukrainian culture.

"However, there are clear indications, in the war in Ukraine, that the Russian military has intentionally targeted Ukrainian cultural heritage. Skovoroda museum is probably the classic example of that, that we visited.

This was the house and museum, that belonged to the 18th century Ukrainian poet and philosopher. The building, which was hit by Russian missiles in 2022, is in the middle of a forest. It’s a long way away from any other buildings. There were no military facilities or targets close by. And the nearest small villages, are several hundred metres away.

There was nothing in that area apart from this particular building which was completely destroyed by Russian missiles in May of 2022. This was not near the fighting. This was a long way from where the fighting was taking place."

"And I had expected, before I came here, to see a country completely devastated by war. I think that’s the media coverage in Europe and in the United States, is of the battlefields, the missiles, the suffering. And I was expecting to, even in Kyiv, and in Kharkiv, to see that side of the war. And of course, I haven’t.

It’s been far more normal. And I think that’s the thing that has struck me, is the normalcy of people’s lives. People are just getting on with their lives as they have to do. They go to work, they go shopping, they deal with their families...

So there’s a degree of normalcy that I was not expecting. What else has struck me as interesting since I’ve been here is the strength of the people. It sounds a bit of a platitude. But I have heard nobody, not a single person in two months, talk about the possibility that Ukraine could lose this war."

Photo proof

Drobytskyi Yar is the place of mass murder of the Jewish population of Kharkiv by the Nazi Wehrmacht. The Drobytsky Yar Memorial Park and Museum were shelled by Russian troops in March 2022.

On 6 May 2022, Russian troops shelled the Hryhorii Skovoroda Museum in the village of Skovorodynivka in the Kharkiv region. The museum was completely destroyed.