Renee Nicole Good’s State murder by US Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (ICE), and its slanderous cover up, show what they would really like to do to if they could get away with it. In fact, what they would do in any case if push came to shove.
In Minneapolis, the city of the George Floyd’s police murder in 2020 during Trumps first presidency, in the resistance to the assault on migrant workers, push has again become shove.
According to the Guardian newspaper (04/01/26), ICE is responsible for 32 deaths in custody in the last year. Another dozen also estimated being killed since they were sent to occupy the heartlands of what Trump perceives his opposition.
These primarily being the liberal opposition centres of democrat held governorships and mayoralties such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and of course in Minneapolis.
ICE, uniformed, masked, without numbers or other ID resemble Putin’s ‘little green men’ from the occupation of Crimea. They silently occupy, block, snatch and bring fear.
This is their job, yet these goons of the state have the nerve to claim they were being ‘stalked’ by legal witness Renee Good whilst on intimidation duty.
She had just witnessed them repeatedly pulling to the ground and spraying pepper spray into the faces of a peaceful picket of residents and neighbours protesting the occupation.
4 armed masked men allege ‘fear for their lives’ as they surrounded Renee’s car stuck in the ice before shooting unarmed 37-year-old mother of 3 at point blank range.
Collapsing at the wheel, her car is seen sliding forward and crashing into another a few yards away as stunned onlookers try to intervene. Despite ICE agents dragging her out into the snow, their cars prevented access for ambulances for a further 15 minutes.
Renee Good is accused of ‘domestic terrorism’ ostensibly for blocking the road in her attempts to monitor ICE brutality, though in reality for inconveniently dying in plain sight.
Her murder coincides with the closure of a city school after ICE goons went in using force and chemical sprays to disperse high school students at the end of the school day according to local news outlet MPS News.
A school official is quoted as saying: “They don’t care. They’re just animals…I’ve never seen people behave like this.” The state has both motive and capacity to be violent anywhere, everywhere all at once.
This is less a sign of the times than the times themselves as capitalism unravels in a social decomposition as a result of austerity and its relentless drive to generalised war for profit.
Peace and War are increasingly indistinguishable as the latter offers annihilation, while the former is a bloody occupation driving us towards it.
Resistance to the occupation is growing at this time of writing. All resistance to the state and capitalism at war or peace is more urgent now than ever before.
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.”
“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.
While imperialisms circus distracts our attention with its smoke and mirrors towards a potential attack on Iran to take advantage of the mass protests and resistance against it’s regime, it initiates a new front in its global war against our class by launching strikes in Venezuela, South America.
The fate of the dictator Maduro is of little interest to us, though the slaughter of our class, conscripted again to defend one faction’s oil interests against anothers is a dramatic increase in the threat of our annihilation.
With Iran, and now quite possibly Cuba which is dependent on Venezuelan oil in the sights of the US, all of strategic interest to China, the fault lines of global capitalist rivalry are now aflame in South America as well as Africa, Europe,the Middle East and elsewhere in Asia.
Our role as revolutionary internationalists must be to denounce each side of serving its respective capitalist state or factional masters and call for an escalation of the Class War at home to hinder the warfare state. We support for all those resisting the drive to generalised war! Solidarity with resistors, deserters and those actively sabotaging the front lines.
No return to capitalist peace. just a repressive pause and austerity assault preparing for the next bloody conflict!
For resistance and escalation on all fronts. Class War against imperialist war! Working class resistance and solidarity against capitalist and state brutality!
The Network of Anarchist Internationalists, January 3th, 2026
A statement in support of Solidarity Collectives and ABC-Belarus has been published on the internet, signed by a number of groups and individuals. https://www.solidaritycollectives.org/en/on-silencingvoices-from-eastern-europe-at-anarchist-events-in-eu/ We are publishing our response, which is not, however, a dialogue with these open and covert supporters of militarism. We simply want to share our analysis publicly and strengthen the connection between people with an anti-militarist and revolutionary defeatist perspective.
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The statement to which we are responding was written by supporters of the war, who reproduce a binary narrative for this purpose: empathetic and supportive Eastern European anarchists versus arrogant and unsupportive anarchists from Western Europe. This narrative is false and manipulative. Those who share this narrative refuse to acknowledge that criticism of pro-war projects such as Solidarity Collectives and ABC (Belarus) also exists within the anarchist milieu in Eastern Europe. The signatories of the statement ignore this anti-militarist tendency in their narrative or lie when they claim that these are Putinists or pro-Russian propagandists. They repeatedly claim that the “Eastern European voice” is overlooked in Western Europe, while they themselves overlook anti-militarist and anti-war voices from Eastern European regions. It should be added that these overlooked voices also come from a relatively large number of people directly from the war zone. By this we mean not only anarchist collectives, but also other working-class people who refuse to support the war efforts of “their” and neighboring states. Let’s look at how many people have deserted from the Russian and Ukrainian armies and how many people in both countries are avoiding mobilization(1). Hundreds of thousands of people are ignored by this “radical left” that tells us it represents the voices of Eastern Europe and fights against the arrogance of the West. Their binary narrative is hypocritical. The contradiction is not between anarchists from the West and those from the East. There is only a contradiction between the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary tendencies, which exist in all regions.
We quote from their statement:“They are writing various kinds of “statements” condemning work in support of Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion.”
We respond: We do not condemn resistance to the Russian invasion. We are not even opposed to armed struggle, as long as it does not replicate militaristic logic and is directed against states and their armies. However, we reject the strategy of conventional warfare and militaristic forms of struggle. From an anarchist perspective, resistance to the aggressive policies of one state (e.g., Russia) should not be a practical service in the defense of another state (e.g., Ukraine). We support autonomous resistance against Putinism and Russian imperialism, but also against the Zelensky regime and EU/NATO imperialism. This is anarchist resistance against war.
We quote from their statement:“We believe in the need for dialogue on controversial issues.”
We respond: They have long presented themselves as “experts in monologue”, but suddenly they pretend to be interested in dialogue. This is not at all convincing. People who deliberately avoid face-to-face dialogue, slander anarchists(2), engage in dangerous doxxing(3), and are verbally and physically aggressive(4) are collaborating on these projects. Some signatories also pressure other groups to prevent anti-militarists from attending anarchist events(5) or directly participate in sabotaging anti-militarist activities(6). We believe that the call for dialogue is a manipulative political calculation in this context. They want to gain spaces in which they will receive money and resources for soldiers. We believe that they do not want to listen to criticism from their opponents and discuss controversial issues. Anarchists have repeatedly expressed critical analysis of their militaristic and pro-war tendencies in the past. There has been no self-reflection or acknowledgment of mistakes. So why insist on dialogue with them? It cannot be a constructive process.
We quote from their statement:“We do not consider the work of the “Solidarity Collectives” and “ABC-Belarus” to be in any way pro-war or supportive of state militarism.”
We respond: Both of these groups provide propaganda, financial, and material support to the soldiers of the Ukrainian army, which is at war with Russia. Why do the signatories of this statement refuse to acknowledge that the Ukrainian army and its soldiers are the embodiment of state militarism? There is no structure more militaristic than a state army. Why do these people refuse to acknowledge that they are defending a pro-war position when they support soldiers of the state army involved in the war? Is it insincerity, political manipulation, or do they fail to understand the basic context? They claim to be against militarism, but when soldiers desert the Ukrainian army or men in Ukraine are forcibly mobilized, they do not show practical solidarity with these people. They object to Russia’s militarism, but the militarism of Ukraine/NATO/EU is their main ally. We refuse to cooperate with them because they advocate cooperation with Western imperialism in its war against Russian imperialism. However, we also do not cooperate with those who cooperate with Russian imperialism, because this is not a constructive strategy that the working class could effectively use against American and European imperialism. We reject all one-sided anti-imperialism. We fight against all imperialist states and blocs.
The list of names and titles under the declaration is very long, but that does not mean it is significant. Socially revolutionary groups do not evaluate the quality of practice by quantitative measures. The number of signatures under a manipulative and deceitful statement does not make it a valuable document. Not even the biggest sum of socially reactionary and pro-war groups can never give rise to revolutionary anarchist practice.
The list of signatories to the aforementioned statement includes quite a few liars, manipulators, aggressors, collaborators with the far right(7), as well as dangerous doxxers and nationalists(8). Groups such as Solidarity Collectives and ABC – Belarus discredit themselves by publicly declaring that they maintain contact with these controversial individuals. If they express concern that anarchists do not want to cooperate with them, this is actually a positive sign. While left-wing supporters of militarism are losing support, the revolutionary anarchist tendency is gaining the necessary energy.
– Some anarchists from Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans
Nepal, Morocco, Madagascar, Indonesia, Peru… In recent months and weeks, massive demonstrations, riots, and even regime changes have taken place in various countries around the world, breathing new life into our most fervent hopes!
In Indonesia, growing outrage over the privileges enjoyed by the elite against a backdrop of austerity reached a tipping point when, on August 28, police killed a young man during a protest in Jakarta and then, on August 31, when videos showing parliamentarians dancing after receiving an indecent housing allowance were made public. In the weeks that followed, riots swept across the country, led by the slogan “Indonesia Gelap, Revolusi Dimulai” (“Indonesia is dark, we are starting the revolution”). Regional parliaments were set on fire and ministers’ residences were looted. The terrible repression, which mobilized the police and army, and led to dozens of deaths and disappearances, has achieved its goal of intimidation since… The movement was also unique in that its symbol was the flag of One Piece, a manga about pirates and their thirst for freedom, a symbol that was later taken up in Nepal, Madagascar, and Peru.
In Nepal, the movement, which initially denounced nepotism and the privileges of the ruling caste, was destructive. On September 9, after weeks of clashes in Kathmandu that left more than 70 people dead, protesters stormed the Parliament and the residences of several members of the government, including the Prime Minister’s one, and burned them to the ground! Because you never stop when you’re on a roll, the headquarters of the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist, the ruling party), the CPN (the Maoist opposition, which called on protesters to remain peaceful), and the Nepali Congress were vandalized by rioters, and the Kailali district prison was attacked and set on fire, allowing all prisoners to regain their freedom!
In Morocco, it was the death of eight women after giving birth by Caesarean section in Agadir due to the lack of resources in the Moroccan health sector that sparked the unrest. From the very first days of the protests, the authorities cracked down by arresting or beating up massively the protesters, but the rebels continued to pour into the streets.
Recently, the GenZ 212 collective, one of the movement’s faces, announced that the protests did not challenge the foundations of the royal authority, that they must remain peaceful, and that calls for action would be temporarily suspended following King Mohammed VI’s promises of reform (even though, at the same time, the justice system was handing down sentences of several years in prison to many protesters).
We won’t fall into that trap! The young Moroccans who took to the streets, set them ablaze, destroyed police stations, were shot while trying to storm police stations to seize weapons and ammunition, and injured more than 300 police officers were anything but peaceful and certainly did not have improving public services in mind!
In Madagascar, the demonstrations and calls for strikes began as a result of exasperation caused by water and electricity cuts imposed on the population and they spread to a widespread challenge to the ruling power, while the island is experiencing massive poverty. The authorities reacted as they know so well how to do: tear gas, beatings up, live ammunition… In the days that followed, despite the deaths and the curfew, the movement intensified and massive looting broke out: supermarkets, shops, banks, hotels… everything was targeted, despite calls for calm from democrats!
In Peru, it is also a widespread system of corruption among those in power and new pension reforms that are being denounced, mainly by students. In Lima, demonstrations punctuated by violent clashes with the police, Molotov cocktails, and attempts to storm the Congress have been repeated in recent weeks. On October 10, President Dina Boluarte was removed from office, which is “only one step” according to many of the rebels.
While the explicit demands of these movements refer to social justice, the fight against corruption, or against the mismanagement of public services, we can only see in all these protests a widespread challenging of the living conditions imposed on the exploited of this world. Everywhere, what is being attacked is the State and its bureaucracy, as well as the political class (even those who historically claim to be “revolutionary”, such as the Stalinist substitutes of the various Communist Parties, as in Nepal). What is being attacked is the bourgeoisie that is getting rich on the backs of the exploited. What is being attacked is the misery caused by pitiful wages or forced unemployment, the restrictions and lack of resources, the cops who protect the exploiters with batons and guns, the lack of future prospects in this shitty world.
We can also detect an anti-political force that partly underlies these demonstrations. In several of these movements, as in Nepal, it was the world of politicians in general, of all political persuasions, that was attacked for a time. It was the widespread enrichment of all the bourgeois and leaders that was called into question, as evidenced by the attacks on Parliament and the homes of parliamentarians. However, we can see that the siren calls of democracy and their endless promises of reform, appeasement, and judicial repression of former decision-makers are, unfortunately, still working just as well as ever. In Nepal, a new Prime Minister was chosen on Discord (which had been a decisive tool in the movement) after the fall of the government; in Morocco, the reforms promised by the king put the movement on hold; in Indonesia, the movement has ended while waiting for the promised changes; in Madagascar, a technocrat has been appointed Prime Minister; and in Peru, the opposition has taken advantage of the situation to remove the president from office, surely waiting to take her place and rule in turn…
Capitalism and the State, like snakes that shed their skin but never die, know how to constantly reinvent themselves in order to recuperate the most fervent hopes and integrate them. We must at all costs ask ourselves why and how democracy so easily co-opt revolts that are so offensive in material terms and can restore another authority that will change nothing.
Incidentally, it is surprising that in France, there is more interest in careerist deputies on show in the media than in people who attack their own deputies.
From Indonesia and Nepal to everywhere else, long live the revolt against the old world!
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 desertersand 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.
Over the last few months, various revolutionary internationalist anarchist organisations put their names to the following statement. Though itself ready for an update it was the precursor to establishing a new network of anarchist internationalists to achieve the following:
Collective solidarity, practical on the ground and in revolutionary principle; To be a hub for the exchange and presentation of information and propaganda; To distinguish ourselves from those oppositionist groups that use the name anarchism but no longer defend Revolutionary internationalism and, to provide a coherent reference point in the libertarian tradition as other international initiatives take place around the imperative of ‘no war but the class war.’
The supporting signatories are appended below and more invites will go out to others who hold to revolutionary internationalist opposition to all wars as subsequent meetings to develop the network progress.
“The Network of Anarchist Internationalists is: For revolutionary defeatism in every waring state!
Will: Support war resisters, draft dodgers, deserters, and conscientious objectors!
Calls for: A major libertarian internationalist initiative to counter militaristic propaganda!
Nuclear catastrophe approaches! The ruling classes ‘East’ and ‘West’ are charlatans whose lust for power and profit is increasingly based on the war industry.
The self-styled West is articulating scenarios of a new world war. For them, the ‘free world’ is fighting an existential battle against ‘autocracies’ increasingly identified with orientalist stereotypes threatening to destroy our alleged ‘civilisation’.
Nations in this ‘democratic’ camp such as Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, are lauded as fighting the same global battle of the ‘good guys’ against the ‘evil’. This logic even enlists Syria’s islamists on the side of the ‘good guys’.
On the other side, Russia, China and Iran, totalitarian states ruled by secret police, party enforcers and clerics. Each violently suppresses our class’s struggle against austerity and the march to war.
For a libertarian internationalist initiative against the militaristic propaganda disseminated daily, which presents our supposedly “good” armed states as if they were a humanitarian enterprise!
We need to offer practical and moral support to war resisters, draft dodgers, deserters and groups taking internationalist positions, especially in the war zones.
Supporting refusal, conscience, desertion and draft evasion on all sides of the war fronts, for revolutionary defeatism, is fundamental. Russia and Ukraine themselves recognise desertion as a major obstacle to their death programmes.
This support within the framework of our internationalism, promotes initiatives to challenge nationalism and borders, territorial sovereignty, the nation-state or it’s proto-state rivals, building new mechanisms of international solidarity and siblinghood.
The front lines are closer than you think, no further than the nearest arms or components factory, than the nearest logistics depot, transport hub or communications centre.
The war is where the ports and airports are, the military bases and their reserve barracks. It’s the rail networks and motorways, the towns, estates, cities and factories where we as workers’ pay the price of war in poverty from worsening austerity. And now the threat of conscription.
We cannot move without being at war and when we notice it, the rhetorical guns blaze “disrupter, extremist, traitor!” We must be all these things. It’s time to distinguish our movement clearly from those who support “some wars before the class war”.
We are clear that revolutionaries not only oppose their wars but call for the transformation of war resistance into a social revolution! We do not call for a return to the situation before the war, their “capitalist peace”, which is just their repression of us in preparation for their next bloody enterprise.
What can we do practically, individually and collectively, home and abroad? On the most basic level, thinking globally, acting locally. Refuse their consensus and call out the hypocrisy, advocating for ourselves and our class across frontiers. Collectively, reject their ‘national interest’.
Link our struggles to austerity and their war profiteering. Everything we do for ourselves, and our class hinders their ‘warfare-state’. Join in solidarity across locality and trade – victory on the home front is a victory and example abroad.
From the Arctic rivers to the Red Sea, from Taiwan to the Congo basin, continental frontiers are aflame or bristling in preparation. The changing faces of the superpower masquerades change nothing. They want us to fight – one capitalism, one war! The danger is real, the danger is now!
Although part of a long wave of mass urban mobilizations spanning years, the wild series of uprisings in Indonesia today began on the 25th of August, when students and workers led demonstrations against proposed additional housing allowances for parliament members, raising their salaries 10 times higher than the national minimum wage of the Indonesian working class. Parliamentary allowances are only the latest in Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s ferocious attacks on the working class, aided by creeping militarization and guided by the diktat of neoliberal austerity: cutting spending worth trillions of rupiah on education, welfare, and public health. Since Thursday of August 28th, with the murder of Affan Kurniawan, a 21-year-old rideshare motorbike driver—run over by an armored military vehicle commandeered by Jakarta police to crush the uprising—we have only seen the acceleration of spreading protests throughout the islands, and the escalation of violence and anger amid the protesters, with a number of politicians’ assets looted and burned to the ground—including, according to Perhimpunan Merdeka (Freedom Association), about half-a-dozen regional offices of the House of Representatives.
On the ground, several of the groups and individuals involved have been among the anarchists and communists, insurrectionaries notwithstanding, organized and otherwise. Demands have been made by various groups, featuring in particular two: Perhimpunan Merderka’s (PM; Freedom Association) demand to abolish the unitary government in favor of direct democracy through “People’s Councils”, and Perhimpunan Sosialis Revolusioner’s (PSR; Revolutionary Socialist Association) call for the workers to take the fight to the factories and workplaces to form and coordinate strike committees and worker’s councils.
In light of recent reports of discouragement, deescalation, and a generalizing urge to retreat, Marxist Forum calls on our anarchist and communist Indonesian comrades to push for a maximalist program within the assemblies and coordinating councils. This entails the organization of self-defense militias—for every worker, a rifle; rearrangement of production away from the capitalists and towards social appropriation, sustaining the rebellions and keeping the workers from going back to work; coordinating with workers of key industries to halt production and operations such as in ports and airfreight, shutting down the national economy; seizing the telecommunication and data centers to facilitate continuous in-flow of information within and with-out of the country, and;
Above all, to RESIST ANY AND ALL ATTEMPTS AT NEGOTIATION. Hijack the union leaderships, expel the middlemen and negotiators of labor, stand against the peace-makers who wish to restore the reproduction of the status quo, resist by any means necessary the cooptation of the rebellions for vested political interests by groups who wish to delimit the Indonesian proletariat’s class anger and make a turn towards liberal pacifism and passivity. The responsibility of the most conscious and organized elements of the rebellions, without taking ownership of the movement and fighting the tendency to lag behind the proletariat in rebellion, is to push the class to advance wherever it lags. The anarchists and communists should not be afraid to go past the proletariat, wherever it is reluctant to advance, and make the class conscious of where it is going and what needs to be done to get there!
The class, while still acting as a class, is now in the political arena. To generalize the rebellions into a full insurrection, it is ever-necessary to imbue the sites of struggle with a clear communising direction and go past the economic and political, to directly and immediately appropriate the social. Comrades, the Indonesian proletariat is on the brink of something potentially bigger than all of us. To take the next step, the class must be compelled to intervene into history directly and begin the conscious communisation of Indonesian society.
BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY; THERE CAN BE NO COMPROMISE.
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!
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.
We are not criminals. We are people. Men and women who refused to become casualties of the war of two regimes. We refuse to be held hostage by political contracts and military plans. The Ukrainian government is currently preparing Law No. 13673, which criminalises everyone who has escaped the mobilisation. Anyone who refuses to return to the trenches faces a risk of imprisonment, deportation, and a forceful conscription into the army.
This law entails:
• mass criminalisation of deserters and conscientious objectors,
• automatic placement into registers,
• collaboration of secret services and courts,
• threat of extradition back to Ukraine.
• This is not a defence of freedom – it is its end.
Ukrainian deserters and conscientious objectors of military service need our solidarity. Their struggle is also our fight for:
• a right to live,
• a right to not be sent to a battlefront,
• a right to refuse the state and its war.
Therefore, we urge you:
📢 Let’s flood Ukrainian embassies and consulates with protest letters, petitions, emails, phone calls, and faxes. (See the sample of protest letter at the bottom of the article)
📢 Let’s organise public solidarity events in front of Ukrainian embassies and during the visits of Ukrainian politicians in your country.
📢 Download the posters and flyers and hand them out to your Ukrainian colleagues and neighbours – let them know that they should not return to Ukraine and that we approve of their decision not to fight. (The PDF poster is available to download at the bottom of the article, or you can get it by contacting us)
📢 Express your support to Ukrainian men and their families who have left their country so that they would avoid mobilisation and recruitment into war (In Czechia, the estimate is about 150 000 men, in Slovakia it is about 50 000. In the entire EU it concerns approximately 750-800 000 people!)
📢 Translate the appeal into other languages and organise a similar campaign in your country. Keep us informed!
📢 Let’s stand on the side of those who say NO to militarism and war.
Each day of silence is a step further to deserters being deprived of their future. But together we can be the voice that cannot be silenced.
Glory to the deserters! Glory to conscientious objectors!
Send a letter and/or email to Ukrainian embassies and consulates in your country. Use both options to increase the pressure.
Subject: A protest against criminalisation of Ukrainian conscientious objectors and deserters
Dear Ambassador,
We are addressing you on behalf of the citizens of [your country] who disapprove of the war and who stand on the side of human dignity. It is with great concern that we observe the Ukrainian government preparing and promoting repressive measures in the form of Law No. 13673, directed against those who refused to be drawn into war. The draft of such laws criminalising conscientious objectors of military service and deserters is an attack on basic human rights.
We reject the idea of sacrificing human lives in an endless war conflict. The people who decided to leave Ukraine in order not to kill or die are not criminals. They are the people who had the courage to say NO to the war.
We ask you to convey our concerns and dissent to the Government of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Parliament, with a demand for:
1. An immediate halt to the preparation of the laws that threaten conscientious objectors and deserters, specifically Law No. 13673.
2. Respecting the right to refuse military service as guaranteed by the International human rights treaties.
3. Ensuring the protection of those who refused the war – whether in Ukraine or abroad.
We perceive the solidarity with Ukraine as solidarity with its ordinary working people who want to live in peace – not as a support of militarism and repression.
AnarCom Network 