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Posts Tagged ‘Ukraine’

Call for International Solidarity with Taras Bogay, anarchist and eco-activist (Ukraine)

Sunday, March 19th, 2017

On the 19th of February, Taras Bogay, an anarchist and eco-activist from Lviv, Ukraine, was assaulted by a group of 20-30 drunk neo-nazis from the rightwing organisations Right Sector and the neo-nazi militia named the Azov battallion. They attacked Taras after he tried to protect a group of foreigners that the nazi group was harassing with racial slurs and threats.

During the fight the attackers threatened to kill Taras. He was knocked unconscious and sustained a heavy concussion and numerous cuts resulting in the near loss of one of his fingers. While defending himself and the foreigners, Taras slightly cut one of the attackers with no serious injury. Taras fought well, but the forces were uneven.

Despite Taras having been found covered in his own blood, the Lviv police department released news about the incident later that day without mentioning Taras’ injuries. The news stated: “the police arrested a 27-years old man that stabbed an 18-year old teenager in a conflict”.

A few days after the incident a false “witness” claimed that Taras suddenly attacked the group of innocent people, then cut himself and ran away. While every word of this evidence is a clear lie, it may be considered as proof of Taras’s fault in the court. The case clearly demonstrates that Ukrainian police has a strong affiliation with far-right organizations. Currently, Taras is being treated for his wounds, and is doing rehabilitation from his concussion. Taras is recovering gradually and his condition is gradually improving. Nevertheless, he is still unable to work.

Taras is experiencing severe financial problems. First, he is unable to work due to the injuries and have to pay medical bills. Second, to protect himself from the false charges, Taras requires a lawyer that cost at least €900 (he has concluded a contract with a lawyer for the period of investigation – about half of a year).

Without a good lawyer Taras could face a prison sentence between five and seven years (the charges being disorderly conduct and grievous bodily harm).

We have started the fundraising campaign at firefund.net/ukraine to collect €900 that will enable us to provide Taras with a good lawyer and help him to survive during the period of unemployment. The struggle against far-right politics relies on global solidarity and mutual aid.

Also, you may donate to ABC bitcoin wallet: 39pQm5RxArsFZEBt4MPvMFuHEuyY1oG18k

Stop fascist scum! Solidarity with Taras Bogay!

Thank you for the support!
Long live anarchy!

Source

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Posted in Anti-Fascist

Kiev: Anarchists attacked the court with fire (Ukraine)

Sunday, April 10th, 2016

Атака на Голосеевский райсуд (08.04.2016)

Check out the communique and the video:

https://vimeo.com/162263722

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Posted in Direct Action

Court hearings on the case of political prisoner Ilya Romanov started June 16 (Russia)

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2015

On June 2 preliminary hearing regarding the case of anarchist political prisoner Ilya Romanov from Nizhnii Novgorod was conducted in Moscow District Military Court. Ilya took part in the court session via video conference link. The court rejected all the petitions of the defendant’s lawyer, Evgeny Gubin, including the petition to cancel his “non-disclosure” pledge, which the investigating bodies made him to sign.

Moscow District Military Court starts hearing of the Romanov’s case on June 16 at 11:00. Sessions will be held in the building of Nizhegorodskii Regional Court (Russia, Nizhnii Novgorod, Bolshaya Pokrovskaya str., 17).

Nizhnii Novgorod regional department of the Federal Security Service (“FSB”) accuses Ilya of preparing a terrorist attack (the “attack” didn’t occur at all) and an attempt for justification of terrorism. The very fact of such double “might-have-been terrorism” in Russian province (where nobody has seen a single terrorist throughout the recent history at all), performed by one political activist, tells directly about political bias in this case.
(more…)

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Posted in Prison Struggle

Attack on the Autonomous workers’ union activist (Ukraine)

Wednesday, May 27th, 2015

On Saturday, May 23, an activist of Autonomous Workers’ Union was attacked in the downtown Kyiv. The motives for the attack were political. The attackers had set up a meeting with the artist Dmitry M., posing as customers for his services. When Dmitry arrived, the two guys menacingly suggested to “go and talk somewhere else” and attacked him outright after his refusal. The fight was over in no time, as some passers-by intervened — the attackers withdrew, shouting their excuses: “He was the first to snitch on us on the Internet!”

The activist wasn’t injured; however, this act cannot be ignored. This set-up meeting was arranged neither by the police agents nor by boneheads, but by our Belarusian “comrades” – former political prisoner Alyaksandr Franzkevich and his friend Maxim aka “The Belarusian”. (more…)

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Posted in Anti-Fascist

About the anti-fascist struggle after Maidan (Ukraine)

Monday, April 20th, 2015

This is a translation of a brochure written by 2 anti-authoritarian communist groups, Vida (Rivet) and Proletconnect about the anti-fascist struggle in Ukraine after the Maidan events. Events unfold on very high speed and although this brochure discusses the Ukrainian reality until June 2014, to the opinion of the translator it offers insight on the background of the conflict and the international geopolitical significance of these events. It offers a different interpretation compared to western media and even parts of the western left.

In USSR times…

“…Its (Kiev’s) buildings are famous all over Russia. It was a center of religion. And now it is a semi-ruin. Here the Germans showed what they could do. Every public building, every library, every theater, even the permanent circus, destroyed, not with gunfire, not through fighting, but with fire and dynamite. Its university is burned and tumbled, its schools in ruins. This was not fighting, this was the crazy destruction of every cultural facility the city had, and nearly every beautiful building that had been put up during a thousand years. Here German civilization did its work, and one of the few justices in the world is that German prisoners are helping clean up the mess that they made.

(more…)

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Posted in Anti-Fascist

International solidarity with anti-fascist Alexander Kolchenko (Russia)

Sunday, March 15th, 2015

Alexander Kolchenko is a Crimean anarchist, social activist and antifascist who is held in captivity by the Russian authorities. Along with other Crimean activists, he has been kidnapped by the Russian FSB (ex-KGB) and is now detained as a political hostage in Lefortovo jail in Moscow. He is charged with committing “acts of terrorism” and “belonging to a terrorist community”.

Why is Alexander Kolchenko in jail?

Alexander, who has undeniably proved his antifascist stance over many years, is facing preposterous accusations of belonging to “Right Sector”, a radical Ukrainian right-wing organization, whose real role in Ukrainian events is blown out of proportion by Russian official propaganda.

In modern Russia any activist — left-wing, anarchist or liberal — can be slandered as a member or sympathizer of “Right Sector”. This situation is comparable to the hunt for nonexistent “Trotskyists” under Stalin, or the McCarthy witch-hunt for communists. Putin’s authoritarian and nationalist regime, which uses in its propaganda everything from religious prejudices and conspiracy theories to outright racism, shamelessly steals “antifascist” rhetoric. And yet anyone who is considered bothersome is called a “fascist”, even if he/she stands on the opposite side of the political spectrum. (more…)

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Posted in Anti-Fascist

Interview with Anarchist Black Cross Belarus on the repression, Ukraine and the refugees (A-Radio)

Saturday, January 10th, 2015

In the context of the recent acute increase in repression in Belarus,
the Anarchist Radio Berlin talked to Anarchist Black Cross Belarus about
their work, the situation in the neighbouring country of Ukraine and the
situation of refugees in Belarus. For security reasons we transcribed
the original interview and re-recorded it ourselves.

You’ll find the audio (to listen online or download in different sizes) here:
http://aradio.blogsport.de/2015/01/09/a-radio-in-english-interview-with-anarchist-black-cross-belarus-on-the-repression-ukraine-and-the-refugees/

The length is: 10:53 min.

Enjoy! And please feel free to share!
You’ll find other English language audios here:
http://aradio.blogsport.de/englishcastellano/

A-Radio Berlin

ps.: Please note: We are always looking for people willing to lend us a
hand with transcript translations from Spanish or German into English as
well as people able to do voice recordings – in order to amplify our
international radio work. You can contact us at
aradio-berlin/at/riseup(dot)net!

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Posted in Interviews

Some developments of the Kolchenko case (Crimea)

Friday, October 17th, 2014

Repressions against Crimean activists – See here for previous info.

There are some news on the Kolchenko/Sentsov case.

At first, FSB [internal security service] is looking for new suspects:

www.khpg.org/en/index.php?id=1406387040

Also, “Union of solidarity with political prisoners” has received an internal FSB document from 22th of September, which besides 4 arrested persons, lists 4 other persons. Their names are listed in this document, but nothing more is known about them and their whereabouts.

Most likely this is growing to become a major falsified case.

This news about the document is only in Russian:

http://www.politzeky.ru/novosti/operativnaya-informatsiya/160707.html

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Posted in Social Control

Neither Ukrainian nor Russian! – Let’s develop our own camp, the third camp, that of social revolution! (Třídní válka)

Thursday, September 4th, 2014

Analysis from Left-communist comrades Třídní válka / Class War:

When we wrote some months ago in our text, “War preparations between Ukraine and Russia – Show or Reality?”i that the conditions for a new war ripen in Ukraine, many comrades expressed doubts or even disagreements with such a categorical statement. Now we can say that the conflict in Ukraine has clearly switched from the “cold” phase to the “hot” one and that what we are currently witnessing in the east of the country is the war by all definitions. From Lugansk on the border with Russia to Mariupol on the Black Sea coast two military forces compete in daily clashes when trying to enlarge the area under their control, they fight on the ground as well as in the air, in countryside as well as in industrial centers, artilleries shell villages, air forces bomb cities (under the pretext that their enemy uses the inhabitants as living shields), men, women, children die under the bombs and missiles… In four months of armed conflict more than 2,000 civilians and militaries have been killed and 6,000 others injured; 117,000 proletarians have been internally displaced and 730,000 others found refuge in Russia. Just as we were on the point of finishing this article dead bodies are strewn over the streets of Donetsk, caught in a government’s offensive stranglehold.

In the same text we also wrote that the only reply of the proletariat to the war is to organize and develop revolutionary defeatism, i.e. practically refuse to join one or the other camp, on the contrary to build connections between proletarians from both sides of the conflict through the struggle against both bourgeoisies. As even in this field things developed, our text deserves (three month after publishing) a post-scriptum.

This text is based on information drawn from different sources (that we quote in footnotes) from militant blogs to official media. This short description of events in the Ukraine required hours and hours of careful work, searching information, reading texts, watching videos, comparing different data etc. We would like to emphasize two things: Firstly, the fact that the events that we describe here were not covered by BBC or Euronews does not mean that they did not happen, that we invented them (various leftist sources and also Ukrainian and Russian media describe them). Secondly, it is clear that the news that we get from the Ukraine are chaotic, incomplete and sometimes contradictory. This however doesn’t mean that we should give up our attempt to grasp what is going on there. We believe that we should face a selective reporting of the state with a critical and radical position of anti-capitalist movement; we should develop and share information and analysis that see the world through a prism of revolutionary perspective.

***

War ideology (either based on a defence of a united national state on one side or the right for a self-determination and pro-Russian sympathies on the other side) is taking root in Ukraine, civil society organizations organize fund-raising campaign to support the army, popes bless arms of this or that side, and television repeats scenes of babushkas supplying armed man with their last jar of compote. Not all proletarians however let themselves to be brainwashed with the war propaganda of one or the other side, not all of them want to sacrifice themselves “for their homeland”. Expressions of practical refuse of war slaughter appear in always greater numbers and both sides of the conflict have big difficulties to recruit new manpower for their mutual massacre. (more…)

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Posted in Autonomy

Quelques réflexions sur la révolution Ukrainienne

Monday, July 14th, 2014

[Voici une lettre d’un ami anarchiste (il se trouve à Kiev). C’est supposé être une réponse à l’article que Crimethinc a publié en mars à propos de la révolution ukrainienne et à tous ceux qui proclament avidement que la révolution ukrainienne n’est qu’une affaire d’extrême droite. Note de 325.nostate.net]

Compagnons !

Je vous écris depuis l’Ukraine. J’ai beaucoup participé aux émeutes de Maidan et à différentes initiatives anarchistes pendant cette période. Je voudrais faire plusieurs remarques que je trouve importantes pour mieux pouvoir apprécier les événements. En général, je suis d’accord avec votre hypothèse, mais je veux souligner quelques détails qui montreront que la situation est moins noire. (more…)

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Posted in Anti-Fascist

Moscow Anarchist Black Cross Repressions Review, April-June 2014 (Russia)

Monday, July 14th, 2014

We continue our regular summaries on repressions of anarchists, antifascists, and social activists in Russia, on obstacles which police state creates for our activity.

In April-May issue: arrests of “terrorists” in Crimea, new detentions regarding “Bolotnoya Case”, letters from political prisoners, police attack of a gig, and other. If you think, we have missed something in our article, or you know about other incidents of repression, please write to abc-msk@riseup.net.

Below you can read instructions on how to transfer funds to ABC-Moscow.

Arrest of Aleksandr Kolchenko in Crimea
Alexander “Tundra” Kolchenko, our anarchist and anti-fascist comrade, was arrested by Federal Security Service of Russia (FSB)  in Simferopol in the middle of May. During that time a local famous film director Oleg Sentsov, social activist Gennady Afanasyev and Alexey Chirny were also arrested. (more…)

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Posted in Social Control

Repressions against Crimean activists: political context

Sunday, July 6th, 2014

Supporting campaign for Crimean antifascist Alexander Kolchenko

Background
Crimea peninsula in the Black Sea was a part of RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) and then since 1954 a part of Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which were both members of USSR. After USSR collapse in 1991 the new independent state Ukraine received the territory of Crimean peninsula. Though, under the treaty between Ukraine and Russia there were considerable contingent of Russian navy on the territory.

On March, 2004, Russia redeployed supplementary units to Crimea and effectively annexed it, taking the opportunity of destabilization in Ukraine after Maidan protests. The considerable part of Crimean population concerned about possibility for nationalists to come into power in Kiev. They believed in promises to improve the economic situation in republic and supported the annexation. Most of Crimean population watch Russian TV-news which is continually broadcasting propaganda. On 11 March, 2014 the Supreme Council of Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol town council signed a declaration of independence of Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol. The meeting of parliament was classified, the building was blocked by militants without decoration. At least such atmosphere can signify that deputies were under political pressure and the very secure of the quorum on that historical meeting can raise doubts. (more…)

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Posted in Anti-Fascist

Some thoughts on the Ukrainian revolution

Friday, June 27th, 2014

Here’s a letter from an anarchist friend (he’s in Kiev). It’s supposed to be a reply to Crimethinc’s recent article on Ukrainian revolution and to everyone who so eagerly claims Ukrainian revolution to be a right-wing only affair. Hope you enjoy.

–

Comrades!
I’m writing to you from Ukraine. I participated a lot in Maidan riots and different anarchist initiatives during that time and want to make several comments that I find to be important for a better understanding of events. In general I agree with your hypothesis’, but I want to emphasize several details which will make the picture not so dark.

To start with, nationalists and fascists took over the forefront of the confrontations only in the media image of Maidan. They have no real control over activities of protesters, but they controlled the scene of Maidan and the fascination of the mainstream medias.

Fascists from “Right Sector” and other organizations had a control only over their members. And it is very remarkable to emphasize that their organizational structures hadn’t been very hierarchical. Groups among them were decentralized. (more…)

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Posted in Anti-Fascist

Statement on the confrontation in Ukraine

Friday, June 27th, 2014

In the ongoing conflict, we support neither Ukrainian government nor pro-Russian factions that established their authority on the portion of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts. The working class (i.e. everyone who has neither power nor capital) is equally alien both to the concept of ​​unitary Ukraine and to the ideas of ​​”federalization” or creation of new states — these are merely the games of politicians, drawing blood from ordinary people. We, the left and the anarchists, should primarily adhere to the needs of the working class in the war-torn regions of Ukraine, protect their rights and freedoms.

Against LPR and DPR!

Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” are a collection of warring right-wing juntas. Rights and freedoms, which are granted to the rest of Ukraine, are not available in the territories under their control.
Public manifestation of political dissent is not possible there; worker rights activists who criticized DPR were kidnapped and tortured. Upon preservation of these regimes the working class will be completely deprived of any opportunity to defend their legal rights. The only possible form of the “left” activity in DPR and LPR is the ritual worship of Soviet symbols, which has nothing to do with the workers’ interests. (more…)

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Posted in Autonomy

Solidarity to anarchist Aleksandr Kolchenko, detained on terror charges! (Crimea)

Friday, June 27th, 2014

Aleksandr Kolchenko was detained in Crimea on the 17th of May 2014 on suspicion of participation in a “terrorist group,” preparation of a terrorist attack, and arson.

He is suspected of having participated in a “terrorist group” which planned explosions near the eternal fire memorial and the Lenin monument in Simferopol on the 8th and 9th of May, and of having sabotaged railway tracks and electricity lines. Kolchenko is also suspected of having carried out two arson attacks: against the headquarters of the Russian Unity-party and Russian Community of Crimea on the 14th of April, and the office of the United Russia party in Simferopol on the 18th of April. He has since been transferred to Moscow and is being kept in the Lefortovo remand prison. The case is run by the FSB, the former KGB.

Aleksandr is an anarchist and antifascist who has participated in student and environmental actions. He has been part of campaigns against tuition fees and supported workers’ rights protests. He was under constant Nazi attack for his antifascist ideas. One incident took place after a film screening about murdered anti-fascist journalist Anastasiya Baburova, where he was attacked by thirty Nazis using knives. In this context, claims by the Russian authorities that Aleksandr is part of the nationalist “Right Sector” are ridiculous, and he is denying these claims. (more…)

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Posted in Social Control