 So today's presentation is a very special one, facing the war how civil society adapts to the new reality in Ukraine. With Russia's invasion of Ukraine, local civil society faced absolutely new challenges they'd never experienced before. Relocation, safety and cyber security issues, physical security issues, crisis project management, and working under stressful conditions all of the time. How have they managed to survive? How have the thematic focuses changed? What was the most challenging as of the 24th of February? Our speaker today is Irna Schwetz. She's the director of a pora in Lviv, a board member of the pora's civil network. She's a civil activist and project manager with more than 10 years experience. Irna as a team member is responsible for planning and conducting election observation and monitoring campaign, especially designing blended learning educational and communication strategies. Because of Russia's invasion, Irna works part-time from Warsaw in the other time in Lviv, and where in Warsaw she is setting up a public center to help document the war crimes. Without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to Irna. Hi Irna, how are you? Hi, good to be here. Hi. Hi, it's great to see you. Thank you so much for joining us. For those of you who don't realize, Irna right now is actually speaking with us from Ukraine, from Lviv. Yeah, in case of any blackout, please don't worry. Yeah, I will try to rejoin it with my mobile phone, but it's, yeah. Yeah, that's the reality we have in Ukraine. So first of all, how are you doing? The situation in Ukraine has increased dramatically over the past couple of weeks. How are you and your colleagues and friends and family holding up? That's a tricky question. Not bad. We're trying to stay positive because I think with the first missiles that hit Kyiv in late February this year, so we were all terrified, you know, but now, I wouldn't say the Ukrainians got terrified even more with those like drones attack. So we are just based off and we are trying to donate money to our army to defenders as much as we can. So basically, yes, it's quite challenging, I would say, to stay right now in Ukraine, especially in big cities, in Kyiv, in Nipro, also in Lviv, which are under attack all the time. Basically, Russia, it hits the electric stations, it hits railways as well, so semi-infrastructure, critical infrastructure, residential areas. So it's sometimes, it's almost every time, it's very difficult to predict where the next drone or missile gonna hit. So we have to preserve to some of the pre-conscious measures and to stay safe in bomb shelters. But on the other hand, the life still goes on and we are trying to be positive and to find some job for us and to see how we as civil society can also contribute to provide more justice for Ukraine, to see how we can support the defenders who are fighting for the frontline, how we can help their families. So each of us, those who are really responsible citizens of their country, so they all think how they can be of any help to the state right now. I don't know, you know what to say, how I am. Not bad. Not bad under the whole, under the all circumstances. So we are really trying to stay positive and to have this critical thinking all the time, also to stay on the track of all the international developments, because for now the support for Ukraine is really very crucial in terms of providing military help in terms of putting more economical sanctions on Russia federation in terms of providing some curement treatment to the soldiers who are now back on the frontline. And also this is another role of the civil society to see what are the gaps because of what the state, the government cannot fulfill all the sanctions. And we are there to help as well. So there are several people who are participating in this webinar who might not be familiar with the poorest work. I was wondering if you would be able to share a little bit of background about the organization and then also if you could discuss the Russian war crime site that you guys are currently spearheading. And so basically we are an older organization. We are almost 15 years old, but we are mostly known as an election observation mission and domestic one. But besides of just deploying long term and short term observers all over the country because we are a network of activists working all over Ukraine, we also do a lot of analytical work. So we have a pretty good legal expertise. We are drafting laws. We were a part of the working group on elaborating the electoral cult really puts a lot of efforts into increasing the transparency of Ukrainian parliament. And we also, as I said, we are the network of activists. That's why we have our regional branches offices in some of the cities of Ukraine, and they are we're mostly working with the local government. And these are regular monitoring watchdog activities. So we are really pushing more transparency, more accountability for the local government. We are trying to make them be more open more transparent to the local communities to the citizens on one hand. But on the other hand, we are also trying to seek those mechanisms, those tools that might be applicable for providing more transparency within the local authorities, but also strengthen people, regular people, regular local communities and make their voice heard at the official level. We also have the programs on monitoring of social media, political advertising, and these all the expertise and all our background was really very relevant, if I may use this term, to somehow rephrase or to reshape our activities after a different scale invasion. The whole team, I want to say that we were not prepared to be war. So it was something in the air. So everyone was talking, okay, everything something going to happen, but we didn't know when exactly. And we had some also kind of backup plan within our organization. And on February 21, when the first missiles impede for most of our staff, like 90% of people who were staying at the Kiev office and they got evacuated to the western quarter of Ukraine. And after a week or two, so we are starting to think how our legal expertise, how our background and connections with other activists in Ukraine, also in Poland in other EU countries can contribute to Ukraine's victory. And actually, this is how the idea to establish the war crimes documenting center in Warsaw came up. There were several people, four people, so we moved to Warsaw. We saw that point without just four impulse or two, but it turned out that now it's already a longer period of time. And we started to think what can we do once we got relocated to Warsaw. And we saw that at that time there were many human right defining initiatives who are doing the documenting thing. So basically interviewing the victims, interviewing people who saw some war crimes, who saw the damages of civic infrastructure, residential areas, who were raped, who were kidnapped, who were forced to mobilization and other cases and other war crimes. But at that point, nobody was trying to get some connections with those refugees who were staying abroad. There were some attempts, for instance, from the local Polish prosecutors to interview Ukrainians in Poland, but you can imagine. People just crossed the border, they are terrified. They do not know what to do, where to go. And after that they met a prosecutor, a real prosecutor with all the cases that they usually have with them. And those prosecutors were trying to interview the refugees, the witnesses, of course, also in Polish language. So basically we saw that it might be a good idea to make it kind of linkages between the law enforcement bodies and the Ukrainian refugees. So what we are doing right now is we are conducting interviews at the refugee shelters and also at our own center for the war crimes documenting. We have a awareness raising campaign, so we are trying to motivate people, Ukrainians, who are now located in Warsaw to come and to speak. We also explain why it is important to speak. We also explain what does it mean, a war crime, because sometimes the person is terrified. I know he or she, usually she had to stay at the border for many hours and they thought, okay, I'm already a victim of war, but war crime is a bit more complicated thing. So we are also trying to educate people on what is the war crime. What does it mean to have and to advocate for war justice? Because, again, just interviewing with our lawyer and then interview at the prosecutor's office is just the first step. But it is very important because there are thousands of Ukrainians who saw the war crimes. And the world has to know about this. Of course, we are not only speaking to people, we also encourage them to go to media outlets to speak up there, to share the stories. And also one of the biggest issue and one of the main principle for us is not to re-traumatize those persons. Because usually if it's only a prosecutor or it's only a lawyer who strictly follows some protocol, sometimes it's not the case. That's why we are also providing psychological support to those packages, especially in the centers, although in the course of the interview. Sometimes for some people, it's still a huge trauma, but on one hand, but on the other hand, they also understand that human memory has, it works on a very specific limit of time. And the thing that you still memorize, you can recall in a month or two, you will not be able to recall them in half a year or a year. So this is something that we are trying to do right now. And on the other hand, we also have another track for now international activity is we are trying to advocate for the special trip, you know, for the crime of aggression. Here we are in line also with the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So we are trying to seek together the appropriate platform for establishing, you know, you know that several states already declared Russia as a terrorist state. And there will freeze the Russian Holy Guards assets that are a property that is within the country. So perhaps in the near future also this money can be used for reparations for Ukrainian refugees and also for Ukrainians who are victims of the war. But the first step, of course, is to come up with the concept of the special trip, you know, to the platform, the international organization that can set up institution, whether it's going to be United Nations, whether it's going to be the EU so there is still a discussion, but we're really trying to push forward the issue and the need to establish it as a separate institution. Thank you very much for that. And now we're going to take a question from the chat right now from Anka Kulberda in Germany in terms of it. How do you approach building the database. Are there any special security measures. Okay, first, thank you, Anka. Yes, security is one of the challenges for us. And, but we have it's again because of our background in elections. We always had to think about attacks and also about the cyber security, because all the data that was sent by our observers, it should be properly stored archives so that we can work with that in a very secure space. And of course, when we came up with this idea of setting up the office and interviewing people, the key question was, where are we going to store the data. Because there are like, there were also like new regulations for us or GDPR which we do not have in Ukraine so we had to tackle it in Poland but on the other hand we had to find a good solution, IT solution to build up the database. We have a cool guy in our IT group within the quarter, and we established cooperation with Vazi team in IT group who helped us a lot in terms of security, and also in terms of this preserving the data that we collected from all the interviews, all the witnesses and victims of the war crimes. So, for now, I can say that those data are really properly secure and are fived. Great. Thank you so much for that. Are there any other questions in the chat, please feel free to join and ask questions. We have Irina for the next 40 minutes. Okay, then I have another question. So, the majority of our audience is in the United States. So, what are, it's a two-folded question, what are some things that you think that people who are outside of Europe who are, who might not be receiving the same news that we are here in Europe about the situation in Ukraine, I think it's important for people to be aware of the current situation at the ground, and in general, what do you think is, what are the main issues that people don't understand about the war, though, because recently it already 24th, but really when you think about it, been in this situation since 2014 since Crimea. So if you could discuss a little bit more about that. So, one thing that I always ask people to remember is that we are still in the state of war. The war is in progress. I know that it has been a long already, but Ukraine is living with them for another eight years. And I'm always asking people just, I know that we call it the war fatigue. So, people, there is so much information about Ukraine in media outlets. And at some point it may seem that people in you or outside on the other continents, there are sometimes both with all this information and it's difficult to track it. But the main thing that all the whole world should always remember that there is a war and it is still in progress. And it cannot be solved like this in a moment or something. There are no quick decisions. There are no quick solutions for this war. So this is something that we will have, I wouldn't say like for another year or two or half a year. I'm not an oracle or clever who can know this, but basically just track the information. Perhaps I know like once per week, twice per week. So, Ukraine is fighting for the independence. This is another thing that in my opinion, not many states even governments understand. So we are not fighting against Russia. We are fighting for ourselves. We are fighting for our independence. I'm already mentioned that the war has started eight years ago, but we also know the historical background. You know, like Ukraine was a part of the USSR. And also, like during the Second World War, the biggest number of those soldiers who died fighting for the Soviet Army, they were born in Ukraine. So they were Ukrainian. We have difficult cases with our history, like the Great Famine, Polodomor. Yes, again, because of the Stalin tragedy. And these connections, these relations with Russia, so they weren't never of the same age. Now, these imperialistic desires, those imperialistic wishes of having Ukraine or having a full control of Ukraine, this is not something new. And nobody can solve it, even Matt was his. And the top ridiculous suggestions in between get rid of Crimea or just give them the parts of your country. You know, Ukraine should preserve in the borders that we originally have. That's why, again, this is not the fight for, this is not the fight against for us. This is the fight for the independence. And this is just another page in the world history in Ukrainian history that we have to cover. Actually, we have to put a dot in this in this scenario. So we have our next question from Marta. What is the best way to support a pora? What networks or specialists would you need to most likely to be connected with? That's again, that's the question connected to the circumstance. We are right now working in Ukraine because we really lack stuff right now. We have many open calls because most of our men are mobilized. So those we have like brilliant analysts who are working for us with for many years now they all serve in the army. And yeah, compiling some Excel sheets in the military headquarters. We also have regional coordinators who are now serving in the army. And most of our people they are somehow engaged into different kinds of voluntary initiatives. The best way to support. I think this is to spread the world to spread the word. We are preparing right now different articles and also different papers, for instance, on why it is important to establish the special tribunal. I would really love to to ask the international community to be also one of the voices of the Ukrainian civil society. And of course to donate money to the all those initiatives like come back alive and and others who are buying drones and three cars for our defenders know that. So we'll survive, but we just need some time and and some help, but on some peculiar. I wouldn't say, oh, I know, because now we are also preparing advocacy visits to those countries who are not so much supportive of establishing the tribunal, or who have really strong pro Russian interest. Businesses, or perhaps newly Russian government have some good connections with with their governments within the EU, Hungary, or like chat Slovakia, where only civil society is very supportive government is very supportive but still business is under the Russian influence in the big portion of it. So basically we are trying to reach out to those politicians to civil society activists, and also to ask them to support all the pro-Ukrainian initiatives like declaring Russia as a terrorist state. Also the campaign on phrasing all the assets of Russian oligarchs within those countries, and of course providing more military help to Ukraine. And this is one aspect, another one, I think that it's also important for the civil society in other EU countries to speak about the Russian influence and Russia propaganda on the field, because this is something that Ukrainian civil society cannot try, but it has a lot of impact and a lot of influence on the public opinion within the country and also outside. So we have really good experience with tracking fake news, water farms, all those fake narratives that weren't deployed by Russia before the war. Ukraine is not the target of Russia propaganda, because Ukrainians now understand the need for critical thinking, who are getting access to objective and to trustworthy information, and also even recent sociological calls, so they show that the professional journalists, mass media and also of getting access to really objective information is now one of the key skills that Ukrainians would like to develop. But the influence, the impact of Russia propaganda outside Ukraine is still huge, even in Poland. And therefore we are really asking the civil society also to join their efforts and to be this information frontline and to educate people how to chend the information, how to verify the sources of information, how not to be just blind consumers of the data that is nicely packed like a candy, but how to really develop skill of critical thinking. Great. So our next question is, how is the public health situation given the large number of people in shelters? Are people getting access to food, to clothing, to medical care? We are fine. We are fine with that. The food, clothing, medical care, everything is there. We have even now those territories that were under Russia occupation, like Volchia, part of the Kharkiv Oblast that were liberated recently. They are now having good access to the medical healthcare, to schooling, some of the critical infrastructure is being renovated or being built, the roads as well. So there is no so urgent need in providing something right now, but we are already talking about the winter period, and nobody knows how it will look like, because with those Russian drones that hit Ukraine last week, for instance, Ukrainians were not prepared to that. We were not prepared to stay in the total blackout for more than a day. We were not prepared to stay without mobile connection, even for several hours. And it was on this anthropological point of view, it was very interesting to see how people, so much depending on their mobiles, on access to internet, how it was so challenging for them to stay without any internet connection for half a day. And I was observing my neighbors with their phones up in the sky because they were trying to reach at least a small mobile connection. So people were not terrified with those like bombs or something, because this is something that we already get used to, but they were terrified of having no connection with their relatives, of having no possibility and no opportunity to track the updates, because for many of us mobiles and mobile application where we have this air raid alerts is one of the major sources where we get the information from. Of course, we come to loud speakers outside the on all the streets for 80%, 90%, we really rely on our mobile phones. But it was a very good lesson also for all of us, because finally we understood that at some point we may lose the whole electricity in the whole city. And we have to get prepared to this. So now we already spoke already speak about the generators about some backups for electricity stations. You know, about some heaters that we used to to use while going to mountain hitchhiking, but now we have to buy that to get ourselves some hope. Now heated during the winter period. But yeah, so another thing is when Ukraine is a huge country. And of course the situation near closer to the front line is more difficult, but like the government, the local government, of course their role is crucial there. But on the other hand, those calls are to the Polish border so alerts. Yeah, but on the other hand, those closer to the border to the Polish border of Western part of Ukraine central part of Ukraine. We are pretty much okay. My daughter, she is going to school. She's a first grade school girl. So now they have a regular day at school. Sometimes during the air raid alerts, they have to go to the bomb shelters, but they also having some fun there. And they missed the class at that time. So they are also a bit happy about this. And we try to have a normal life between the air raid sirens. Speaking of the air raid sirens, are you okay because you just had that alert and you're just so calm. No, I'm okay. Yeah, I'm okay. Yeah, I know already which one I have to say. Yeah, so we can cut it. Great. So the next question is, what can my nonprofit in the US learn from your experience with crisis response? What was the biggest lesson you learned at the start of the war? Great. So, as I said, I think there are like several crucial things. One of the lessons is that civil society of Ukraine has never been so united as they are right now. Even in speaking about the, we know like we love revolutions, democratic revolutions, we have several of them for the last 15 years, but now Ukraine and civil society is very much united. And we are really very much supportive for the Ukrainian government. It doesn't mean that we do not perform the work that function, we do, and the authorities are aware of this. But at the same time, we are trying also to coordinate our efforts to see how we can contribute to those messages that Ukrainian state is articulating on the international arena. We are trying to be supportive, we are trying, I wouldn't like to go in line, of course, like not, but at least not to contradict. This is something that we've never seen before. This is in terms of the civil society initiatives. Also, this is the Ukraine, I would say now is a huge case for fundraising and cramped funding. There are hundreds, thousands of initiatives. So we can buy blirectars, and I know that it's also inspired other countries to follow the examples. Yeah, Lithuania, Poland did the same thing. And every time that we need, and it is sweet, we have some like huge necessity in some of the military armor or whatever, weapons, humanitarian aid, Ukrainians are ready to donate. They are from all over the world. So they are now, each of us also refugees who are now staying abroad. So they are representatives of their country, and they are pretty much good at advocating this necessity to help the country. So Ukraine is a really good example of how these voluntary initiatives can flourish, but how they can be so much supportive to the main aid, to the victory. And what is the big, okay, what is also peculiar about this war, I would say that this is the overall national motivation and our desire to win. I know that for many countries, and we're hearing that, like while traveling throughout the Europe and abroad also, that Ukrainian, not only civil society, but also like Ukrainian army, Ukrainian defenders, they are examples for many to follow. And I think that this is, again, something that we should not lose after the war. So this is like huge military expertise that we can use. Also, the lesson. Okay, the one that I already mentioned is about the reliance on these digital devices. Now, so now we are also thinking about how we can, I know, like minimize or how we can survive without mobile phone or without some connections, or having some backup plans. Okay, so it's really recalling our lives before mobile phones and internet, all this stuff. I wouldn't say that we have to reinvent the bicycle, but so just to find proper solutions that would suit to this particular situation. Okay, not profits. What else? I don't know. It's, yeah, it's again about building networks, among volunteers. It's about building trust among people, because now, like, you have also, all of us are doing some volunteer stuff. And we have pretty good expertise already, like my husband, he knows everything about starlings and how to get them connected, everything about the logistics to the front line. And now he already had phone calls from other regions from Ukraine, some volunteers there, they are going by the starling. So it's like connections that you would never have before. And it's really like you can see the same old society really like grassroots in the making. And it all is a component with so much trust towards the camera, and so much, I know, like, desire. Are you okay? It sounded like that with a notification or is that? I don't know. So are there any civil society organization working to provide mental health services during this time to the refugees within Warsaw and Czechia? That's a huge question for us. Yes, I should admit. It's a pity. And for me, it's a huge pity to admit that, you know, like Ukraine is on its eight years of war, but we didn't provide. We didn't succeed in having a good network of mental health services provided to soldiers, to veterans, and also to those communities where they have a lot of veterans serving during the anti-terroristic operation since 2014. And no, basically, if you want to be very brief on this, like, we do not have civil society organizations who are working on providing mental health services. But the biggest challenge is also that we didn't have the state service that could provide those kind of services, either to the veterans or to the civilians. It's going to be a huge challenge for Ukraine. And there are some initiatives already who are trying to work with some grassroots groups. But again, they are not massive. They are not massive. Of course, those shelters abroad, there are psychologists, so you can, as a refugee, you can address the professionals, you know, you can get some medical treatment, psychological support. But the number of refugees is also very high. So there are so many people, and as you could understand, so those psychological support, it should be provided for a very long period of time. Because post trauma, syndrome, and other diseases, they are not something that is very easily cured. So it's going to be a very long mentorship. It's going to be a very long way with the psychologist or other specialists who can provide psychological support. There was also a question whether Ukrainian psychologists can get the support from. And there were also talks, some negotiations with the United States associations. And the peculiarity of Ukrainian war is, again, we cannot just copy-paste the American system, because the American veterans is a big different case. Because here, Ukrainian defenders, they are defending their own country, and they are fighting on their own land. That's why there is, they are not, in many cases, they are not professionals. They have, you know, some training, one week, two weeks training, and that's it, and you're on the frontline. Now we are also the Ministry of Veterans, so they are trying to come up with some good solutions and good approaches on how this psychological support may look like. But of course, after the war, during the recovery phase, I think that those organizations, not profits like Poverny-Zhuvim, like, yeah, they'll come back alive. And those who are now getting donations and mostly are focusing on the military assistance. They also should have some more focus on providing more psychological help to the veterans, because this is about not only the security, the safety of those people, but this is also about the safety of the whole nation. We already have cases, for instance. The recent one is that, like my colleagues from Ivano-Frankivsk, the neighboring region, they are talking about that they have the veteran, the defender, who is back on the frontline. And he's sleeping on the bench, because he's afraid of the sirens, that he will not be able to get out of his house so fast. That's why he decided to stay in his yard all the time, but he's afraid to step inside the house during the air raid sirens. And this is just one example. But we will have thousands of deaths, and especially those who know, like, we have a huge number of ring lancers in the army, so those people who are not professional army men, but they were so much motivated to defend their countries, their country, that they just decided to join the army. And after several weeks of training, they got to the frontline, and of course they were not prepared, not in a physical way, but here. And of course, some of those, like, military men, they are already serving, who would say, like, you know, like eight months already of the war, and many of them, they haven't seen their families, or they haven't seen them just once or twice, because they are not allowed. Families are torn, because sometimes mothers and kids, they're staying abroad, even if your husband is not serving in the army, he's not allowed to leave the country. So men are not generally allowed to leave Ukraine. And yeah, so it also might have some impact on your psychological health. So it's not only about military people, but it's also about civilians. It's also about those who, of course, witness some work crimes, and so forth, those who are reading news all the time. This is, it all depends on the level on your, I know, psychological organization, I'm saying. For some of us, it's just reading news all the time, being tough all the time, being ready, you know, thinking about, oh my God, something might happen every time, and this is enough to get some disorder. So it's, yeah, for the time being, it's a crucial issue for Ukraine. And we have time for one last question. It's from the chat. It's from Yarka. What are some of the ways to strengthen Ukraine's civil society, both during and after the war? Yeah, thank you. So that's a difficult question. Okay, to strengthen. I think that civil society, okay, first of all, I would say that all the Ukrainian civil society and the Ukraine should be one of the parties during all the discussions, all the international discussions. Whilst the post recovery plan is being discussed within the EU leadership, or within the some donors, you know, or humanitarian aid organizations, you cannot avoid Ukrainian representative there. So I think that now, and also during this after the war, recovered period, it's very important to hear the civil society and to make sure that Ukrainian civil society is sitting on the same table with all other stakeholders. The other one is always to bring connections with other countries to support, but also to have not just how to provide funds or whatever, because sometimes it looks like some donor organization they are so willing to support some of the Ukrainian initiatives. But we also need to put a lot of effort into making them more professional, into making and showing that it is important to work with regular people with grassroots, with organizations who are targeting specific target groups like veterans, like elderly people, like children. And of course it is important to understand the needs, first of all, the needs of civil society, the needs of the whole country, and to put the effort accordingly. Great. Well, thank you so much. It has been really informative speaking with you. And I hope that everyone who has participated in this conversation has really enjoyed the conversation. We really appreciate the work that the Pora and other civil society actors have been doing throughout the war and we support you.