# Solidarity Conference | Summary of Keynote Lecture by Maksym Butkevych The [**TCUP 2026**](https://www.huri.harvard.edu/tcup-conference) Keynote Lecture was delivered by **Maksym Butkevych** — human rights defender, journalist, former Ukrainian serviceman, and former prisoner of war. Speaking to a packed auditorium and virtual audience, Butkevych reflected on freedom, captivity, solidarity, and the moral stakes of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Drawing from his experience as both a human rights advocate and a POW held for two years and four months in Russian captivity, he offered a powerful meditation on dignity, responsibility, and the meaning of solidarity in wartime. The keynote was moderated by **Dr. Emily Channell-Justice,** Director of the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program at Harvard University. ![Butkevych Channell Justice TCUP.png](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2026-10/Butkevych%20Channell%20Justice%20TCUP.png?itok=XEuzq1YM) #### Defending Human Rights by Taking Up Arms > In order to defend human rights, I resorted to the only option available to me — to take up arms. Butkevych began with what he acknowledged may sound like a paradox: as a lifelong anti-militarist and human rights defender, he joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces in February 2022. He explained that the decision was not a rejection of human rights principles, but their logical extension. If Russia prevailed, he argued, there would be no space for human rights activism in occupied Ukraine. “Human rights,” he noted, “have no importance” in the ideology of the so-called Russian world. To defend them, he believed, he had only one option available at that moment: to take up arms. Russia’s war, he emphasized, is not a war for territory or resources. Russia is vast — even too vast, he suggested — and already struggling to manage and develop such a vast territory. Nor is there any mineral or industrial gain that could justify the scale of destruction unleashed against Ukraine. Rather, he argued, this is an old-fashioned imperial war — a war to restore empire — fought with 21st-century weapons. Russia without Ukraine, he observed, cannot sustain its imperial self-conception. This war is not about territory, Butkevych argued, but about values — about the defense of human rights and freedom against imperial domination. #### Captivity and the Destruction of Subjectivity After just three and a half months in military service, Butkevych was captured in June 2022 in occupied Luhansk. He was later subjected to a fabricated trial and sentenced to thirteen years in a Russian penal colony. Reflecting on his time in captivity, he described a discovery that surprised him. The worst feature of captivity was not physical violence, though that was present. It was the systematic attempt to deprive prisoners of their subjectivity — to turn them into objects. Captivity, he explained, is not merely confinement. It is the stripping away of agency. Prisoners are expected to obey commands without question, to internalize imposed narratives, to abandon their will. > Violence is the antithesis of freedom — it deprives a person of the right to choose and strips them of control over their own life. He extended this observation to occupation itself. Occupation, he argued, is the captivity of a society. It reduces entire populations to passive objects of control. Liberation, therefore, is not only territorial — it is the restoration of agency. Butkevych’s experience in captivity sharpened his understanding of freedom. For Ukrainians today, he said, freedom is not an abstract philosophical ideal. It is the concrete freedom to influence one’s future, to shape collective destiny, and to live with dignity. ![Butkevych Keynote TCUP](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2026-10/2.png?itok=KjVspk8c) #### A War of Values Butkevych insisted that Ukrainians do not perceive this war as a “local conflict.” It is, in their understanding, a war of values — the outcome of which will shape not only Ukraine’s future, but the future of those values internationally. Ukraine is defending not only its territorial integrity, but a worldview grounded in human dignity, human rights, and freedom. These are not “Western” values, he noted, but universal ones — shared by societies across the globe that wish to live without fear and without domination. He offered several reasons why Ukraine’s victory matters beyond its borders. It is a defense of a rules-based international order against a “might makes right” system, and essential for global non-proliferation, as rewarding nuclear blackmail would invite further proliferation. More fundamentally, he argued, it is a defense of truth itself: Russian state ideology does not simply distort truth — it undermines the very existence of truth, claiming that reality is whatever the state declares it to be. #### Solidarity: Essential, but Not Sufficient The conference theme of solidarity ran throughout the lecture. Butkevych was unequivocal: international solidarity has been key to Ukraine’s resistance over the past four years of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Military assistance, economic support, legal cooperation, sanctions, and pressure on Russia to release prisoners — these are not symbolic gestures. They are concrete embodiments of solidarity. Is solidarity essential? Yes, he said. Is it sufficient? No. More can be done. More pressure can be applied. More weapons can be delivered. Gratitude for support does not negate the urgency of further action. At the same time, he added a sobering reflection: Ukraine remains alone in one sense — alone in paying the price in blood. And it would like to remain alone in that experience. Yet to prevent other countries from being drawn into the same kind of bloodshed, Ukraine requires sustained solidarity — in arms, in economic support, and in political resolve. ![Butkevych Q&A TCUP](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/2026-10/4.png) #### Not Forgotten Asked about captivity and advocacy, Butkevych emphasized that the most important thing for a prisoner to know is that they are not forgotten. During his imprisonment, he received hundreds of letters, and those letters sustained him. They were proof that someone outside remembered, spoke his name, and worked for his release. Since his release, he is now involved in developing educational materials for former prisoners of war, families, journalists, and medical professionals, as well as launching an English-language resource platform to document Ukrainian captivity testimonies. He also advocates for better preparation of Ukrainian servicemembers for the risk of captivity — one of the three core professional risks of military service, alongside injury and death. #### Conclusion Butkevych closed with a reminder that the Russian war against Ukraine is not about lines on a map. It is about the defense of freedom as lived agency — the freedom to choose, to speak, to act, to build a future. Solidarity, in this sense, is not charity toward a distant conflict. It is alignment with a worldview grounded in human dignity. > If we want to live in a world where truth matters, Ukraine must win. [ WATCH NOW: TCUP 2026 Keynote Lecture arrow\_circle\_right ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGmvu7g8LHw&list=PL9k86tSOS4AHuHM9bbwrJc0FxBqpwMo4r&index=6) [ ДИВІТЬСЯ ЗАРАЗ: TCUP 2026 Ключова промова — українською arrow\_circle\_right ](https://youtu.be/b1QO0CWt0bE?si=tAkeSMrbQYEJcqjC) See also:- [ TCUP Commentary ](/page-type/tcup-commentary) - [ Conference ](/tags/conference) - [ TCUP ](/tags/tcup)