demchenko, the spokesman of the state border guard service, worked live on the espresso tv channel . well, i am now giving the floor to my colleagues, watch the espresso tv channel, stay with us. greetings. good evening. my name is myroslava barchuk. this is a project of ukrainian foam. we are talking today with larisa denysenko. larisa denysenko is a writer, human rights activist and readers of the board of the association of women lawyers yurfem, which helps victims of sexual violence larisa good evening greetings greetings myroslava and we will today to talk about a topic that is very close to you, which you have a lot of, but it concerns the culture of communication, as you often say, and everyone who tried to talk about the war crimes of the russians in the western

media, especially the academic environment, or the greater part of the intellectual western environments, which are mostly in peaceful cities in europe or north america know how hard it is, how difficult it is to appear balanced , detached, uh, not too emotional, what was the trust in your words. you comment a lot for foreign journalists for ukrainian fixers, the topic of sexual violence is a very complex topic, which is especially difficult to talk about. you wrote a post the day before yesterday about the fact that even you are accused by the western audience, that you do not want to further examine your own trauma, that you need to calm down is it necessary to look more global , etc. please explain, uh, uh, please explain

, uh, what exactly do these people expect from us, from you? are happening to our country so as not to disturb someone's peace of mind. well, i have to tell you that there is actually a lack of understanding and an attempt to explain to me what i know . they sound er on the topic of communication or possible cooperation with the russians. which ones does someone consider to be good russians, but now it is about the passport of the good russians. it seems that kasparov started to initiate it, but in relation to sexual crimes, in relation to what i am talking about

sexual crimes and what about the war crimes committed by the occupiers on ukrainian territory? no one made such remarks to me, and this was mostly related to topics of a broader nature, for example, why should we not cooperate with scientists? in a common space, eh, the russians are, well, they are good russians, he is a very good lawyer, eh, and he has his own peculiarities, he cannot call a war a war because he is arrested, or he has been living in austria for a very long time, and he has never voted for putin and if you constantly

push away from various discussions. people are already living, you know, in the times when the war is over and everything has been paid to us a-a blocks this was the courts and then it is already possible because there may be different conditions you can tell me a-a that i will agree and behave like an excessively emotional person who very narrowly focused and which is in may and so can't accept that the world is diverse and you know , now we just live in a very strange time for me, sometimes it's very difficult for me to understand how it is possible at the same time, in

fact, in front of our eyes, to destroy and fight lysychansk and to rebuild gustoml, where one of the possible ones was today enough a- and big investors, uh, a million billionaires , famous branson, and uh, and when you weave it into your past life, ah, it’s even hard for you to understand, and how can this all happen, you know when i work with a woman who was evaluated after sexual assault, and this is a person which is already out of reach of our country, she is safe but i just feel how long the road is when a person just feels his body his shoulders uh his heart is in place you understand and at the

same time, for example, you can look at how we can conduct various negotiations regarding the restoration of the country and in the western audience, which very often believed that a-ah, you know, it seems to me that this is a ticket even to the higher world of the world of an educated person italian opera russian literature russian ballet and i don't know if you like uh woody tapes i love allen, in fact, everyone has rewatched it, i am interested in how arthouse turns into mass into mass culture, and here and there, there are dubbings and transitions , and in one of his e brilliant, in my opinion, e social dramas of detectives of matska, the main character is a tennis coach in order to to enter and into the world sufficiently enriches the poor and he forced himself

to listen to the defense and wait for dostoyevsky, you understand . that is, it is woody allen a-a. he reproduces his vision so in his vision of how his community er-e perceives it and that is why we are now faced with those what do you understand people, and in order to understand why this is inappropriate for us a-a why do we have the right to purge from ourselves what they may a-a considered a part of identity and er-e it is simply very difficult to give but here it is just another one such moment when you know that you physically do not live the war with us, just like you, both of you have such an experience when, uh, near kiev, uh, there were occupying

troops, that is, even now, you are uh, constantly under the threat of uh, missile missile of a blow, you are very clearly aware of it at the bodily level. and what is it war and this is a very important realization, i know it myself. it was a long time ago, very recently. i'm sorry, i'm going to kill you. we talked about it with olena styazhkina. i was preparing to evacuate because i didn't understand, we'll survive, we won't survive, whether or not our house will be hit. you only experience it yourself then you can understand it or, for example, about the letter kat above the house. it is never possible to describe it. and imagine why we mainly

communicate with people who have such experience in books and cinematography, and they mostly have no personal experience , even when you say -e with military correspondents and in different countries it happened in different ways and it's all the same, you come to another country, you research the material, you, to a greater extent, analyze the night, you live, you understand, and that's why you just need to explain and not be afraid to be frank, you know, well, it seems to me that emotionality is the same as frankness. it can be of different intonation, it can be different words, and what i really don't like is that i don't like shouting, i understand

why it happens when a person wants to to say, but when you talk to people who don't even imagine it's there, i don't know, well, the seventh part is what our whole country is going through. and shouting is not a very good communication tool, you need to calm yourself down in some way, but at the same time not to get rid of a-a humanity not to get rid of the value a-a and to be absolutely sincere even about one's experiences and it seems to me that it helps a lot er-er my larisa the next question will be er-er there will be about the scream because a-a very recently i remember two wonderful interviews on babel that were even called your phrase, you said you discussed how to communicate, how to tell the world about the war crimes, the disasters that

are happening here, and you said that you can't shout because they will stop listening to you, they will stop hearing you and here we actually came to the topic of the great scandal that arose and exploded in ukrainian society, er, the day before yesterday, ukrainian pravda , a publication that everyone reads, published its own investigation about the fact that former ombudsman lyudmila denisova, while in office, told unconfirmed stories about the rape of ukrainian children by the occupiers, yes the truth wrote , in particular, that during interrogations by the prosecutor's office, denisova told the law enforcement officers that she allegedly heard these stories from her daughter oleksandr kvitkoi, who headed or if denisova explained that she published these scary stories, the details are because she wants to win the victories in the war for ukraine,

first there was a headline in ukrainian pravda that contained a mention of fictional stories, then the title was changed but a very loud scandal has already broken out in society and society is divided. therefore, one part perceives the main message of the article that it seems that most sexual crimes of russians are fabrications and fakes denisova yes and this playing along is, of course, russian propaganda, the rest of society took it as a message that unconfirmed stories discredit ukraine , discredit our own testimonies, and let us make sure that in the future there will be no more such illiterate officials with such unconfirmed statements. what do you think about this story and what can they do? be the consequences of this story, and i see this is a very broad question, i

will allow myself to focus on a few points, and the first is communication what sexual violence is, in my firm belief, there is no turning into a scoreboard from , you know, there is such a concept in the practice of the european court of human rights, secular interest, well, in fact, the entire yellow press is built on that and on detailing on physiology on processes in order to incite in order to to laugh, and for that, actually, if they understand it is a certain language, the language of the scoreboard, and you, as a journalist, perfectly understand what i am talking about, and our audience may eventually inquire . what is this phenomenon, therefore, communication is about one of the heaviest anastasia, because the pits of evil are clearly

a-a. moreover, at the state level, there is no way to turn into a scoreboard, a tabloid line a-a , you can even read these messages with such detail, and in telegrams, in particular, lyudmila denisova or e-e, in the columns of various online and not only editions, you can even visualize it, and you already know it will be, you yourself visualize it as pictures, the second point, and accordingly, i am not a prosecutor who conducts an official investigation or is generally interested in the issue and do not have appropriate tools to check uh how much uh these are stories uh hyperbolized made up or it's just bad uh bad communication yes i hope this will be given proper evaluation ah

but it seems to me that ah if there is water certain the percentage of suspicion that this information is a jumble of unconfirmed facts, or it was presented very incorrectly from the beginning. this question could be raised at completely different levels, and in any case, the answer remains to and when the national media, within the framework of freedom of speech, cheers for those survivors of sexual violence who were forced to

go through it to survive. that their feelings were not devalued so that their stories were not crossed out so that the international criminal a-a court or actually in the tribunal or in the national courts a-a-a and the person himself felt confident and the prosecution felt confident and the party defense felt confident, so it is necessary to proceed from the fact that uh, we respect people who had the courage to declare this, now i want to take a little step back and explain what could be the problem here, do you understand the lines, i am a hotline , any she often a - and hmm, it implies anonymity, anonymity of messages, anonymity of messages in general also deserves respect, so

first of all, if there were such pigs. to doubt the veracity, unfortunately, but it is necessary to explain, especially to explain what is being said about the fact that oleksandra kvitko and er and ludmila denisova they er-er they er-er stated from the beginning about a much larger number of calls that they received allegedly like this the number seems to have been 10 times more than that number, what is the real number of calls to the psychological help hotline and you are absolutely right . in the police were sent to the prosecutor's office, but

what we heard gives us reasons, for example, to trust people and to claim that there were not isolated cases of sexual violence against adults and children in the liberated territory from the occupiers do you understand, in my opinion, actually uh, to make a detailed history of the story of the rape of a child, how uh, how does it all happen, it's at least uh, a bad tone, and believe me, well, it's just that if it's about, let's say, uh, diplomacy, uh, they're unequal a-a ministry of foreign affairs e-e or ministry of defense a of other countries it is not well perceived as it is perceived by people because in democracies people are very dependent on the people, the position of governments, and

in fact it is, well, it terrifies people, of course, like us and someone stops it. it's all easy to read, but you know me here it hurts a lot because of the fact that, oh, this excessive detailing, it would tell me that it is simple rape. well, there is nothing particularly interesting here, you can even not focus on this, but you need to focus on it . this is very harmful and unfair to to people who are in the target - evaluated after such a crime and evaluated after the occupation because i constantly emphasize that violence during the occupation is actually double violence and double torture because a person is in total despair and the group grows many times. please tell larisa

i understand correctly that the hotline could really receive such testimonies and the ombudsman, no, psychologists who receive calls do not have the right to divulge not only the details, but the rape as long as there is no the evidence base has not been collected, or they could talk about it but simply in a different way, and again , the interesting situation here is that as far as i understood, there were five people working on the hotline, of all of them, we only know oleksandr kvitko, who is very she is public and she is a psychologist, all other documents appear as operators do you understand this is an operator who receives communications, receives calls and people have no experience and no right at all to help those who

call because you just accept the call, you record it, you understand you make a fixation a-a if a person wants to trust you further, you can simply direct him or her to: from the police phone to the psychologist helpline phone to the legal helpline phone and actually support information or secure facts if it is a witness who wants to anonymously testify to the story and pass it on to the prosecutor's office, this is a big ethical challenge , how much does a person who collects information not have the relevant profession, does not see a person if it is an anonymous call, and in an instant, for some reason, posts it in a telegram channel, and not even his own, but actually an official one

a person who is responsible for the protection of human rights and is authorized by the parliament for human rights, that is, there are obvious violations. but again, you know, i would like the relevant authorities to deal with this. i am just a lawyer to you. that is, this is my expertise . i am yours. i can say that i don't like it here, but i'm not conducting this investigation and, er, i hope that we get clearer answers to our question, and with that permission, i still want two small points to speak about. and you rightly said that people have become very polarized who have read the material is really there, by the way, i advise you to read the column of the chief editor of ukrainian pravda, serhiy museeva, in my opinion, it goes further and more clearly answers the questions why is this

happening and what is the danger of such suspicions , in particular, regarding the virtuous behavior of one or another official, but there are two moments when people were very angry at the fact that this is a stretch of russian propaganda that they did it . we are lying, that is, in the good picture of their world, it does not change anything, but look, for example, i perceived this information as information from an official source, i did not spread it because, well, actually, this is not the language that i would like to talk about sexually force. but i could direct foreign journalists, and i was authorized to talk to the office, and actually i could just pay

attention to these data, and a lot of people were scared, terrified, and very angry. and they actually missed these messages. now they have such a moment people can deny this to me, but i feel this way, that they partly feel themselves to be accomplices and liars, you understand when on various forums you prove a-a different russian audience to trolls or objectively to real people that your army men, your fighters, officers and soldiers swallow our women and babies, do you feel now that uh, when they said that you were lying so that he was not right, now you actually feel that your spine has wobbled, it's a very bad feeling, and that's the danger of such stories in fact.

you will understand one feature, one more point that danylo mokrykh talks about, which applies not only to those people who talk about it like this in the international audience, but here is a point that concerns the victims of war crimes, and here danylo mokryk writes about the fact that the denial of russian war crimes even in the format there, denisova invented it. this is a continuation of the abuse of those who survived these crimes, because the victims of such crimes are so uh and so reluctant to report because it is very stigmatized and it is very difficult for them. well, no i have to tell you how hard it is for people to open up. and even after this story, uh, people can completely shut up and not talk about it, uh, look, uh, well, it seems to me that danyla is a little

confused about cause and effect, and because uh, much in my opinion, it's worse to talk about such serious crimes in the language of the boulevard newspaper. it's much worse , it actually turns you into a heroine of a very terrible, hmm, boulevard thursday, and that's just what you remember. and believe me. well i just know what i 'm talking about people don't want to associate themselves with posts ah, mrs. excursionist, and it’s very difficult to perceive yourself through these messages, and since actually, one way or another, mrs. ludmila did not call uh and did not say names in full if uh,

there were appeals and these appeals were recorded and then transferred to the prosecutor's office, in principle, a person can feel protected, although there were several moments and messages that, ah, well, in my opinion, already contained a violation of security rules and a violation of private life and private data of a person -e actually by itself trust is an opportunity to turn to e-e legal aid to turn to the state, and we are not talking about that anymore, and actually the article in ukrainian pravda says that the ukrainian authorities do not engage in sexual violence, do not engage in war crimes, it seems to me that this is precisely what the state is talking about responsible, you need to treat your obligations, and regarding compliance with

safety rules, regarding the understanding of a person who dares to speak about it, regarding the fact that these crimes are being investigated, and well, i just want to emphasize the fact that crimes are being investigated, that is, it is impossible to talk about the fact that this phenomenon does not exist, and at the moment we wanted to investigate, we have literally 1 minute left, and i want to ask you and you have already started talking about it, i want to ask about this here you are you actually work in this very difficult field, i read dozens of stories about rape on various sites on various western media, in particular, how many stories are there that are already supported by such an evidence base, so are you ready to go to the international court of justice, how many such cases are there on which evidence has already been collected and look er, well

, first of all, we can talk about national er, national justice, and currently the prosecutor's office has 19 if i'm not mistaken , they are already preparing er for the transfer to take place in court, now the case is being considered in court, it is quite high-profile - this is the case of the rescuer and the sex offender and the war criminal romanov. it will be heard behind closed doors and in absentia. ukraine will treat the preparation of materials for the court, the indictment, and the quality of justice

. they are preparing for the fact that they will be heard in national courts, and the international criminal court works according to its own procedure, and there are already the same plus more cases that will be filed and given for consideration by the international criminal court and ah about you can talk to the people who record these testimonies specifically for the international criminal court . and separately, the center for civil liberties deals with this, in particular, the lawyers, the lawyer and oleksandr matviychuk, etc. that is, it is a completely different story because we are walking through several corridors that are small