A-Infos (en) Russia, AIT: Ukrainian anarchists - participants of the international week of action against the war in Prague (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Internationalism - a guide to action or an excuse for inaction? ---- 
Welcome speech to the Week of Action in Prague ---- 9 points for further 
discussion from the anarchist portal from Kharkov. In some very, very 
eastern geography of the country, which until 2022 many would not even 
find on the map ---- Program and list of participants of the event ---- 
1. First of all, these theses will only talk about the war in Ukraine. 
No regional egoism. Before Kharkov was close to the front, there were 
many students from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa; now we have 
no opportunity to learn about what is happening there through personal 
communication. Therefore, we will limit ourselves only to what is 
visible from our bell tower.

2. The situation in recent months in Ukraine fully confirms the thoughts 
from our English-language interviews dated February 24 and the review 
article dated March 31. Ukraine is turning from a concentration camp 
into a death camp. Yesterday, the law on total mobilization No. 10449, 
adopted on April 11, came into force, contrary to all forecasts that 
deputies would be afraid to do this. Now, during any street check of 
documents and reconciliation with the electronic register of persons 
liable for military service, cops will have the right to detain a man 
and take him to the TCC if his data is not in the system after the 
expiration of the 60-day submission period. For not having a military ID 
card with you, you are also subject to detention and busification to 
establish data. A day earlier, the Supreme Recycler signed Law No. 10379 
increasing absentee fines for evaders. According to it, for refusal to 
appear on a subpoena or to update credentials, an absentee fine of 17 to 
25.5 thousand hryvnia will be imposed with the prospect of blocking 
accounts in case of non-payment (the minimum salary in Ukraine is 8 
thousand hryvnia). Estimates of the number of citizens planned to be 
drafted into the army vary from 150,000 to 500,000; in the second case, 
this will mean the mobilization of every tenth man of the corresponding 
age. In other words, the totality of mobilization is limited only by the 
financial capabilities of the budget.

In recent days, the editors of our media have prepared detailed analyzes 
of the butcher law and the reaction to it at the grassroots, as well as 
how its adoption affected the flight from Ukraine. They talked about a 
project for free mutual assistance of Ukrainians in unauthorized border 
crossings and about the Russian military man Yuri Galushko from Kharkov, 
who killed six artillery commanders for his mother, who was injured 
during the Russian shelling of Kharkov, and then fled with weapons. For 
the International Day of Conscientious Objectors to Military Service on 
May 15, we wrote about the spring increase in desertion from Russian 
troops and talked with a deserter from the Ukrainian border service.

The disintegration of the Ukrainian army over these couple of months 
began to be discussed at the highest level. According to one of the most 
famous lawyers in the country, Rostislav Kravets, during the war, more 
than 100 thousand military personnel left their units without 
permission; parliamentarian from the ruling party Yuri Kamelchuk 
announced 15 thousand military personnel who received disciplinary 
sanctions for failure to comply with orders or desertion. Very often 
those who escaped from units are not punished in any way, otherwise 
there will be no one to fight at all. Demoralization in the Armed Forces 
of Ukraine is facilitated by a lack of understanding of the prospects of 
war, the attitude towards soldiers as meat and the failure of parliament 
to fulfill its promise to set a demobilization period when adopting bill 
No. 10449. The shortage of personnel in the army is even more acute than 
that of weapons and ammunition. The repressive bodies are afraid of 
being sent to the front and turn a blind eye to any violence of 
territorial recruitment centers against civilians, just so as not to go 
to fight themselves.

3. Calls to unite against uniformed sadists who imagine that they have 
the right to decide who lives and who dies are as ubiquitous among the 
masses as the willingness to organize together to change life is weak. 
More and more of those who have nothing to protect are trying to leave 
Ukraine, without choosing between life under the Kremlin and death for 
the wallets of scum at the trough. On May 17, a sad anniversary was 
reached: 30 men had already officially died trying to cross the Tisza 
River bordering EU countries. Those who do not flee are forced to 
survive under virtual house arrest (many have been doing this for more 
than a year, but now this practice is becoming widespread). Talk about 
the imminent end of Ukraine as a state, especially in the front-line 
areas, also does not contribute to protest activity: from this point of 
view, there is no point in risking criminal liability if it will end 
soon anyway and you will have to think about what to do in the new 
reality. "It is better to possibly die in the Russian occupation than to 
definitely die now for the internal occupation," such is the logic of 
this gloomy apathy.

4. However, episodic examples of social resistance are regular. April 6, 
Desnyansky district of Kyiv: during a conversation between the TCC 
patrol and a certain passer-by, Timofey Molderf, born in 1972, 
approached one of them from behind. and struck him on the head, after 
which he took a knife from his bag and tried to stab another raid 
participant with it. April 20, near the village of Chornoguzy, 
Chernivtsi region: two civilians knocked a TCC employee to the ground 
during an alert. The vehicle was blocked, he fired a pistol into the 
ground, but for some time he was not allowed to enter the car. On the 
evening of May 3, in the town of Vinogradov in Transcarpathia, about 10 
people of Roma nationality gathered at the entrance to the TCC and tried 
to open the gates by force, protesting against the mobilization of two 
of their fellow villagers. The officers fired into the air; the next 
day, video footage was published with apologies from the women who took 
part in the assault. The evening of the same May 3 in Zaporozhye: at the 
call of the wife of Evgeniy Butenko, who was detained by the cops at 
home that day because of allegedly being wanted, a crowd of residents 
came to the TCC. There they shouted: "Let all the people out of the 
basement!", "You should protect us, not kidnap us!" Police surrounded 
the building to prevent people from entering. The three-hour rally was 
broadcast by the YouTube channel of local activists of the "living 
people" movement. On the night of May 12, in the same Zaporozhye, 
someone (according to rumors) threw two Molotov cocktails into the 
building of the Shevchenko TCC, they did not catch fire. On May 14, cops 
announced the detention in this city of an organized group of "living 
people" of five people who are accused of spreading disinformation about 
the mobilization: activists talked about its illegality and filmed the 
abductions. At least one of the detainees was severely beaten. 
Sinelnikovo in the Dnepropetrovsk region: yesterday, TCC officers were 
transporting private security officer Alexander Sadovsky, born in 1975. 
in the back seat of a car; During transportation, he took out a knife 
and put it to the throat of one of the employees. Another began to take 
the knife and received a stab wound in the arm. The same day in the 
regional center, Dnieper: unknown people in black attacked a military 
medic sitting in a camouflage minivan with the words "faggot TTSKshny", 
blew gas from a can through an open window, broke his face and glasses. 
And how many videos every day of how passers-by help fight off those 
kidnapped on the streets!

Also on May 18, in the afternoon, in the village of Bolgan, Vinnytsia 
region, border guards noticed a man trying to cross the 
Ukrainian-Moldovan border outside the checkpoint. When detained, a 
resident of Kyiv born in 1990. hit one of them, then used a gas spray 
and tried to take away his service weapon. One of the border guards 
fired two warning shots and then shot him in the legs; he was hospitalized.

5. Parallels in internationalist circles between the Russian-Ukrainian 
conflict and the First World War with calls for Russian and Ukrainian 
workers to stop military production do not take into account the fact 
that Ukraine is fighting on the economic base of its Western partners. 
All critical goods, from ammunition and fuel to food and medicine, are 
supplied from abroad. Ukraine's drone production and military equipment 
repair bases do not play a key role in the war. The weak link is the 
transport system. Ukrainian international carriers are sounding the 
alarm: many truckers, having left Ukraine, abandon their trucks and 
refuse to return; the logistics workers who remain in the country simply 
quit or do not want to leave home, saying "let the TCC and the police 
take it." Yesterday afternoon, about 100 trucks partially blocked the 
Odessa-Kyiv highway, one of the busiest in the country. The traffic jam 
at the exit from Odessa reached 5 km. Strikers from different regions 
declared that "the country rests on us" and demanded reservations from 
mobilization for their profession; They let cars and buses through. In 
our Kharkov, transport companies are also on the verge of stopping; 
trade is in danger of collapsing at the national level. This was 
probably the maximum strike struggle that the working class is capable 
of under existing conditions. By the way, this event attracted much less 
public attention yesterday than the fight between Usik and Fury for the 
title of absolute world heavyweight champion. A lot says something about 
the environment in which the Assembly has to operate.

At the same time, this month marked in Ukraine the first public episode 
of ordinary workplace struggles during the war. On the morning of May 1, 
in Druzhkovka, due to a strike and rally, a plant supplying bread to the 
north of the government-controlled part of the Donetsk region stopped. 
The reason is many months of salary arrears; About 200 people work 
there. However, for the reasons described above, such protests are 
unlikely to have a critical impact on military operations. Castles don't 
worry about whether their slaves are starving.

6. While foreign comrades continue to ignore our calls to campaign among 
Ukrainian refugees, the state does not leave them alone. The moribund 
regime is desperate to recapture the fugitive serfs, whether through 
refusing to grant consular services to men without military records or 
directly negotiating to prevent European authorities from enforcing the 
integration of Ukrainians. Amid the silence of internationalists, this 
month migrants began to speak out for their rights. As you can read, 
with a liberal democratic agenda rather than a class one:

It is noteworthy that they sent a photo of the picket to a conservative 
anti-Maidan blogger from Kyiv, who also provided informational support 
for the protests in Zaporozhye. The forecast from the winter interview 
with the Assembly that, given the passivity of the international 
anarchist movement, the anti-war theme will be used by right-wing 
conspiracy theorists can be considered confirmed. And we believe that 
this happens not only in Ukraine.

7. This can only be changed by going to the Ukrainian embassies and 
consulates with demands to release those who do not want to fight. We 
have no illusions that the regime will take such a step - this 
ridiculous hybrid of the American Confederation with North Korea is 
ready to quickly send the majority of the country's population to 
mincemeat, just to gain at least a little more time to plunder what has 
not yet been stolen. Even if Ukraine opens its borders, European 
countries may already close entry. Therefore, if such actions get into 
the major media, they will first of all show anti-war people in Ukraine 
that our community really stands on their side. Without concrete 
practical steps, any slogans about "no war other than class" will be 
perceived as an empty abstraction for everything good and against 
everything bad.

8. Although proponents of the war sadly acknowledge that 
internationalist positions are gaining strength in foreign anarchism, it 
still devotes a disproportionate amount of attention to denouncing 
social chauvinists and a disproportionate amount to discussing what is 
actually happening on the ground. For our collective, even before the 
war, it was self-evident that anarchism is about "no borders, no 
nations" instead of "borders and nation above all"; proving such basic 
things in the third year of the war is even less interesting. 
Organizations of Ukrainian former anarchists may have significant 
influence in Western countries, but in Ukraine they are unlikely to be 
known by more than a few hundred people, and wasting such effort on 
criticizing them looks like free advertising from here. As Elon Musk 
says, let's not be too hard on NPCs.

9. And yet, all of the problems listed do not negate the historical 
significance of the upcoming Week of Action. The whole history of Europe 
1918-1923. is a history of social revolutions that failed or were lost 
due to the unpreparedness of revolutionaries, resulting in even greater 
global carnage. This history must not be repeated. We hope that the 
upcoming event will be only the beginning of great anti-war activity, 
for which a permanent structure will be created from comrades from 
different countries. For our part, we are ready to provide assistance 
and support to this cause as much as we can now.

Our readers are well aware that we try not to quote classics in order to 
avoid a cult of personality, but it seems that this is exactly the case 
when it is worth ending with the words of Bakunin from a letter to Nechaev:

"...This passion is only valid and salutary when both sides are equally 
and closely connected in it - negative and positive. One negative 
passion, hatred, creates nothing; does not even create the force 
necessary for destruction, and therefore will not destroy anything; the 
positive alone will not destroy anything, and since the creation of the 
new is impossible without the destruction of the old, it also does not 
create anything, always remaining a doctrinaire dream or dreamy 
doctrinaire."

Let's remember this in our future work.

https://aitrus.info/node/6219
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