Elephant in the room

The full scale war continues in Europe for 446 days. And even though Putin’s plans to conquer Ukraine on a couple of days failed, Kremlin is not giving up their plans on taking over large parts of the country. In the struggle against invaders, a lot of different powers took to arms, including leftists and anarchists. With the anti-authoritarian unit gone, most of those people were scattered around different units on the front lines. But their politics are not lost and many still stick to their ideas despite different challenges.

In this episode our interview partner is Lesik from Kyiv, who became politically active more than 17 year ago and through all those years was fighting different struggle for justice and equality. Through his eyes, you can see another side of political activism in Ukraine. We participated together with Lesik in some protests in Ukraine and outside of it many years ago, but the bonds of struggle are strong. Our comrade remain as sharp in his political perspectives as ever and even dares to challenge Noam Chomsky to a duel… a dialectical one, and invites Slavoj Žižek to visit him with a possibility of sleeping on a coach.

This interview is dedicated to our comrades that lost their lives in Ukraine fighting not only for freedom of people, not states. We remember them and will forever carry them through our struggles.

Links of the show:
Timothy Snyder: The Making of Modern Ukraine https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz_1Mx1MaO6sw_
Serhii Plokhy. The Gates of Europe : A History of Ukraine. https://chtyvo.org.ua/authors/Plokhii_Serhii/The_Gates_of_Europe__A_History_of_Ukraine_anhl/
Yuri Samoilenko https://avtonom.org/en/news/anti-fascist-yuri-samoylenko-died-battle-kharkiv-region
Human rights activist and POW Maksym Butkevych https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-maksym-butkevych-conviction-severodonetsk-luhansk/
The Other Chelsea – A Story from Donetsk https://guidedoc.tv/documentary/the-other-chelsea-a-story-from-donezk-documentary-film/

How to support antiauthoritarian fighters and provide humanitarian aid to civilians:
https://www.solidaritycollectives.org/
https://gnip.blackblogs.org/
https://www.instagram.com/hwv_ua/
https://www.instagram.com/radicalaidforce/

International initiatives/campaigns to support Ukrainian resistance:
https://ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org/

Lesik’ personal telegram channel https://t.me/xeres_lsk

For March 8 Solidarity Collectives gathered statements from women and Queers fighting and resisting the Russian invasion. We recorded those statements to give this perspectives a voice

March 8. A day symbolizing freedom, a day motivating to fight, a day when the voices of feminists can be heard by millions of protesters walking the common path of equality.

But the path of Ukrainian women changed dramatically on February 24, 2022. The beginning of the war in Ukraine, became an existential turning point in the lives of millions of people, a peaceful safe reality burned in the flames of Russian rockets, was crushed by tanks marked “Z”, shot with civilians of Bucha…

Thousands of women decided to resist the aggressors from the East. They joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine to defend their homes, families, friends, those they love, freedom and independence of the people. Our initiative supports eight women or non-binary fighters who 2 years ago marched on equality in Ukraine and the world, and today they defend Ukraine at the cost of incredible efforts.

Each of them is a heroine, each has an incredible story, sometimes you wonder how much courage, strength, inspiration there is in one person, each of them sacrificed something, each of them lost someone.

Here, we gathered words from some of our comrades.

Solidarity Collectives
https://solidaritycollectives.org

In 1945 the city of Dresden was bombed by the allies. The story was used by multiple different political group in their attempt to appropriate this event. Starting from the crumbling Nazi regime and ending up with GDR’s so-called socialists. From 90th, neonazis are also using this day to rewrite the history and make Dresden as one of the biggest victims of the second world war.

For many years, anarchists and antifascists are resisting both the liberal narrative of victim city and nazi marches that are still happening despite the struggle.

In this episode we are talking about the history of the city prior to bombing, the reasons for it in the first place and how different political regimes approached it. With details of antifascists resistance to nazis in the city from the 90th till today.

In the last episode of this year we are talking with Alexis from Medical Self Defense Network – left and anarchists aiming to build up grassroot organizing of the health care as well as providing medical aid to the people in the war zones. MSDN is currently active in Ukraine and in the region of Northern Syria.

The website of the project is https://msdnetwork.org/. You can also follow them on twitter in case it survives Elon Musk – twitter.com/msd_network

Don’t forget to donate to the projects that are living mainly from donations of the communities.

In this interview we are talking with people of the No Borders Team, an anarchist collective from Polans, about the situation at the polish-belarusian border in the past year.
The north-eastern European migration route experienced a devastating renaissance late summer of 2021. The monster of EU has in turn showed its ugly face yet again too. Politicians feeding the narrative of danger through migration, lining up with right-wing and conservative forces. Europe defends its wealth with all possible means and accepts the death of people without hesitation.

Within a very short time, the polish-belarusian border zone was shielded, walls were built and the so-called border protection was incredibly militarized. Despite this sometimes deadly border policy, many people still try to cross it and seek protection in Europe. Activists who support them on their way face serious police and government repression.

We will try to give a picture of the most important things that happened in the last months, polish migrant policy and the conditions of People on the Move on the eastern border of the European Union (EU). And also we will talk about the work that grassroot groups are doing, from the very beginning in the border forests till today solidarity network that is trying to support people locked in closed detention centers.

The situation in Poland is a result of the EU anti-migrant policy, that People on the Move are facing in every external border of the EU. So this border is now one point more where human rights are violated and the EU is fighting a war against migration.

Donations:
The work of the collective needs support especially in terms of finances. So please help to collect donations so No Borders Team can continue their work. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/no-borders-team-support-no-border-s-activists#/

Contacts:
https://nobordersteam.noblogs.org/
https://t.me/s/no_borders_team
https://www.facebook.com/nobordersteam/

Music:
Granice moralno​ś​ci by Radikal Sisters
https://radikalsisters.bandcamp.com/track/granice-moralno-ci

Picture: Woman standing on a burning rubbish bin, waving her veil. Tehran, 1 October 2022, https://freethinker.co.uk

Baharak is an Iranian living in exile for some years already. She had to leave Iran and is now located in Leipzig. We talked about the feminist aspects of the revolution in Iran and the problems which appear with the uprising in the diaspora. The diaspora is as diverse as the people today in the streets of Iran. And different groups claim the revolution for their believes.

Information from anarchist perspective in the region -The Federation of Anarchism Era: https://asranarshism.com

Musik:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhkuVRiO_PE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b57XXjMhp0Q

CW: We talk about violence against woman and queer people.

The war in Ukraine has kept everyone’s attention for over eight months now. Many were horrified by the atrocities that accompany war efforts and are ongoing. We see dead soldiers, tortured civilians, sad faces of those who found their relatives killed and happy cries of locals on de-occupied territories. However, not much is known about one of the most marginalised and invisible groups of the population – the prisoners.
In this interview with talk with Masha from ABC-Belarus, who wrote an article about the situation of prisoners in Ukraine and Russia. We focus on the situation of facilities in occupied territories, people inside the prisons, forced labor of prisoners and more.

DONATE TO ORGANISATIONS THAT FIGHT FOR PRISONERS’ RIGHTS

Ukrainian Unity Alliance (provides legal and humanitarian aid to prisoners)
Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (prison monitoring, legal advice)
Ukraine Without Torture (monitoring and humanitarian aid)
Russia Behind Bars (follows news on using prisoners at war, provides consultations to prisoners and their families on evading the draft)

The war in Ukraine is going on now for 5 month and our solidarity is still necessary. We talked with Yuri a member of the network Solidarity Collectives about the challenges the activists are facing within their work, why the initiative Operation Solidarity was transformed, what is the focus of the new initiative and what are the wishes and advises towards the comrades from abroad.

Hi! We are the ‘Solidarity Collectives’ volunteer team. Previously, we worked under the name ‘Operation Solidarity’ but had to reformat our initiative. To find out why you can read our statement (https://telegra.ph/Solidarity-Collectives-Statement-07-04).

Solidarity Collectives is an anti-authoritarian volunteer network that unites several grassroots initiatives. We help the Ukrainian resistance movement to fight the Russian invasion, support progressive forces in this fight, help people who suffered because of the war and spread information about what is going on in Ukraine.

What do we do:

Support anti-authoritarian activists, union members, and grassroots activists who’ve joined the military units. As of today, Solidarity Collectives regularly support about 150 anti-authoritarian fighters, many of whom are currently on the frontline.
Regularly receive and transport humanitarian aid to where it’s needed the most. Usually, it’s medicines, clothes, food, sleeping bags and mats, gas burners and fuel for them, and electrical equipment.
Participate in conferences and discussions, and speak with journalists worldwide to communicate our position – that everyone who shares values of liberty and equality should support our struggle today.

How to support us:

Everything we do is only possible thanks to international solidarity. So if you want to stop Russian imperialism or mitigate its destructive consequences, which are already turning into a humanitarian disaster too, you can help us!

Our payment details:

Monobank (transfers inside Ukraine): 5375411415211403
PayPal: [email protected]
PayPal for humanitarian aid only: [email protected]

Our contacts:

Messages: @ContactCollectives
Email: [email protected]
Networks: Telegram (https://t.me/SolidarityCollectives), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/solidaritycollectives/), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/SolidarityCollectives)

Banner from Minsk in 2021 : Freedom is born in struggle

ABC Belarus is calling urgently for donations to continue their support of the anarchist and antifascist prisoners in Belarus. Since the uprising in 2020 the repression keeps going and right now there are 30 Antifascists and Anarchists imprisoned. The number is growing. In this interview a member of the solidarity campaign is explaining the recent situation in Belarus in general, as well as the situation of imprisoned people, how the repression is continuing and why so much money is needed.

Fundraising campaign: https://www.firefund.net/abcbelarus
Website ABC-Belarus: abc-belarus.org

Already on March 2, we conducted an interview with the independent journalist Dmitry Okrest. We talked about his perspective on the war, the reaction of society in general and the anarchist movement specifically, the ideology behind the war, and the impact the war has on russian society.

Information from anarchist perspective in Russia: avtonom.org