The Freedom We Take For Granted

This article is part of our coverage of the 2026 Warwick Economics Summit.

“When you can’t rely on the legal instruments, when you can’t rely on the international system of peace and security, you can still rely on people. Ordinary people can do extraordinary things. Ordinary people can change history.”

These words from Ukrainian human rights lawyer and 2022 Nobel laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk echoed through the amphitheater, part of a striking keynote that stood out at the Warwick Economics Summit. Accompanying these words was the image of a teacher in Kyiv, crouched in the cold outside one of the few buildings with electricity to instruct her students online. A thousand miles away, students representing top universities from across the globe were faced with a reality radically different from their own. One where the failure of international law is not just a topic for discussion, but a brutal, never-ending nightmare.

Matviichuk’s keynote address was at once a condemnation of the world’s weak response to Putin’s invasion and a testament to the strength of individual people, in Ukraine and across the world, fighting for freedom. This war, she says, is about something much bigger than territory. The war in Ukraine is at the center of justice: it represents a collapse of the international system as we know it, a worldwide crisis of ethics and freedom. The way we react to this crisis will define the new world order. Yet her talk was not a policy pitch, nor was it a lobbying effort directed at the future of diplomacy. It was an appeal to the core of all the young people in the room, to a generation of adults that, having inherited their rights and liberty, have become passive consumers of democracy. Throughout Europe and the West, more generally, we have been functioning as if peace and freedom are a given, falling back into the habit of appeasement that was so disastrous not even a century ago. Matviichuk traces the roots of this crisis to Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea. European governments’ inaction in this instance empowered Putin, she argues, signaling to him that European democracies would not actually fight to uphold their values. The Nobel Prize-winning human rights lawyer was adamant that this war was never about NATO or Western European influence, as she repeated multiple times: Ukraine was neutral when Russia invaded Crimea. This conflict was about freedom and ethics from the very beginning: “Putin is not afraid of NATO, he is afraid of the notion of freedom.” When called to defend their democratic morals, Europeans, including even Ukrainians, turned away from Crimea, preferring to “switch off the war from the TV” and continue with business as usual. We see these conflicts as contained, something we are safe from, until it’s too late.

This is further exacerbated by the dividing forces behind authoritarianism, especially in the digital age. “Truth is always the first victim of the war,” Matviichuk pointed out in her talk: our digital reality makes us vulnerable to external manipulation, as people cannot tell the difference between truth and lies. While this is a threat everywhere, the use of digital manipulation and misinformation has been a central tactic in this conflict, which Reuters called “the biggest war of the fake news era.” These tools have been used to confuse civilians, influence foreign leaders, tarnish the reputations of Ukrainian leaders, and shape public opinion worldwide. Matviichuk therefore raises an important question: without a shared sense of reality, how can we engage in collective action? How do we, as individuals and as a society, rebuild after the international system of justice no longer guarantees freedom?

The Ukrainian human rights lawyer invites us to turn our eyes to her people for the answer. In the last four years, Putin’s regime has tried to take everything from Ukrainians: their joy, education, and families. But if the image of the teacher from Kyiv giving everything to provide lessons to her students tells us anything, it’s that the people never gave up. Against all odds, Ukrainians have held up against one of the world’s largest armies, not because of a strong military or alliances, but because of all the ‘ordinary’ people who refused to abandon their home. It shouldn’t take the threat of invasion, however, for citizens to become active protectors of freedom. The key takeaway from this talk is that people have extraordinary power, whether to resist brutal regimes or build a more just world. Ukraine shows us that when we can no longer rely on international agreements to guarantee our rights, we can rely on individuals–in a world increasingly obsessed with the macro, we’d do well to remember this.

Throughout the entirety of the Warwick Economics Summit, speakers made references to the uncertain/unprecedented/turbulent times. The backdrop of fracturing international institutions and eroding freedom worldwide permeated every talk, but none as directly and powerfully as that of Oleksandra Matviichuk. There is no room for sugar-coating when the organization you head (the Center for Civil Liberties) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for documenting war crimes against your own people. There is no place for sparing feelings when all the world’s safeguards failed to protect your home. Despite all these heartbreaks, this trailblazing lawyer asserts: “the basis of our existence is dignity, not victimhood.” Importantly, this speech was not about the treacheries of a (not so) faraway war, but a plea to the international community to recognize that this crisis affects us all and we cannot afford to ignore it.

Her voice ringing from the speakers overhead, Matviichuk told the hundreds of students present to do something, for Ukraine or otherwise. The message: we can no longer treat freedom as a given, and each of us must engage in the fight to protect human rights in every way that we can. She did not leave students with a list of action items, just this wakeup call, one that is sure to have resonated with many as they traveled back to their respective universities around the world. Each of us can make the daily decision not to look away from those suffering; once we realize the extraordinary power of ordinary people caring, we will finally understand the immeasurable value of the freedom we take for granted.