In our "Surprise guest" column, we welcome distinguished personalities from science, journalism, culture and social and political life.

This month our guest is Oleksandra Matviichuk a human rights defender and head of the Center for Civil Liberties (Ukraine). She has experience in creating horizontal structures for mass involvement of people in human rights activity, in particular, the Euromaidan SOS initiative, as well as several years of practice in documenting war crimes. Author of a number of reports for the UN, the Council of Europe, the EU, the OSCE, the International Criminal Court. Initiator of the #SaveOlegSentsov campaign for the release of Oleg Sentsov and other political prisoners in Crimea and Donbas. She received the Democracy Defender Award for "Exclusive Contribution to Promoting Democracy and Human Rights" from missions to the OSCE. In 2022 Oleksandra Matviichuk was awarded with the Right Livelihood Award and recognized as one of the 25th influential women in the world by Financial Times. Also in 2022 , the Centre for Civil Liberties which Oleksandra Matviichuk heads was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, jointly with Ales Bialiatski, a  Belarusian activist for independence and democracy and Russian organization Memorial.