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.
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.
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.
Compassion fatigue is being replaced by stress and trauma as people can no longer bear to focus on so much misery and potential fear. In the wars around us there is a sense that we are not just witnessing the terrible lives of others, but the future that awaits us and gets closer each day and with every news broadcast. We prefer to notice that we did not change the curtains as the grenade crashes through our own window.
Are we moving from passive voyeur to active anticipant? More than half of the world’s nuclear powers, six nations, Russia, North Korea, Israel, recently Pakistan and India, and now the US are strutting on the battlefield.
Trump’s attack on Iran’s nuclear sites has changed the rules of the diplomatic game, perhaps to the point of no return. Foreshadowed by Israel’s surprise attack under the smoke screen of forthcoming US-Iran negotiations, the US’s second ‘Pearl Harbour’, punching through the false security of a two-week window for Iran to reconsider its position, has put all of us on an exponential path to military destruction.
This lesson will not be lost on China, which suffered the greatest casualties at the hands of imperial Japan’s 20th century wars, prefigured by the surprise attacks of Port Arthur and Pearl Harbour. Trump’s new IED – improvised explosive diplomacy – risks detonating the Pacific region in the struggles over Taiwan and strategic sea lanes.
Not lost on other belligerents, Russian strategists observe that, “… on a tactical level there are pluses [for Russia] from the conflict between Iran and Israel”, including, “higher global oil prices and distraction from Russia’s war in Ukraine” (Moskovsky Komsomolets).
The business daily, Kommersant, continued that: “Any escalation in the Middle East distracts from Ukraine and alters the priorities for Western military assistance,” adding incredibly: “Russia could…play the role of impartial arbiter, helping if not to resolve the crisis, then at least to de-escalate it.”! Perhaps more realistically it laments conversely that it, “…was unable to prevent Israel’s mass strike on a country with which five months ago, Russia signed a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement.” That fact will also not be lost in China.
The unclaimed banality is – if you want war, prepare for war! On the Home Front, “battle ready and armour clad… “, is the Labour government’s echoing of George Washington’s now ubiquitous militaristic slogan, “peace through strength”. Whose peace whose strength?
In the late 15th century at the birth of European colonial expansionism, Italian military commander Marshal Trivulzio expressed the military maxim for the next 500 hundred years: “To carry out war, three things are necessary: money, money and yet more money.”
Cue more austerity and an internal conflict against the enemies within, not just the unions but politically prefigured by the banning of such group groups as Palestine Action. Already the status of people with disabilities, gender dysphoria, social and eco-dissidents of all kinds is being downgraded and rights rolled back.
As we prepare military bases for migrants or North American nuclear weapons, this hunt for enemies will grow. That soft fascist echo of reason, “If you have nothing to hide you’ve nothing to fear” is the ‘arbeit macht frei’ of our time.
In the era of Trump, populism, fascism, never has this phrase been more terrifying. Have you ever identified your gender identity, sexual preferences, political allegiances in official documentation or social media? Times are changing. Tolerance was always an insidious form of oppression and has paved the pathway for the direct repression to come.
Hypocrisy-a return to traditional values.
While the Israeli state’s slaughter of Palestinians is possibly the greatest self-inflicted reputational damage done to a nation in modern times, despite its own experience of genocidal harm, its double standards rival one of the greatest hypocrisies of war in the Iranian theocratic dictatorships’ condemning of the death of civilians as a war crime and a breach of the rules!
Not because the death of civilians or anyone else for that matter in war is not abhorrent, but that if no one had ever coined the term ‘war crime’ before, the Iranian regime has given them plenty of reason and opportunities to invent the phrase in its near 50-year existence. Now seen as ‘the good guys’ by the liberal partisans of ‘some(any?) wars before the class war’, those, who would be first up against the wall in the fundamentalist dictatorship, choose to ignore its generational atrocities.
Perhaps less well known than its bulldozing of walls onto homosexuals, its stoning of women for religious infringement and running of mass torture centres, is its mass murder of long-held political detainees. In 1988, in more than 30 cities across the country, 30,000 political prisoners, many of whom had been in custody for years were taken out and murdered by the Islamic regime, the Godly guardians of Islamic fanaticism.
Despite this, the Trotskyists and the Stalinists – 2 cheeks of the same arse – make companionable bed fellows as they call for the ‘left’ to support Iran and defeat for Israel and USA. This position dubbed, “revolutionary defencism’, is the left-wing of capitalism’s political apparatus’s obligatory anti-working-class side-taking with the bourgeoisie. They offer us nothing other than an alternative imperialist camp to die for.
While such crises feel shockingly new on our own front doorstep, we’d do well to remember that patriotic calls to commemorate the last great imperialist slaughter of 70 million souls, the older generation still with us remembers well and we should heed their warnings. As a recent veteran of the Burma campaign commented:
“I’m not here celebrating, I’m remembering. The biggest crime is war itself. If there was no war, there would be no more war crimes.”
When we, along with others, say, No War but the Class War, it is a plea for survival. Everywhere, the tsunami of global conflict is rising inexorably towards the last great imperialist global configuration that will wipe us out as a species. Classes for businesses on how to survive or plans to resurrect dad’s army and leaflet every home are mocking the graves they are digging for us.
Only the class of producers who make all wealth, the working class, which has no common interest with those who steal the wealth that we produce can either ultimately prevent this war or perish with it. War or Revolution! When we say, No War but the Class War, it is a call to arms for the liberation of ourselves, the producers, the vast majority, against the existential crimes of capital and the ruling class, that tiny parasitical minority.
It is already officially recognized that after the law on partial decriminalization of unauthorized leaving a military unit (SZCh in Ukrainian) and desertion came into force, desertions from the army of Ukraine have increased significantly. “I spoke with our elite units, both with the Airborne Assault Forces and with the Marines: the number of SZCh increased by 60%,” said Roman Kostenko, secretary of the parliamentary defense committee, at the end of January. Seeing that the ground is slipping from under its feet, the Ukrainian state is trying to take punitive measures.
We recently wrote about the post of war correspondent Yury Butusov on December 31 which received a wide resonance in Ukraine. In the post, Butusov described how 1,700 people fled from the 155th Mechanized Brigade “Anna of Kyiv” before the first shot was fired. By the time it was sent to France, there were already 935 fugitives. In France itself, more than 50 fled. Less well known is that on January 8, the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) detained a senior lieutenant from this brigade, who himself went into SZCh and incited his fighters to do the same. He was taken from the Rivne region to Kiev and sent to custody without bail. Then, the former brigade commander, Colonel Dmytro Ryumshin, was detained with the possibility of bail for 90 million hryvnya ($2,161 million, a very large sum of money in Ukraine). According to the SBI, there may have been a scheme operating in the brigade in which those wishing to leave the country were registered for money. “If I’m not mistaken, about 12 draft dodgers were included in the lists for training in France,” said bureau spokesperson Tatyana Sapyan on the air of the telethon.
The magazine Forbes reported on January 27 that the second brigade of the Ukraine’s Armed Forces was in the process of disintegrating within a month during deployment at the Donetsk front. We are talking about the 157th Mechanized Brigade, which consisted of new recruits and was sent to defend Pokrovsk. There are a total of 8 such brigades of the 150th series,“that formed in 2023 or early 2024 and, after a lengthy period of training, began arriving on the front starting late last year. The brigades are big, some with roughly double the usual 2,000 manpower billets of a Ukrainian ground combat brigade. But they’re also fragile—with inexperienced leaders, too few modern armored vehicles and poor morale that often results in a high desertion rate. (…)There were reports of brigade troopers taking one look at their trenches—and promptly abandoning their positions,” the publication noted. According to it, the brigade had not received the necessary combat training and “began falling apart before they even arrived in Pokrovsk.” It was the second such case in a month.
On December 25, in the public Telegram group UFM which provides assistance in leaving Ukraine, a member wrote:
“My wife’s brother escaped from training without a weapon (I won’t say the exact date), three days later the cops were already looking for him at his registered address, and he was on the cops’ criminal wanted list..… So everything is going fast now. It was a week ago. He went to the place of registration to surrender himself, there were familiar cops (he wanted to negotiate), but something went wrong, and as far as I understand, he was again shoved in the training center, but in where he lived. Before that he was caught by TCR [Territorial Center for Recruitment and Social Support] in Kirovograd region. Now he’s in Kharkov, [there is] no contact with him. All this he personally told, as well as the fact that in the training schools of Vinnitsa region they kick people with a buttstock if you f*** off, he lost a few teeth..…”
Despite this intensification of the efforts to persecute deserters, the possibilities of the repressive system are still very limited. A man from Kharkov named Andrey reported on January 12: “As for the search. There is one character who disappeared into the sunset in June. Recently cops checked him for the 4th time when he was coming from work —he was not wanted. So it’s a lucky break. He works as a packer in the workshop. Unofficially, of course. He’s been on a relatively quiet sector, northbound, so it didn’t come to the meat grinder. It’s more likely the liver that needs to be repaired, not the head.” Another resident of Kharkov, who went into SZCh last summer together with his commander and the entire company from the southern front, was mentioned by us last month — he now lives at home and goes to the store, and no one is looking for him. On the morning of January 13, the disappearance of the first company commander with the rank of captain was discovered in the 3rd Mechanized Battalion of the 143rd Mechanized Brigade near Kupyansk. The mobilized officer left his weapon, took his personal belongings and personal car.
There is also new evidence of mass desertions from training camps in the Dnipropetrovsk region, where those mobilized in Kharkov are usually sent. We wrote a little earlier about massive desertions in this area. One woman in Kharkov shared the following information anonymously on January 30: “I talked to a local policeman, he says every day there are about 100 people near Novomoskovsk who go into SZCh. The efficiency of efforts to catch them is so-so. In my opinion, network marketing has better recruitment rates. How many a day they catch out of these 100 he will not, of course, say. He complained that there is a lot of paperwork”.
On the same day, January 30, the above mentioned journalist Yury Butusov posted information, according to which in some radio engineering brigade of the Ukrainian Air Force ten radar station operators had been taken for marine rifle positions. “Each operator has more than two years of experience, but no one asked for their opinion. After receiving the information, three military men made certificates of care and resigned, three went into SCZh”. It is strange that there were only three! On February 2, the Assembly received the following information: “In our military unit, in the summer, you could still officially go abroad on vacation. Then two of us didn’t return and the unit commander forbade us from going abroad on vacation… and I was transferred from the Air Force to the Land Troops at zero [front line], and it took me 7 days to figure everything out. And I went into SZCh. And then a buddy policeman picked me up in his car, he drove from home. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have left there. They would hit the brake at every checkpoint, but the [service] certificate decides. He gave me a ride home. If only it had been to the border… I was going from the Zaporizhzhia region, the checkpoints there are crazy. We had many guys who went into SZCh on their own, then they were caught at the checkpoint and sent them back to the infantry on the move to zero [to the front line].” Since the interlocutor is still in Ukraine, we will not give other details.
Against this background, individual rebellions receive a particularly strong resonance in the media. According to the Rivne Regional TCR, during the check of military registration documents on February 11, unknown persons of mobilization age inflicted bodily harm on their employees and damaged transport. Despite the arrival of the police, the attackers fled and are wanted. The next day, according to the Kharkov Regional TCR, in some district enlistment office of Kharkov their serviceman was sprayed with tear gas and injured with a knife. The suspect was detained by the cops.
Two examples of workplace struggle from women convicted by local courts of Kharkov on November 19 and on February 12. In the first case, some controller of the Kharkov metro automatic checkpoints, according to the investigation, messaged at least 8 times from November 2023 to April 2024 in one of the Telegram chats how the enlistment teams operated at the subway station. The judge found the woman guilty and sentenced her to five years in prison with a three-year probationary period. She was released from custody and her cell phone was confiscated. Another one from February 2022 to August 2024 supposedly stole 10 sets of earrings, 19 rings, three necklaces and two chains from the Quetzal jewelry store. The total amount of material damage caused to the entrepreneur for whom she worked was 2,281,581 hryvnia (about $55 000). “She disposed of the jewelry at her own discretion. In the courtroom, the accused fully admitted her guilt. She noted that she had drawn the appropriate conclusions for herself and that this would not happen again,” the court verdict states. She was sentenced to five years in prison and was taken into custody in the courtroom, she must also pay the store owner 2,281,581 hryvnia in material damages and 56,796 hryvnia in favor of the state for conducting expertises.
The loudest story of this winter occurred in the usually quiet Lubny district of the Poltava region. On January 31, a resident of Poltava, Yevgen Shcherbak, was being transported to a military unit for training, accompanied by servicemen from the district enlistment office. Intend on evading service, he called his relative’s partner, Vadym Kuzub, from Lubny and told them the bus route. During a stop in Pyriatyn, the Lubny resident in a grey balaclava and pixelated pants killed one of the guards with a hunting rifle he had brought with him. Shcherbak and Kuzub disappeared with the dead soldier’s automatic rifle. However, the next day the head of the regional police reported their arrest. The two men were born in 1984 and 1988, respectively. Unconfirmed rumors suggest that the shooter previously served in the territorial defense at road checkpoints.
Piryatin shooter Vadim Kuzub on trial. From the state TV
The murder suspect Vadym Kuzub admitted his guilt at a court hearing on February 3, confirming that he had helped his woman’s relative escape. According to him, he wanted to scare the guards, but he failed, and then he fired his weapon. “The ambulance arrived about 40 minutes later, and he died quickly. I didn’t know that he had died, I thought he was alive. I didn’t want to kill him, I just wanted to take Shcherbak Yevgen.” The shooter’s lawyer, Valery Masyuk, said that his client is actively collaborating with the investigation. Yevgen Shcherbak, who fled from the enlistment agents, is now charged with obstructing the activities of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Both are in custody without the right to bail.
There are not as many stories from the army of the neighboring chamber as there were in our previous piece about this. For example, the Telegram channel “Atesh”, working for Ukrainian intelligence in Crimea, on January 2 gives the following information from its agents: “They report that in the village of Lazurnoye in the Kherson region, Russian occupiers are complaining about a sharp increase in the number of breakdowns of equipment arriving at the repair base. The Russians suspect that the growing number of breakdowns of watercraft (boats and jet skis) is due to deliberate sabotage by the Russian military themselves. Russian military personnel are increasingly choosing sabotage as a way of survival, which disrupts the plans of the Russian military team to use these watercraft to force the Dnieper.” They narrate about how the watercraft are disabled in a post on December 9: “The number of cases of sabotage among Russian military personnel is growing, aimed at avoiding being sent to storm the islands in the Dnieper delta. Soldiers intentionally break engines, puncture rubber boats and even transmit coordinates to the Ukraine’s Defense Forces about the location of boat bases and fuel reserves. It is known that three service investigations related to sabotage have been recorded in the 126th Separate Coastal Defense Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces. For the Russian command, this has become a real problem.” On February 1, another channel of the Ukrainian special services, “I Want to Live”, posted photographs and data of a group of Russian convicts from the 1437th Motorized Rifle Regiment. According to the post, at least 8 stormtroopers went on the run near Pokrovsk. “In short, we have some deserters here. They are hiding behind that they are the 300th [injured], they want to storm something, take a car and come to Selidovo, so the situation is quite serious. Now I will give you their call signs if they introduce themselves (…) These are dangerous people, warn anyone nearby if possible,” says the voice on the audio recording.
Nikita Posmetukhov. From the VK page
On February 10, the Southern Military District Court reported on another incident in the battles for the Dnieper delta in the Kherson region. Corporal Nikita Posmetukhov from the 70th Motorized Rifle Division of the RF sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of four colleagues, including two officers. On the night of November 28, 2023, Posmetukhov was drinking with his fellows, then took an assault rifle and went to the command dugout, the document says. When he knocked on the door, patrolmen called out to him. He started shooting at them and killed a junior sergeant. Then he got into the dugout and shot a lieutenant colonel, captain and private (they were sleeping at that moment). After that, the shooter was detained by two privates. As noted in the document, the attacker got angry at Captain Komarovsky, which was not killed or wounded. He applied disciplinary punishment to Posmetukhov and promised to send him to the assault unit.
Overall, our forecast from last year is being confirmed step by step. The number of Russian assaults and their pace of advancement since the start of 2025 have dropped sharply, the trend seems too long and strong to have been caused only by the weather conditions. It appears that the drop is due to peace talks, during which the Russian authorities hope to achieve a deal with the new administration of US President Donald Trump.
A commentary on graffiti created by an “unknown” artist by Lukáš Borl
I used to think that everything had limits. But when I saw the graffiti in the attached photo, I thought that the political confusion of the artist was absolutely limitless. Incorporating an anarchist symbol into the name of a state, that takes a great deal of deranged. Perhaps the author does not know that anarchy is the negation of all states, i.e. Russia, Czech Republic, Ukraine, France and all other states. Perhaps it is not important for him that anarchists have always been persecuted, criminalized, imprisoned and suppressed by all states – totalitarian and democratic. Perhaps the author thinks that if we put an anarchist symbol in the name of a state, the state will cease to be a state and turn into anarchy. If only it were that easy.
Who knows, maybe next time we’ll see the same anarchist symbol in the words stAte or ČeskÁ RepublikA. These words also include the letter “A“, so the confused graffiti artists have good material for their work.
For those who are not into political confusion, other areas may be more interesting. For example, facts about the nature of the state that bears the name Ukraine.
Ukraine is a state that has closed its borders to a large part of its male population, effectively trapping these people in a war zone.
Ukraine is a state whose army persecutes men of draft age and forcibly forces them to the front, putting them in danger of serious injury or death.
Ukraine is a state whose border guards persecutes, tortures and murders deserters.
Ukraine is a state whose courts prosecute deserters and whose prisons imprison them. At the moment, official statistics speak of more than 200,000 deserters, but there are likely to be others who are not officially registered.
Ukraine is a state whose courts are currently conducting political trials against anti-militarists on charges of “discrediting the armed forces of the Ukrainian state.”
Ukraine is a state that criminalizes certain political entities on charges of “supporting and promoting communist ideology,” which logically could also affect anarchist groups that refer to class struggle and anarchist communism.
Ukraine is a state that applies a discriminatory policy towards the Russian-speaking population.
Ukraine is a state that has incorporated far-right formations such as Azov, the Brotherhood, the Right Sector, the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), etc.
Ukraine is a state that provides protection for the bourgeoisie that grossly exploits the working class. Workers in Ukraine normally receive 20 000 hryvnia (= 460 Euros) for a month’s work, while the prices of basic commodities are similar to those in the Czech Republic.
The Ukrainian state suppresses workers’ struggles for better working and living conditions.
Ukraine is a state that is less brutal than neighbouring states such as Russia or Belarus, but nevertheless its basic essence is the defence of the privileges of the capitalist class at the expense of the working class.
Ukraine is a state that oppresses, in particular, that section of the working class that, in terms of the state bureaucracy, falls into the category of ‘Ukrainian citizens’.
Ukraine is a state that preserves all the contradictions of class society and therefore all the misery of proletarian life.
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!
“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.
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.
AnarCom Network 