Tag: nato

Author – assembly.org.ua The following is from our comradesin Ukraine “Assembly”.

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Already the fifth and largest conflict with the territorial recruitment centers (TRCs) in Odessa for the week happened in the early hours of October 30 at the “7th Kilometer” industrial market. A crowd of warehouse workers overturned their bus, broke its windows, and physically injured an enlistment group, forcing them out of the market. The regional TRC also claimed that protesters used batons and pepper spray. According to the market’s deputy director, Irina Tkach, their entrepreneurs and staff were not among these loaders. An asphalt plant, supermarkets, and post branches are also located nearby. There are more people working there than at the market. The Security Service of Ukraine has opened a criminal case on obstructing mobilization activities; the defendants face 5 to 15 years in prison. It could have been the most militant labor protest in Ukraine since Independence Day 1998, when striking coal miners clashed with riot police in front of the Lugansk Regional State Administration.

And two months have passed since then. There’s still no word of any repression in this case, though an investigation is ongoing. It seems the state Moloch still fears the united working masses. Things are much more difficult for those who risk fighting a gang of torturers alone.

The entire country was discussing how, on the evening of December 3 in Lviv, 30-year-old Hryhoriy Kedruk fatally stabbed 37-year-old district TRC employee Yuriy Bondarenko. Bondarenko died by morning from a critical femoral artery injury. The suspect fled and was soon apprehended, with the knife seized at the scene. Hryhoriy admitted that the knife belonged to him and said that he “apparently” dealt the blow when he was being beaten by three or four servicemen. He is originally from the Rivne region, lived in Kharkov for a time and is registered there, then moved to Lviv. He claims to be unemployed and has an IT education. On December 5, the Frankivsk District Court sent him to 60 days in custody without bail. He faces up to 12 years in prison for two counts of intentional infliction of grievous bodily harm. The killed Bondarenko was also born in Kharkov and graduated from the Kharkov Zooveterinary Academy. He worked in the restaurant business and moved to Lviv before the full-scale Russian invasion. He transferred to the bounty hunters in June 2025, allegedly due to serious health issues.

The scene of the kidnapper’s murder. Photos from the Lviv Regional Prosecutor’s Office

On October 20, enlistment team raided the premises of some private enterprise in Kamenskoye (Kamianske). Security guards forced them to leave, but the workers pursued the visitors outside the gates after word got out that TRC had grabbed one of their colleagues. During the conflict, one TRC representative threatened them with a pistol, while another pepper sprayed into the eyes of an employee filming the incident. This is at least the second such incident after Kovel in Volyn.

Two days earlier, on October 18, near a supermarket in the city of Dnieper (Dnipro), police and TRC employees allegedly located a citizen wanted for violating military registration rules. He refused to go with them. Passersby came to his aid and attempted to free the man, striking the military servicemen several times and damaging the service vehicle. However, they were unable to free the kidnapped one.

On the other side of the country, in Ternopil, on the evening of October 13, TRC employees blocked the car of Sergiy Zadorozhnyi, head coach of the local football club Nyva, near a shopping mall. This also led to a mass brawl with civilians. Zadorozhnyi, who had a reservation, later left, but the clash continued amid chants of “Shame!” in the crowd. Police stated that no one contacted them or medical facilities with bodily injuries.

On October 17, around midday, on a road near the village of Plebanivka near Ternopil, two people in a Mercedes Benz G-Class reportedly cut off a TRC vehicle, took a mobilized one who was being transported to a training center, and fled the scene. One of the enlistment agents sustained a leg injury due to hit by a car. Police detained the suspects later that day, according to the regional TRC.

Flames on the central street of Ukraine’s capital: on October 23, tires were set on fire in front of the Kiev City State Administration building. Police detained a local resident born in 1977. From social media

Mobilization bus smashing in Odessa. From social media

Also on October 30, a court in Odessa found guilty an unemployed resident who, on June 12 of this year, used tear gas against a TRC employee and wounded him in the chest with a knife. He was sentenced to five years in prison with two years of probation. The leniency of the sentence was influenced by sincere repentance, a full admission of guilt, the presence of a minor child in his care, and the transfer of 250,000 hryvnias to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The same day, in the region of Poltava, police escorted a man kidnapped from the street to the Kremenchuk District TRC’s assembly point. During the paperwork and search, in response to a cop’s question about the presence of prohibited items or substances, he pulled out a pistol and fired several shots. As a result, two TRC representatives were injured in the legs by bullets. The shooter was detained.

Teenage blockade in Poltava. From social media

On the evening of November 16, a 37-year-old resident of a village in the Sambir district of the Lviv region violated traffic rules while driving an Alfa Romeo. During talk to the police near the car, the driver took out a grenade and detonated it. He received injuries and was taken to the hospital. Local media call him a runaway military man.

On November 24, the cops captured a driver on Pirogovskaya Street of Odessa. A crowd of passersby attempted to block the road and the police car, but the man was eventually taken away in handcuffs. The reason for the detention was not disclosed. The next day, a crowd of youth from the 23rd High Professional School in Poltava blocked a police car with two detained men. One allegedly managed to get out, the second was taken away. There were no official comments on the situation.

From the latest news: on December 24, in the Rivne region, a employee of the Sarny District TRC was beaten with a crowbar by a passerby from a group that was trying prevent the kidnapping of a person from the street. He is in serious condition with a broken rib and contusions of the parenchyma of both lungs. On December 25, in the city of Dnieper, a man stabbed two members of a TRC patrol. The suspect, 42-year-old, was detained, and the knife was seized at the scene. On December 28, a suspect in a penetrating stab wound to a TRC employee in early November was identified and detained in the city of Odessa.

On the other side of the Ukrainian South, annexed by Russia since 2022, there is no forced mobilization from the streets. On November 17, about 20 employees gathered in Melitopol near the Russian prosecutor’s office of the Zaporozhye region. Since they work at the Voinikov & Co agricultural enterprise in Berdyansk, they demanded an end to its seizure and payment of wage arrears. Two months ago, on September 25, the company’s territory was seized by representatives of Partner Union LLC. Since that time, salaries have not been paid, and shareholders have not collected rent for the land.

Rally near the prosecutor’s office. From the relocated Ukrainian administration of Berdiansk

Residents of occupied Mariupol and Berdyansk, who were working on construction at a water pumping station, recorded a video message to the chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia, complaining that they have not been paid their wages for half a year. They claim several dozen people have been affected. “In response to our legitimate demands to pay our wages, Stanislav Vinnitsky threatened physical violence.” At the end of December, the addressee of their statement Alexander Bastrykin demanded from the head of the regional investigative department to report on the investigation

The wave of protests against the rising cost of living, sweeping across the globe for years, has also finally reached our Slobozhanshchina, divided between Ukraine and Russia:

On December 8, displaced persons from border areas gathered for a spontaneous rally outside the Sudzha District Administration building in Kursk. According to activist Vladimir Sinelnikov, 150–200 people arrived, and district chairman Alexei Spiridonov came out to them. The rally was prompted by the governor’s announcement the previous day that monthly payments of 65,000 rubles to people who lost their property due to the Ukrainian invasion will be cancelled starting in January. He claimed the Russian government had decided to reallocate the funds to other needs in order to “give a new boost to the region’s economy.” The protesters brought written appeals from initiative groups to the federal and regional leadership, declaring, “We are being strangled by debt. We are forced to pay mortgages and loans for houses that practically don’t exist, while simultaneously paying our last rent on other people’s apartments.”

With the October 25 (or November 7 according to the new style) approaching, we spoke with another Kharkov resident nicknamed as Red October, who fled from the 122nd Airmobile Battalion of the 81st Airmobile Brigade. “My nickname is more of a reference to my birthday and red leaves. But if someone associates it with the great victory of all workers, that’s also not bad,” he explains. Regarding the state’s countering the avalanche of desertions, the interlocutor tells:

“I went into SZCh [unauthorized leaving of a unit] through the hospital, I had hypertension, they took my blood pressure and took me to the medical unit in Kramatorsk, and from there I took the train home. I’m not hiding, I roam freely around the area. My brigade has so many SZCh that they haven’t even opened a [criminal] case against me. Doesn’t the SBI [State Bureau of Investigation] have any other work? There are already half a million like me. When I first joined the army, no one even knew what is SZCh. Even if it’s not half a million, but 250 thousand, that’s still a lot. No SBI could handle that many cases. Plus, in the units, SZCh cases are handled by ordinary soldiers, usually those who refused [to fight] or wounded. And when they hand over all the cases to the SBI, almost all of them are filled with mistakes, and the SBI returns them to the unit, while the soldiers who handled them have already been transferred, and other soldiers are doing the same. A Sisyphean task. I was mobilized in the summer of 2023, and in the summer of 2024, I went into SZCh, primarily because they wouldn’t give me leave. A month before my SZCh, a guy who had been fighting from the very beginning went out and ran away from training to become an FPV drone operator. They didn’t catch him. Incidentally, I was also an FPV operator. My buddy, who lives in Ternopil, even went over the mountains to Romania after SZCh. I gave the army a chance, a whole year, went to combat [missions], did everything conscientiously, and put up with all the injustice, and now I believe such an army shouldn’t exist.”

Overall, the fugitive drone operator is skeptical about the state’s ability to stop this flow. He continues basing on the own experience:

“I don’t quite understand how drones can be used for these purposes [to combat soldiers’ flee]. And how can they help if the person has already left the front line and is moving away from the front? We don’t have enough drones to properly carry out combat missions. A drone can spot someone fleeing their position. But there’s a problem: that person is holding an automatic rifle, four magazines, and at least a couple of grenades. If they don’t have all that, then there’s no point in bringing them back. But from what I’ve seen, people who abandon the front line aren’t afraid of anything anymore. Personally, when I refused to serve as an infantryman a second time, I said no one would force me to go back; they could shoot me right away, so why bother? And after that, they transferred me to drone operators. There were hundreds of people like me in the battalion; they didn’t leave right after their first combat missions, and command is trying to persuade them to take up other roles, like mortar, driver, mounted anti-tank grenade launcher, or drones, or, at worst, they transfer them.”

As he added us some later:

“At the training ground is worse than in the TRC, only if you resist learning with the horns, and when it comes to shooting, all the instructors become like silk. As far as I understand, dying in training isn’t considered heroic, and there won’t be any payment.”

October 2025 set a new record for unauthorized leaving a military unit and desertion: 21,602 such cases officially, compared to 17,000-18,000 per month during the summer and with around 30,000 mobilized personnel per month. And no one knows yet how many others left their bank cards for their commanders so they could receive money for them and not report them missing. That means, in the time it takes you to send a donation to the Assembly, several more people could have shed their uniforms bearing the fork-shaped slave brand. Since November, statistics on SZCh, desertion, and other crimes against the rules of military service have been classified by the Office of the Prosecutor General. And all this despite the fact that the Armed Forces’ training centers are now like a prison: swarming with sentries, guards with night vision goggles, drones with thermal imagers, ditches, rapid response teams, and so on. Even from a temporary deployment point or a combat line, it can be easier to escape. This was reported to us, in particular, by Irina from Kharkov, whose husband was captured while attempting to go through the mountains to Romania and ended up at the 233rd Combined Arms Training Grounds near Rivne — the same place where, in early summer, 27-year-old Andriy Rybak from Khmelnytsky was beaten to death, according to his parents, for attempted escape.

On December 25, the Ukrainian media was shocked by a video filmed by Russian soldiers in the captured battalion command post of the 106th Territorial Defense Brigade in Huliaipole, Nestor Makhno’s homeland in the Zaporozhye region. The reasons for this were explained yesterday by journalist and military veteran Volodymyr Boiko on his social media: “The territorial defense battalions are probably the most exhausted and war-torn units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. But their combat capability primarily determines how far the enemy will advance deep into Ukraine. Because only the infantry holds the territory. And that is why the combat losses of the Territorial Defense, the Territorial Defense staffing on a residual basis, and mass desertion of the infantry are three components of Ukraine’s defeat in the war with Russia. […] There was simply no one to defend [that battalion command post]. And a few hours later, 71 servicemen from the 102nd Brigade also deserted: 45 from Sofiyevka and 26 from Huliaipole. Two days later, another 23 servicemen “went on skis”. The reason is no secret: the 102nd Brigade has long been “erased” and with such a shortage of personnel is unable to carry out combat missions. A week before the mass desertion, it was decided to finally withdraw this brigade from the combat zone to restore combat readiness — to give people a rest and at least some replenishment. But due to the catastrophic situation at the front, a new order was received before December 18: no rest, everyone was sent back to their positions. When the fighters found out about this, they simply got in their cars and drove home.”

Along with this, we discovered a real concentration camp for recruits this month near the village of Malinovka of the Kharkov region: the former Figurovka recreation base. According to a Kharkov stormtrooper who fled to Romania after fighting since 2015 and a 2-year prison term in 2023 for SZCh, there is no other training ground like it — it’s hell on earth, where the guards kill those who tries to run away. He claims there are graves in the forest of those who tried unsuccessfully to escape.

Another guy from Kharkov, named Sergei, was shot in a leg with rubber bullets at the end of summer during a clash with border guards while being detained right near the border line with Romania. “My brother was grabbed by 5 people right at the gas station and dragged to the TRC. And now he’s been in the hospital for a year now, they’re collecting into a whole. His legs were severely torn up; he fought in Kursk last year, and has been in Germany since the summer for rehabilitation. So I knew exactly what awaited me. I won’t give up. And I’ll be free,” he told us on October 16, adding that he had escaped from the training center in the Lviv region a week earlier and was packing his backpack for another trip to Romania using recommendations from our site. He received temporary protection there a month ago. On December 4, Sergei told us that he met his son in Germany that day and was applying for new protection.

Sergei’s bullet wounds. Received from him

And his new mountain expedition, crowned with success. Also sent by him

Another amazing story of coming out was shared with us by Mikhail from Gorlovka. In 2012, he was close to anarchism, attended the May Day demonstrations of the Revolutionary Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists (RCAS) in Donetsk, and helped distribute their leaflets in his city, without being a member himself. In 2014, he left for Odessa, where he lived and worked as an IT specialist for all those years. That summer, a Shahed drone hit the building where he lived, damaging it and killing several residents. He moved to another apartment, and soon after, he was busified on the street. At the TRC, Mikhail demanded a medical examination, but they simply wrote that he was healthy and fit for service. He was taken to a village in the region of Nikolaev where such recruits are held. But they were not heavily guarded there, so he was able to escape, and then was smuggled out by a man for 4,000 euros. The same man, for 10,000 euros, brought Mikhail to the Transcarpathian region, from where our reader crossed the border and ended up in Slovakia. “There’s a special story about how this escape was organized. I called my parents, who live in Gorlovka. (My father was mobilized in 2022 and served in the DPR units for over a year, then was discharged due to his age. Incidentally, he also served in the Kharkov region.) But he wouldn’t have been discharged if not for my mother’s active spam (a school teacher—a profession that involves regular brainwashing) to various agencies with complaints and calls to officials. My parents contacted their friends living in France, and they, through their connections, found this man. The man himself served in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and after being discharged, he went into this business. I rented a place from my online acquaintance who’s currently working in Saudi Arabia. He’s a chemist by education. By the way, this acquaintance is a Jucheist in his views. He was educated in Moscow. He’s a Ukrainian from Moldova.” Thus, after escaping, Mikhail lives in Moldova. You can read more details from him at the link in Russian.

Our anarchist readers from the EU countries recently launched a volunteer project Solidarity is the Way to support those who successfully came out in Romania. Those in need are offered free food, clothing, medicine, transportation, temporary accommodation, and legal advice. Two magpies helping each other build nests, according to the author, symbolize this mutual aid

Generally, our native Kharkov is becoming a center of individual terror, like Odessa and Bialystok in the revolutionary 1905. That summer, one of the Novobavarsky District TRC clients burned down their building from the inside, while another one stabbed at once four mobilizers on the street. On the morning of October 24, another young man from Kharkov committed an explosive mass murder in Ovruch of the Zhytomyr region while trying to reach Belarus. In fact, such acts change nothing and after a few days everyone forgets about them.

The local anti-mobilization riots that took place this year also led to nothing even where they broke out. And even in feet voting against the war, people have to rely more on themselves and their closest friends than on relevant activists. On December 9, YouTube deleted the approximately 140,000-subscriber “Alex 18-60” channel, which featured border-crossing video stories from members of the UFM Telegram group, helping so many of His Green Majesty’s subjects not to die for his eternal reign. The admins are currently developing a new channel. All videos are in reserve.

On the other side of the front, the human rights project “Go by the Forest,” which helped Russians avoid war, has not seen a rapid increase in activity in the army for a long time. According to their Telegram channel, while the number of deserters seeking assistance increased tenfold from January 2023 to January 2024 (they helped a total of 2,086 such people), from the project’s inception until December 1, 2025, they provided assistance to 2,652 deserters. In percentage terms, the growth has also almost stopped: deserters accounted for 8.8% of requests in 2023, 19% in 2024, and 22% in June 2025. This is just a drop in the ocean of tens of thousands of runaway Russian military personnel — most prefer not to engage with this organization. Perhaps due to its maximally one-sided anti-war stance: it completely ignores the existence of draft dodgers and deserters in Ukraine, as well as the criminal nature of the border guard service and territorial recruitment centers, while proudly declaring its cooperation with outright bullhorns of Western special services like Radio Liberty or The Insider. It would seem like an ideal opportunity for Russian anarchists to supplant liberals in the anti-militarist arena. However we know nothing about any of their activities on decaying the army from within.

Additionally, in the fall, Ukrainian underground author Elvenor Hoxley released his song Fragging with the following words: “I know one formula, it came to us from Vietnam – I’ll throw a grenade quickly, no one will have time to call mum!” Our news outlet also presented No Escape — the online map of border detentions for planning of safe routes by refugees — in a form of the interview with its developer Dima Photographer.

At this point, our autumn forecast of the worst-case scenario for Ukraine is being confirmed: some heavy military fail opens the way to some kind of compromise, just as the severe military defeats in Donbass of 2014 and 2015 paved the way for the previous peace agreements in Minsk. To ensure that a new ceasefire does not lead to the preservation and strengthening of the Maidan-born right-wing regime, it is necessary to revive the historical memory of the working class about the revolutionary anti-war legacy of 1917, as well as to elaborate its horizontal cooperation, both when it comes to social protests against the hunting down of men by the state on the streets and in leaving of the fenced prison called a “country of freedom and democracy.”

What can we wish for our free-thinking readers in 2025? All the same as last year and the year before. At the very least, please continue to stay with the Assembly. (We do not even ask Ukrainian bank card holders for money; it’s better to spend it on food, just visit our website from time to time. While financial support from the foreign public is vital for us, especially considering that Ukraine, even if the war ends, will try to the last possible moment not to lift the ban on men leaving the country.) For those planning to leave warring countries, we wish you success and to settle in your new place. For those who do not want to leave Ukraine or Russia, we wish you as little contact with the state gang as possible and the opportunity to become as self-sufficient as possible, up to creating autonomous settlements in the rural hinterlands. And, of course, help people and animals in need, stay healthy, develop yourself, and study anarchist communism. Perhaps this will come in handy sooner than you think.

From an article by AMI – https://antimilitarismus.noblogs.org/post/2025/11/23/report-from-a-discussion-on-the-situation-of-deserters-and-practical-solidarity/

What is the situation of proletarians who are listed in official documents as men and Ukrainian citizens? Generally speaking, they are under attack from several different sides. On the one hand, there is the deadly invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army. On the other, they are forcibly mobilized by the Ukrainian army and sent to the front, from where they return traumatized, maimed, or dead. Those who evade mobilization or desert are tortured, persecuted, and stigmatized. Many have also died trying to illegally cross the Ukrainian border, which the Ukrainian regime keeps tightly closed. Ladyslav was lucky to survive. He fled Ukraine through the Romanian mountains. His situation has improved, but new threats and attacks continue to emerge. Zelensky’s government is pushing through repressive laws that will target deserters and opponents of mobilization living in European Union countries. “The regime aims to bring back as many cannon fodder as possible from the EU and will do absolutely everything to achieve this goal,” says Vladyslav. In October 2025, we met with him in an Austrian city to hear about the problems deserters face, and we discussed how to defend against them.

Before we even started the interview, it turned out that sometimes the train journey itself can be a problem, even if you buy a ticket. Vladyslav’s journey became increasingly complicated, and the day before the event, he even had to spend the night in a completely different city than planned. However, Vladyslav reacted to the long series of complications with complete calm: “I almost died when I ran for eight days through the Romanian mountains in winter to escape the army and the war. Since then, nothing has fazed me.” In other situations, too, our guest proved to be truly hardened by life experience. He didn’t stress about things that would stress others and calmly accepted organizational complications that left our crew feeling less than calm.

Upon arrival, Vladyslav first spoke to our circle of friends about why he fled and what reactions he encountered from the police, army, doctors, and border guards. The horror was illustrated by photos showing the injuries he had suffered.

Then the conversation turned to four main topics:

• First, what repressive methods the Ukrainian state uses to combat desertion and force people to go to the front.
• Second, how it is possible to avoid forced mobilization or flee to one of the countries of the European Union.
• Third, what is the status of refugee men in European Union countries?
• Fourth, what needs to be changed so that refugees who are already in the EU can obtain the best possible status that will “guarantee” that they will not be persecuted or sent back to Ukraine, either during or after the war?

In the ensuing discussion, most attention was paid to the fourth topic. Vladyslav repeatedly mentioned that EU authorities refuse to grant asylum to deserters and other male refugees from Ukraine. They are only automatically granted temporary residence permits. This is disadvantageous for them not only in terms of what they are (not) entitled to in the host country. The problem is also that without asylum status, refugees are at greater risk of being sent back to Ukraine, official harassment, persecution, or criminal prosecution. There was agreement in the discussion that it is first necessary to map the situation and gather relevant information, which will then be published in various languages. Subsequently, it will be possible to organize activities that will put pressure on the relevant institutions to improve the situation of refugees. Specifically, this should mean, for example, ensuring that individuals do not have to prove individually when applying for asylum that they are in mortal danger from the Ukrainian state and its army. Every deserter or man fleeing mobilization is, by definition, in such a dangerous position. This conclusion can be made at a general level, without exception. Our partial goal is to get officials to accept this and automatically grant asylum status to every such person, with appropriate protection from threats from the Ukrainian state, army, courts, etc. However, we are under no illusions: We know that self-defense must primarily come from autonomous structures and activities organized by the working class outside the state and in opposition to states.

We are now continuing the discussion on how to achieve the above and are already taking practical steps. In addition, we also want to develop other related topics from the following list in the future:

• 1. Documentary and legal support for deserters and refugees

– How to collect and verify documents confirming a person’s identity and status in order to protect them from forced mobilization.

– Practical advice on using EU laws on the protection of refugees and internally displaced persons.

– Support in submitting requests to archives, obtaining birth certificates, death certificates, and citizenship documents.

• 2. OSINT and information security for deserters and refugees

– How to safely collect and store information about repressive measures taken by the state without the risk of exposure.

– Methods of digital anonymity, minimizing surveillance by special services.

– Tools for verifying the reliability of sources of information about military operations and mobilization.

• 3. Practical protection and escape logistics

– Advice on safe border crossing, orientation, hiding places, and risk minimization.

– The role of small communities and solidarity networks in supporting people hiding from mobilization.

– Safe transport of pets and psychological support during escape.

• 4. Studying documentation on war and repression.

– How to analyze and document cases of human rights violations and war crimes.

– Creating archives and files that can be used for defense and advocacy.

– The interconnection between human rights protection activities and anarchist practices of solidarity.

• 5. Education and communication strategies

– How to convey information about repressive laws and the risks of mobilization to interested parties.

– Methods for teaching safe behavior without involving the state or bureaucracy.

– Organizing seminars, lectures, and publications to expand anarchist solidarity networks.

• 6. The practice of revolutionary defeatism

– How to oppose imperialist war aggression without defending bourgeois democracy, nationalism, and the state.

– What did revolutionary defeatism mean in past wars, and what can it mean today.

Original Article by Anti Militarist Iniative (AMI) – https://antimilitarismus.noblogs.org/post/2025/08/27/how-many-forcibly-mobilized-people-will-your-drones-help-kill

The mainstream media publishes articles about how terribly the Russian army treats deserters. “Chained to trees, locked in metal tanks, or dragged behind off-road vehicles—this is the reality for Russian soldiers who refused to fight in Ukraine,” they note. (1)

As usual, there is not much written about the equally horrific massacres of Ukrainian deserters. One thing is certain, however. The combat capability of both armies is partly based on violent mobilization and torture techniques designed to discourage desertion and force even those who do not want to go to the front to do so. While thousands of soldiers are trying to desert, others are being sent to the front against their will, hoping to live to see another day. That is, unless a “suicide” drone armed with explosives happens to fly into their heads. On the internet, we can see videos of such drones belonging to the Ukrainian army massacring Russian soldiers on motorcycles, in trenches, on roads, in forests, plains, and elsewhere. (2)

In most cases, footage of these events is accompanied by articles that celebrate them and cynically dehumanize the victims. They never ask who these people are or how they ended up in a place where they were mercilessly killed. It is impossible not to notice that even the anti-fascist and “anarchist” movement is organizing collections for drones for the Ukrainian army. And because — like the pro-Western mainstream — this “radical left” environment also presents the war as a defensive action against occupiers, it probably doesn’t worry too much about the fact that its drones may well be massacring Russian soldiers who were forced to the front under threat of punishment. In the logic of a “defensive war,” every Russian soldier on the front line is a Putinist and an occupier. (3) Thousands of deserters and forcibly mobilized soldiers are nothing to the supporters of this logic and can be mercilessly eliminated. (4) But what such an approach has to do with the declared struggle for freedom and justice is something that the proponents of this line will not explain to us. After all, most of them do not have to face fire on either side of the war line. They simply send a financial contribution from time to time from the safe haven of the pampered petty bourgeoisie (or their descendants) and then write an ideological shitstorm full of vague phrases about the struggle for freedom and self-determination of the Ukrainian people.

Footage of terror in the eyes shortly before the drone exploded

In contrast, soldiers on both the Ukrainian and Russian fronts are largely proletarians who do not have access to these privileges. Yes, they are proletarians, because the proletariat has not ceased to exist just because some individuals have decided to remove this word from their vocabulary. The truth is that many proletarians are on the front lines involuntarily and under duress (5). Very few have the means or documents to flee abroad. Many live in illegality: they avoid banks, leave big cities, hide in forests. If anything makes sense from an anarchist perspective, it is to provide them with support, not to build drones that will massacre them or track them down so that someone else can massacre them.(6)

Solidarity with deserters and those forcibly mobilized!
Resistance to those who build machines for their killing!
Class solidarity against the murderous logic of war!

NOTES AND SOURCES:

(1)
Ruští dezertéři jsou brutálně mučeni. Svědectví přináší CNN | Newstream

(2) For example, here
https://cnn.iprima.cz/ukrajinska-droni-elita-v-akci-madarovi-ptaci-vyzobali-rusy-na-motocyklech-ti-zkaze-neujeli-479487
https://cnn.iprima.cz/zabery-ukrajinske-likvidace-okupantu-ruskeho-vojaka-zachranila-lopatka-467046
https://cnn.iprima.cz/zabery-hruzy-v-ocich-kratce-pred-vybuchem-ukrajinske-drony-likviduji-ruske-okupanty-475517

Also here:
https://www.msn.com/cs-cz/zpravy/other/ukrajinsk%C3%A9-drony-ude%C5%99ily-na-rusk%C3%A9-voj%C3%A1ky-v-lese/vi-AA1JzxmT

What do we see in this video? A man in uniform with a backpack is walking through the forest when suddenly he is shot by a drone. To the viewer, it is presented as a sensational video of how Ukraine’s defenders stopped the occupier. However, it is not at all clear from the video who he was, why he was there, and whether he wanted to be there at all or was forced there by officers under threat of punishment. He is dead, and no one will ask him.

(3) Reality speaks for itself. Forced mobilization and high desertion rates in the Russian army prove that not every soldier on the front line is a Putin supporter. On the contrary, many are victims of Putinism, just like those who are being shelled in Ukrainian cities. https://antimilitarismus.noblogs.org/post/2025/02/04/over-russian-18000-soldiers-desert/

(4) The Solidrones initiative, which reportedly manufactures “drones for anti-authoritarian fighters in Ukraine,” states: “Defenders consume tens of thousands of unmanned aerial vehicles every month, because a precise drone strike can take out a significantly more expensive tank and cripple the occupiers’ advance.” https://www.afed.cz/text/8191/solidrones

There is no doubt that they operate drones, which are weapons designed for destruction and killing. But even if someone wanted to argue that they can also use supply or reconnaissance drones, it is important to clarify one thing. Even in such cases, drones serve as a means of support for senseless killing. There is no significant difference between a forcibly mobilized soldier being shot down directly by a drone and being tracked down with the help of a drone and then killed by infantry (often also supplied by drones), artillery, or the air force.

A number of other questions are also relevant.

Can the so-called “anti-authoritarians” who manufacture or operate drones decide how and against whom they will be deployed? That might be conceivable in the case of guerrilla warfare organized autonomously outside the state and against the state. However, this is not the case with these people, who, as they themselves acknowledge, are integrated into the official state army of Ukraine. It is therefore the army authorities who determine how the drones will be used by the “anti-authoritarians,” and there can be no question of autonomy of action. What will these “anti-authoritarians” do when their officers next order them to use drones to track down deserters attempting to escape? After all, this is one of the agenda items of the Ukrainian army, which they voluntarily serve.

(5) According to statements by surviving Russian soldiers, they were not allowed to evacuate because a blocking unit guarding them from behind would not let them leave their positions on the front line and would shoot if they attempted to retreat. Forcing soldiers to advance may therefore be less risky in some cases than retreating and deserting. This cruel tactic was used by the army during the Stalin era, and today the Russian army is returning to this practice.

(6) The forcibly mobilisation and subsequent killing by drones is also well known to the population in Ukraine. However, we do not know of a single case where the production of drones by the Russian army has been financed with money by so-called anti-authoritarians or anarchists. In any case, we must condemn the forcibly mobilisation and murderous use of drones against the working class, whether these practices are used by the Ukrainian, Russian or any other state army.

From Roosevelt and Stalin’s “Big Two” to Putin and Trump’s ‘Odd Couple’, history might not be repeating itself, but it does feel like it’s having a laugh at our expense.

What happened in Alaska felt less like the deliberations from an encounter between two warring figureheads, and more the choreographed delivery of a joint position statement long held and worked out.

A big reveal of the commonality between capitalism’s war mongers usually lost in the facade of rival narratives.  As such, an actual sneak peek behind the veil. 

Is it conceivable that Trump is imagining an axis with Putin ultimately against China?  Disregarding Europe, already treated as a backwater on the one hand and aligning their own strategic objectives on the other, may well be the best last-ditch superpower throw of the dice for Russia and the necessary counterweight the US needs to fully pivot East.

Together, they meet on a strategic level over their relationships to Europe, and Putin cannot regain the central Asian ‘Stans against Chinese opposition without US support. 

Similarly, detaching Russia from its Chinese chaperone leaves the latter surrounded and alone to face the US in the Pacific.  In this region and potential future conflict theatre, the US has just concluded its biggest war game since the cold war, it involving hundreds of aircraft and 50 locations thousands of miles apart.

The former ‘partnership’ of Europe has seen the writing on the wall.  It has not been idle, though possibly futile, in its efforts to respond.

It has been buying time telling Trump what he needs to hear.  While talk of increased defence spending and rearmament might look like dancing to the US tune, they are more likely a gallop towards an attempt at defence autonomy in the anticipation of the abandonment that is their likely fate.  The realities of the global power competition they’re about to confront alone.

Back to the future?  “Thank God for the French army!”, Churchill said in 1933.  History tells us we are really in trouble when the Anglo-French entente is the answer to a crisis!

Yet here we are again.  Prime Minister Starmer and President Macron held in early July what was effectively billed as a nuclear summit.   They declared a mutual combining of their nuclear capacities against unspecified yet forthcoming, “extreme threats”. 

French President Macron declared this both, “.. a message to our partners, and our adversaries”.  This begging the question: is an Anglo-French nuclear deterrent a salvation or does it bring us closer to war?

If a pragmatic alliance against populism and multi-polarism could find its own slogan of provocative militancy, it might be:

What do we want?  Pragmatism! When do we want it?  Within an appropriate timescale when circumstances are optimally aligned!

Now maybe, the circumstances are urgently aligning for Starmer and Macron.  A patriotic toast in the last chance saloon of Europe making its last mark as a global defining entity.

Each successive conflict seems to dwarf the other in horror.  From Ukraine to Gaza, from Gaza to Sudan; to name only a few.  Whilst they all risk becoming sidelined footnotes on the march to a superpower reckoning.  The horizon of which could be accelerating towards us. 

There will be no history nor analysis after that.  Tragically, given all the potential we have as a species, here will exist, just the ashes of tyrannical hubris.

Whatever our analysis or speculation, we are revolutionaries not journalists.  It is not our role to idly conjecture or to excite the debate.  Our purpose here is to emphasise that whatever the twists and turns may appear to be, no matter how unlikely, the trajectory remains the same.

Capitalism and war are two wheels of the same bike driving inexorably towards global destruction in a compulsive competition for power and resources.  Its detail becomes secondary to the primacy of our solution: Class war!

The focus for their rivaling attentions may chop and change.  Ours, however, remains the same – them and this existing nightmare of a socio-economic system!  Them, the exploiting capitalist class who run the economies and nations in their interests and at our expense.  The system that has no interests except profit, and which exploits and oppresses us to this end.  

We are the world’s producers, the global working class. Without frontiers and beyond borders, we are used as the cannon fodder of their wars of exploitation and domination.  Without us, all wealth and our world, would not exist.  Without them as a ruling class – war, famine, environmental degradation, exploitation and oppression will cease to exist.

Our choice and our task is a fore gone conclusion.  It is also in reality no choice at all. Fight for survival but also for the creation of a truly human community beyond exploitation and destruction.

Article by Dreyfus

Paradigm Lost?

Has everything suddenly changed?  How can the pot we were watching so intensely suddenly seem to be boiling? Aren’t such turnarounds, back stabbings, treasons and betrayals usually carried in behind our backs, closed doors or dead of night?  Is such change too unbelievable to be true?  Yes, of course it is.  Everything changes but capitalism!

Imperialism’s ‘great game’ never went away, it briefly froze in the headlights of the Cold War.  What has changed is the 80-year consensus since the last great world war (2) on how business is done.

Since the end of the Cold War the pieces on the chess board of the power-bloc competition have moved slowly but inexorably towards this point – where some piece or other has to fall to progress towards the end game.

Republican Elephant goes to town…

Trump is the backlash to 40 years of neoliberal economic experimentation.  The acceleration and integration of forces of production and distribution that temporarily masked capitalisms drive to hegemonic monopoly.  Far from receding, the danger of war has just increased exponentially.

The previous way of doing things aka a ‘world order’ (sovereignty, alliances, mutual agreement and international standards etc) has paradoxically left the ‘mono-polar’ world’s only truly ‘superpower’ constrained against its best interests – a ruthless unfettered challenge to its only true rival, an ascendent China in the east. 

What we are seeing is not about Ukraine, Russia or for that matter, Europe.  It is about the pacific frontline between rival organisers of capital.  The writing has been on the wall since the post Reagan era when the US abandoned the idea of a military strategy based on a simultaneous conflict on two continental fronts.  Slowly but surely the centre of gravity has been shifting. 

Every US administration has signaled this for a generation or more.  Trump has had both the momentum and audacity to move the dial.  His position on Ukraine and Russia is neither appeasement nor surrender, it is a strategic realignment. 

While Europe has expected the US to engage in the western hemisphere in time of threat, the US could not count on such reciprocation in the east, even if Europe were able – which it isn’t.  And it is increasingly clear that the western focus is not US capital’s prime concern.

Trump could have pulled a blinder.  Hiding behind the façade of his own hyperbole he could be on the verge of decoupling Russia from China, silencing the Western Front and force Europe to pay.  Sentiment and semantics have no role in this ruthless tour-de-force of realpolitik.

Starmer Chameleon..

To see the cringeworthy homage paid by the Kings socialist emissary Sir Kier at Trumps Republican court was like watching Idi Amin being celebrated as the ‘last king of Scotland’, while the following public castigation of Zelensky added to the theatre with his refusal to sign up to his tormentor’s extortion. 

The outcome, however, is possibly cast. This fortuitous yet diversionary chapter from the US point of view, war in Europe, will close with preparation for the conflagration to come with China the next bloody project.

A European volte-face changes little.  An armed peace is as austerity driving as war and the threat remains.  Besides, the moving of a global battlefront in the era of nuclear warheads and ICBMs is no more significant than a dinosaur ducking to avoid a meteorite.

In My Name..

For our class, everywhere and without frontiers, the challenges and tasks remain the same.  Capitalisms existential threat – through war most immediately or climate catastrophe should that fail requires the same unyielding response.  Fight it where we find it – on the ‘home front’. 

If global power politics feels complex, our daily encounter with its consequences is very familiar! Austerity; cuts to Health and Social Services; food banks, travel costs that keep us geographically confined; poor housing that is killing us; exploitation through rent, low wages, inflation and debt.  This is what they call peace!

Fighting this peace is our daily struggle.  This Class War, at first for bread and then to live is by its nature a fight against their wars!  If we won’t let them kill us at home, we can stop them killing us, or those like us, abroad.  Resistance begins at home.  It grows with a conversation.  It spreads through discussions and shows itself in actions and solidarity.

The drive to war was never more a European affair than the Class Struggle.  The opposition to war globally, everywhere is our Class War!

Article by Dreyfus

“The war massacre in Ukraine continues, affecting populations on both sides of the war line. While Putin’s army bombs Ukrainian cities, the Ukrainian government has turned them into prisons for a significant portion of the local population. People are being maimed, imprisoned, raped and murdered as a result of the actions of the rulers in the Kremlin and Kiev. Let’s not look away. Let’s support those who are affected.

War and nationalist propaganda are deceiving and manipulating us, while at the same time obscuring important facts. Among other things, for example, the fact that the State borders in Ukraine are closed to men of conscription age. They are guarded by the army, which sends men to prison, shoots them and drowns them in the river when they try to cross the border to safe place. Army gunmen also chase men in the streets to drag them to the front and use them as “cannon fodder”. Yes, this is the same Ukrainian army that is praised by many as if it was a noble form of liberation institution. If we look to Russia, we can see a similarly disturbing reality. For the slightest protest against the war, people end up in prison; forced mobilization has obliged many proletarians to flee or go into hiding. Deserters, saboteurs and conscientious objectors are massacred, judged and imprisoned in Russia, as well as in the Ukraine.

We do not care how the bourgeoisie justifies this aggression against the working class in Russia and Ukraine. It is necessary not only to condemn and criticize it, but also to give practical support to those who are concerned, i.e. deserters, rebels, saboteurs, refugees, those who avoid forced conscription to the front and many others. It is necessary to stand consistently against Putin’s aggressors, as well as against aggressors acting at the instigation of the Ukrainian Government.

What can we do, we who currently live outside the war zone? At the very least, we can share resources with those who desperately need them. The Anti-Militarist Initiative (AMI) is therefore launching a public fundraising campaign starting the 1 February 2025. The money raised will support proletarians from Russia and Ukraine who are trying to avoid mobilization, who have deserted, who face repression or are trying to save their lives by fleeing a war zone.

How to Support the Fundraising?

1) You can deposit money into the account.

Payment details:

“IBAN: CZ1955000000001024164477
Account holder: Historický spolek Zádruha, z.s.
Bank: Raiffeisenbank
bank code: 5500
Swift code: RZBCCZPP

2) It is also possible to arrange to hand over the money in person in cash.

3) Fundraising gigs, solidarity parties and dinners, etc. are welcome.

4) Sharing information about the fundraiser is an important part of the fundraiser. It can be translated into different languages, and sharing a flyer or poster, publishing the appeal on websites, social networks, magazines etc. is also welcome.

5) We plan to successively publish statements from collectives and individuals who have supported the fundraising. They will explain their motivations and reflections on anti-war resistance. Write your own contribution.

Fundraising for deserters and war refugees

The following interview was carried out by comrades from the Československé anarchistické sdružení – CAS a Czech Internationalist Anarchist Group.

1)Please introduce yourself briefly to the readers of our magazine. Are you from Ukraine, where you were born and spent your youth?

Hi. My name is Vadym Yakovlev, I’m Ukrainian queer writer and journalist and I’m against the war and nationalism. I was born in Odesa, the largest southern multicultural city in Ukraine, a few months before the collapse of the USSR. My mother is Ukrainian and my father is Russian. Their fathers were military. My father worked in a factory. With the collapse of the USSR, the factory was closed, and my father lost his job. It affected my family and my childhood. I grew up in Odesa, but one year before I escaped Ukraine I was living in Lviv, the biggest city of the Western part of Ukraine. At home my relatives spoke Russian and Ukrainian, so I never focused on issues such as national identity. My family was an unhappy international family that lost a lot with the collapse of state communism in Ukraine. I guess all of that influenced me a lot in my search of my true political views and my desire to do something that can have influence on society.

2)You left Ukraine, what led you to this decision?

On the one hand, I could no longer work in Ukraine because of my political beliefs. The Ukrainian intelligentsia, journalists and artists as a community with the beginning of the war decided to become privileged elite propagandists in the service of the state. I didn’t want to be a propagandist, so I lost the opportunity to publish my articles. And if you publicly express in Ukraine the views I have, authorities can put you in the jail. On the other hand, of course due to my views, I didn’t want to go to war on the frontline. That’s why I escaped.

3)What is your attitude towards war and antimilitarism?

Much of my work in Ukraine was related to my anti-patriotic beliefs. My articles and participation in art projects were very often devoted to criticism of Ukrainian patriotism, Ukrainian nationalism and the mainstream privileged “pro-Western” and pro-war civil and cultural Ukrainian elite. I have always been interested in anti-war art and anti-war activism. Since 2022, I had to start doing this, even at the cost of losing the opportunity to stay and work in my native country and the loss of close friends who abandoned me because of my beliefs.

4)The war in Ukraine changed a lot of things. Are you in touch with your friends back home? What are their attitudes towards the war? How do they live

As I said in answer to the previous question, I lost most of my friends from the privileged art scene and the journalist-activist community. Almost all of them became propagandists, receiving support from the state and Western foundations. I also lost touch with the majority of the Ukrainian leftists, who are supporting militarism, nationalism and NATO. This type of leftists is supporting by the state and Western foundations too. But I’m still in touch with my friends, who are don’t work with the state and have nothing to do with privilaged classes. They support me and my anti-war views. A lot of them, if they are men, are living an awful life now, cause they have to hide all the time at their apartments in the fear of getting outside. Ukrainian army is kidnapping people from the street and sending them on the frontline without their permission. And majority of people with man gender marker in the documents are not allowed by the law to left the country.

5)Have many people, including anarchists joined the army and left antimilitarism? And not much is known about them? Maybe they are afraid. Do they exist? Are you in contact with them?

Regarding anti-war anarchists in Ukraine, we have anti-war collective called Assembly. They are from Kharkiv and have their own website where they are publishing anti-war and anti-conscription texts. This group of anarchists is anonymous and they hide the names of their team members. This is the only way to conduct any anti-war activity in Ukraine. There was only one Ukrainian organization that did not hide the names of its members and openly spoke out against the war – Ukrainian Pacifist Movement. The Security Service of Ukraine accused them of support of Russia and sent its leader to court. After that, the organization significantly softened its public position, fearing prison. Many Ukrainian leftists sided with the war, it seems to me, because of conformity. They are afraid to express their real position or simply don’t even have one, as it seems to me, and just are following mainstream trend. But these are just my assumptions. In Ukraine, as an authoritarian militaristic country, it is extremely unsafe to be against war.

6)What about Ukrainians in exile? Are they doing any anti-war activities? Are they organizing in workplaces?

Lately, many Ukrainian anti-war initiatives have appeared abroad. For example, Ukrainians are now organizing demonstrations against mobilization and human rights violations in Ukraine. These demonstrations are taking place in Germany, Italy, and France. Often, these actions are organized by Ukrainian leftists who have nothing to do with the pro-war Ukrainian left mainstream such as the so-called “Ukrainian anti-authoritarians” or Solidarity Collectives. All these groups of anti-war Ukrainian leftists are not financed by anyone, they are a personal initiative of convinced and active young people. There will be more of these actions, and I am in active communication with the organizers and members of this initiatives, this is very inspiring! In addition, in the West there are a certain number of Ukrainian scientists and artists who are against the war and who are constantly being marginalized and silenced here in the West.  But we have all been silenced for too long, our voices have been erased for too long, and now we are increasingly trying to build horizontal connections at various levels, organizing an anti-war front here abroad against the war and the propagandists. There are many more of us than even we think.

7)The media is silent about the forced mobilization of the Ukrainian government. Rarely does information about deserters leak out? What can you tell us about it?

Nobody knows the exact number of deserters from the Ukrainian side, but according to official and unofficial statistics, there are about 150-200 thousand people! These are huge numbers. The official Ukrainian media are controlled by the state or the Security Service of Ukraine. Ukrainians mainly consume information from anonymous news channels on Telegram or TikTok. It is there that videos of violence against civilians by the Ukrainian army are constantly published. These videos, full of terrible scenes and evidence of human rights violations, do not make it into the official media. The Ukrainian authorities are constantly trying to find the authors of anonymous Telegram channels who criticize the actions of the Ukrainian army or advocate for peace, and put them in prison. Sometimes the authorities succeed. The Ukrainian government, police and the Security Service of Ukraine do not hesitate to use any methods to silence alternative voices. For example, the police recently arrested the mother of a blogger who is abroad and speaks out against forced mobilization, for publishing his post! There are also unofficial ways to shut up dissenters. I remember one teenager who had his own channel on Telegram, where he criticized Ukrainian nationalism and mobilization. He identified himself as an anarchist. Fascists came to his home for a “conversation”, after which he publicly renounced his beliefs. But the pro-war Ukrainian leftists, who are propagandists and accomplices of all these crimes against Ukrainians, will never tell you about such things.

8)Do you have acquaintances who have deserted or evaded the draft? How can we in Czechoslovakia help them?

I know people who have illegally fled the country, and I have many acquaintances and friends in Ukraine who are hiding from the army and conscription. Perhaps, over time, it will be necessary to create initiatives to help such people within the framework of anti-war Ukrainian movements abroad, which have only just begun to emerge. If such initiatives appear, I hope that there will be people in the Czech Republic and Slovakia who will want to help these Ukrainians.

9)What message would you give to Ukrainian and Russian workers at home and abroad?

The only thing I want to convey to those who are not part of the privileged classes (and this is not only the proletariat), regardless of their nationality and location: never trust those who build their happiness on your exploitation, marginalisation and systemic discrimination, and especially do not be fools and do not participate in their wars, it is simply stupid!

10)Thank you for the interview and if you have anything else to say, we would be happy to.

Thank you, comrade, for interviewing me.

Please see my Facebook page for more: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100013291847024

Martin (CAS)