The canvas of peace

Her name is difficult to spell and pronounce, unknown to most. But Oleksandra Matviichuk won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, while the fury of war was raging in her country: Ukraine.

Oleksandra, 42, a lawyer, rights activist, and founder—in 2007—and leader of the Kiev Center for Civil Liberties, said of herself in an interview with the weekly Credere: "I am a religious person and I believe in God." Faith sustains her in the struggle. In Rome, she met Leo XIV, along with five other Nobel laureates: "I gave His Holiness the drawings of the children of Chasiv Yar, a small town in eastern Ukraine completely destroyed by the war."

She invited the Pope to Ukraine: "I told him we need him." Since Russian troops treacherously invaded her homeland on February 24, 2022, Oleksandra has begun weaving her own peace fabric with Russian and Belarusian activists, "to build," she explains, "invisible bonds and jointly protect civil society, save people." Moreover, she won the Nobel Prize together with Ales Bjaljacki, a Belarusian activist, and Memorial, a Russian human rights organization whose director, Oleg Orlov, has been imprisoned, as has Bjaljacki: Putin and his cronies, Belarusian President Lukashenko, neither appreciate nor like civil rights leaders.

From the day Russian tanks rolled onto Ukrainian soil, for those people and for Oleksandra herself, life has taken a path of pain, death, desolation, cold, misery, and terror. In the world's substantial disinterest: where are the marches, the protests, the fierce polemics, the prayers for an end to this "senseless" (Leo XIV) war?

Among the few defenders of Ukraine—and of truth, justice, and humanity—is President Mattarella, who stated in Berlin: "It must be resolutely reiterated: the sovereignty of a people is not expressed in the right to wage war on its neighbor. A nation's desire to succeed does not translate into producing injustice. A war of aggression is a crime." Oleksandra continues her unequal struggle: "We all have the power to influence the future with our actions. There are no guarantees that everything will go well, but for me, hope is this: to believe that every effort has meaning. We Ukrainians have a duty not to let our children inherit this tragedy."

Renzo Agasso
​NP December 2025