A-Infos (en) Ukraine, "Assembly": From arbitrary demobilization to the destruction of Ukraine. Interview with "Assembly" from the late autumn of 2025. (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

We have translated a major new interview with the underground media in 
Kharkiv about Camille Chinardet, a student of international relations in 
Strasbourg. Published especially on the anniversary of the end of the 
First World War, interrupted by workers and soldiers. ---- About the 
situation: ---- - How would you describe the situation in Kharkiv right 
now? From a social and economic point of view, as well as from a mood 
point of view at the moment? And what happened to you on February 24, 2022?

- The city has been 20 km from the front line for a year and a half 
(since May 2024). More details about the economic situation can be found 
in our separate large material on the Day of the City.

The rest is not much different from other cities in the southeast. It 
resembles the occupation of 1942-1943: every day civilians are taken out 
into the streets, packed into minibuses called "dushegubki" and driven 
to their deaths. This is without mentioning the usual prisons and 
pre-trial detention centers, full of political prisoners of all ages who 
receive multi-year sentences for such terrible crimes as working in the 
municipal services of Russian-occupied Kupyansk or talking about the 
common historical past of Russians and Ukrainians. The local language, 
holidays, monuments and toponyms are banned by the administration as if 
they were some kind of colonizers. The prospects for getting through the 
winter season with heating and electricity are very bleak. Of course, 
this does not apply to the elites - they will certainly have them.

A wonderful illustration of the Ukrainian authorities' attitude towards 
the local population was provided by the leftist historian from Odessa, 
Vyacheslav Azarov:

"The Ombudsman for Language Issues Ivanovskaya called on the police in 
Kharkiv to hold a preventive conversation with the owners of a bar where 
visitors sing karaoke in Russian. The employee herself admitted that the 
law does not prohibit this, but given the Russian aggression, such songs 
caused public outrage, which the ombudsman shares. In essence, the 
employee called on the police to break the law because the emotions of a 
part of society that does not tolerate its fellow citizens speaking 
other languages ​​are more important to it. The familiar social 
hierarchy is in effect again, in which there are ordinary citizens, 
above them the state, and at the top a patriotic elite that is above the 
law. I must disappoint those who fight against imperialism, but this 
scheme exactly reproduces the order of the late Russian Empire, when 
public behavior was dictated by the Black Hundreds. This "salt of the 
earth", the "true Russian people" also had the patriotic privilege of 
using arbitrary repression to improve the behavior of their fellow 
citizens in favor of the autocracy, and the police actively used them 
for this purpose when they were not legally allowed to do so."

Meanwhile, according to government data, a total of 51% of young people 
in Ukraine spoke Russian in their daily lives in 2024. This year, 40% of 
students in Ukrainian schools speak Russian during breaks, and 30% do so 
at home and with friends. The share of those who consider Ukrainian 
their native language has officially fallen from 71% to 64% in the past 
year.

- How did life change during those years because of the invasion?
- Most became poorer (those who managed to survive), others became 
incredibly rich, and for some the Russian invasion simply gave them 
freedom to realize their ugliest sadistic fantasies. The train is on 
fire, and the doors are locked by the conductors. That is why more than 
half of our content is devoted to how to leave the blue-and-yellow 
mixture between a drug den and a madhouse, without asking anyone for 
permission . The Makhnovists did the same: when they could not hold 
Gulyaypole, instead of defending it to the last fighter, they simply 
moved to where it was easier for them to apply their principles.

Recently, another major problem has officially emerged: many Ukrainian 
defectors, traumatized by the violence of the regime that is trying to 
send them to their deaths, are starting to justify the Kremlin's 
aggressive policy, blaming Ukraine as the sole culprit for the 
continuation of the war and rejecting any internationalist program. They 
should understand that Russian military contractors are no less 
interested in waging war on the last poor Ukrainian (or even poor 
woman). All post-Soviet dictators are essentially one company, be it 
Zevalier, Putler or Lukachet. People who are complete strangers to each 
other are slaughtering tens of thousands in a manipulated match of those 
who know and communicate very well.

- What was the situation before that? How was it?
- Everything was the same, just a little softer.

- What was the state of the left in politics before the invasion?
- Before the fascist coup of 2014, both Stalinists and libertarian 
leftists gathered hundreds of demonstrators in our city for May Day. 
After that, the city authorities stopped approving such protests, and 
the police allied themselves with the street neo-Nazis (although even 
before the Maidan they also did not want to investigate the far-right 
attacks on their opponents). Due to the unwillingness or inability of 
the leftists to guarantee their own safety, they practically lost all 
public influence in the city.

- Can you tell me to what extent people are able to engage in politics 
and participate in it under the restrictions that war usually imposes?
- It depends on what you mean by "politics".

- Were there protests against the government's decisions regarding NABU 
and SAPU 1 in the summer of this year in Kharkiv?
- Yes, about a thousand people gathered at a rally. But the conflicts 
between one group of state parasites and another do not interest us, 
especially since these rallies took place only thanks to complete 
tolerance from above due to the EU patronage of these agencies.

From May 15 to 18, over a hundred collectives and initiatives from 
different countries gathered at the Balkan Anarchist Book Fair 2025 in 
Thessaloniki. There was also a place for the modest presentation of the 
Assembly " The Fenced Island of Pain ". The comrades especially 
appreciated our thesis: "It is better to be a termite that gradually 
weakens the edifice of militarism than a flea on the tail of one of the 
fighting dogs". Of course, the gloomy picture we painted there is 
already largely outdated: now we have much more positive news .

For "Assembly":
- When did you start "Assembly"? Why?

- Well, we already described it in detail more than 3 years ago.

- If you think your initiative has a purpose, what would you say it is?

- Our immediate goal right now is to save as many lives as possible from 
the eternal reign of Zelensky and the boundless enrichment of his 
cronies. The lives of people that the Moloch state wants to take away 
for more and more NATO funding. Whenever Ukrainian representatives or 
supporters tell you about Ukrainian civilian victims of Russian bombing, 
ignoring the fact that closed borders prevent these people from fleeing 
to safety, know this: they simply want to hide their responsibility for 
these deaths.

- Did the full-scale invasion change anything in your initiative? In 
what way?

- We change along with the life around us. Reading the above interview 
from 2022, could anyone have imagined then that we would consider 
Ukraine no less cruel than Russia and much more cynical? Of course, when 
in the interview linked above we said that Russia was committing 
genocide against everything Ukrainian, we simply did not yet know what 
real genocide (in Gaza) looked like. However, another point remains 
completely relevant: the only place in Ukraine that is safe from Russian 
attacks is the government district and the palaces in the VIP suburbs of 
Kiev, where the main winners of this war live.

Similarly, Ukrainian drones are not killing residents of the Kremlin, 
who enjoy full security guarantees, but civilians in the border regions 
of Belgorod and Kursk, many of whom are themselves Ukrainians with 
relatives in Kharkiv . This means that our main idea from 2022 remains 
the same: the real enemies are not on the other side of the trenches, 
but on the other side of the fence around the administrative buildings.

- In your email you write that you no longer identify as anarchists. Can 
you explain why?

- Because of what the anarchist movement is doing. The very fact that it 
focuses so seriously on proving elementary theses like "an anarchist 
cannot kill and die on the orders of the state" or "not all Ukrainians 
want to serve in the army" makes one think sadly about its prospects. It 
is even sadder that this has been going on for 4 years in a row. For us, 
Buenaventura Durruti has already said it all: fascism is not for 
discussion, but for destruction. Some even go so far as to express 
solidarity with all those forcibly mobilized, including Russian 
mercenary stormtroopers, as if the conveyor belt of death did not rely 
on their obedience.

All that has been said about anarchist discourse does not mean that we 
are disappointed with anarchist practices - no, the problem is that this 
discourse is completely incompatible with the current challenges of 
social struggle. What could be more anarchic than defending freedom of 
movement from the cannibal state, in order to be a human being, and not 
a bargaining chip for those who think they have the right to decide who 
dies when?

- You focus mainly on local news. Why is this choice?

- Our budget is very limited even for local work. Expanding nationally 
would require a whole new level of funding. Plus, we don't know which 
other regions could join us if we did.

- According to your website, you say you operate through collective 
intelligence. How does that work?

- We can be in any country and know what is happening in our region 
thanks to our readers who send us information through the contact form.

- Would you say that it is difficult to be a media outlet and cover 
events in this context of spreading fake news everywhere?

- This is especially true when it comes to scenes with the buses or when 
the green goblins are holding people hostage in the basement. That's why 
we don't publish all the content that is sent to us. We have to select 
and check it carefully. As you can see, there is often a lot of time 
between our publications: to avoid publishing unverified things and at 
the same time not to repeat what has already appeared in many other media.

A year ago, on October 31, the anarchist guerrilla Kyriakos Ximitiris 
died in an explosion in an apartment in Athens. On that occasion, his 
image appeared on the wall of the Israeli separation barrier in 
Palestine, along with the names of his arrested comrades and the words 
that all walls will fall. A week before that anniversary, on October 24, 
an unknown young man from Kharkiv blew himself up along with a border 
patrol service while trying to reach the Belarusian border. Since he 
left no suicide note and it is not known whether anyone helped him, we 
can only guess at his motives.

About the war:
- Since my master's thesis is mainly dedicated to anarchist groups and 
individuals in Ukraine, you are the only group I have seen that talks 
about deserters. Can you think of a reason for that? Why did you choose 
this topic?

- Probably because the other groups you encountered are in state service 
and the state has not allowed them to talk about it. This is not 
surprising - the nationalists, the army and the border guards everywhere 
are links in the same chain that serves the ruling class - not only in 
Ukraine. The situation here is the same as when they started writing in 
Ukrainian instead of Russian, as if with a snap of their fingers, 
probably without realizing how absurd their stories about the "war to 
protect their identity and independence" sound.

The more their beloved army disintegrates and the more territory it 
gives up, the more impotent rage and hysteria we will see from those you 
ask about in this question. Our good Belarusian "comrades" recently even 
presented a whole list of them , which is regularly updated. And yes, it 
happens - someone has dared to retaliate with the same , can you 
imagine? There is nothing to worry about: if this continues, their flame 
will be enough to heat at least half of Kharkiv if the heating season is 
interrupted. Moreover, true fans of Ukraine do not waste time at all 
visiting foreign events; they enjoy life behind the Iron Curtain.

Those of them who are actually in Ukraine are also not having the best 
of times. They seem to fear that at this rate there will soon be no one 
left in Ukraine but themselves, and yet - by their own admission - their 
masters did not even allow them to form a fully subordinate 
"anti-authoritarian platoon". And they still do not allow them. Then 
these people complained about the "damned military bureaucracy" for 
which they voluntarily agreed to fight. Since their masters from the 
state did not even allow them to organize a platoon, they had to join 
openly far-right units, and then distort and lie . Well, let's not be 
too hard on these individuals.

By the way, a year and a half ago we confirmed information about more 
than 100,000 cases of military desertion. Ukrainian state propaganda, as 
usual, called it fake news. However, now this figure is officially even 
three times higher. According to your interlocutors, desertion is in 
Russia's favor, but how can it benefit from it if, according to them, 
Russia is already on the verge of decline with each passing day?

Although none of us are deserters, this topic is close to us not only 
for political, but also for aesthetic reasons. We respect brave people - 
and to oppose criminal law requires more courage than to take a spoon 
from Mr. Kuleba and, on someone's orders, die in a muddy ditch like 
cattle in a slaughterhouse. Even if such a deserter simply returned 
home, let alone walk dozens of kilometers through the mountains with a 
backpack , cross barbed wire and risk dying of cold.

- I know there has been a lot of debate about participating in the war 
or condemning it and its impact on people. Do you think this is a 
relevant debate? Is this a controversial position at all? What is your 
position?

- For our group, this question never arose. Long before 2022, Ukraine 
deprived some of us of free education, forbade others from working in 
their native Russian language, and others simply took away other 
personal belongings, creating accounts to settle. When it also put the 
male population aged 18-60 under the trench (from the evening of 
02/24/2022), what doubts could there be that the external threats facing 
this country should be fully exploited, even if at that moment life in 
the Russian-occupied territories was much worse than under the Ukrainian 
government? ( Now the situation there has partly improved, partly not. ) 
And who can free the working class from state coercion and terror, if 
not these people themselves, refusing to be controlled and taking their 
lives into their own hands, like their ancestors who escaped feudal 
oppression and thus founded our city?

It is remarkable that we did not immediately turn to dealing with 
deserters. At the beginning of the war it was rather a marginal issue, 
so the headlines on anarchist websites that linked the Assembly to this 
topic were more like clickbait on the part of the editors. The time for 
this really came much later.

October 2025 has already set a new record for unauthorized desertion and 
desertion: 21,602 such cases officially, compared to 17,000-18,000 per 
month in the summer and about 30,000 mobilized persons per month. And no 
one still knows how many others left their bank cards with their 
commanders so that they could receive money for them and not declare 
them missing. This means that in the time it takes to send a donation to 
the "Assembly" , several more people could get rid of their 
trident-marked slave uniforms. As the last leader of the Soviet Union 
would say, the process has begun!

- I read some of the interviews you gave to European newspapers before 
or during the war. Would you say that pacifism is a position that can be 
taken at the moment?

- No, we would prefer to turn the war on dictatorships into a war 
against them. Of course, pacifists can be our allies, just as 
cooperation with some moderate trade unionists is not always in conflict 
with the struggle to abolish wage labor.

In addition, our hopes for even the slightest revolutionary prospects in 
Russia faded after the defeat of the Wagner rebellion in June 2023. Then 
the Ukrainian counteroffensive failed and mass mobilization began. Then, 
two years ago, we called this the agony of the dictatorship. Now we see 
how it gradually turns into death throes. Perhaps after its collapse, 
now driven more by the Ukrainian working class than by the slowly 
advancing Russian troops, the social struggle will spread in Russia 
beyond the front line, as it did from Russia to Germany in 1918? Time 
will tell; for now we must focus on more urgent tasks.

- On the other hand, would you say that there is an interest in 
continuing the war? For whom?

- The circle of those interested in the war is very wide; this is far 
from a simple conspiracy of a few oligarchs, but a direct material 
interest of a fairly wide segment of the population. From trash media 
receiving subsidies for inciting hatred, to military volunteers 
collecting donations, and people who make money from taking pictures of 
the consequences of bombings. Just imagine that even the leading drone 
manufacturer in Ukraine before the war was a casting agency for the 
dictator's television projects. There is no reason to consider this 
group "victims of aggression", and that is why their leader has so 
repeatedly failed peace talks: in Paris in 2019, in Istanbul in 2022, in 
London in 2025.

- You publish mostly critical articles about the war and defend this 
position in your interviews. Have you been threatened because of these 
opinions? Who?

- Many people are crying and gnashing their teeth because of our very 
position. You have probably met some of them, even in France. If we were 
not receiving threats from them, it would mean that we were doing 
everything wrong. More importantly, other people have also received 
threats for sending us information. However, this is meaningless: we 
have not yet exposed any of our informants.

And it is not entirely true that we mainly publish critical articles 
about the war. Since last fall, we have been focusing mainly on 
publishing useful information about escaping abroad, based on stories 
and consultations on our 24/7 email hotline.

- In my country (France), people on the left say that nationalism in 
Ukraine is very strong and therefore very dangerous for the left in 
Ukraine, especially in the midst of this war, which has made it 
extremely strong, so we should support the war very carefully. Do you 
feel that way in Kharkiv?

- Just read everything we answered above and draw your own conclusions. 
We can only add that only the most peripheral part of our team remained 
in Ukraine, otherwise we would have long ago shared the fate of Bogdan 
Sirotyuk, Angela Gurina, Alexander Matyushenko, the prisoners in the 
"leaflet cases" and many, many other Ukrainians who simply dared to have 
their own opinion.

- As a collective, do you see an end to this conflict? And if so, what end?

- The expected depletion of Ukraine's financial resources "by the end of 
the first quarter of 2026" may indeed mean the final act of the military 
drama due to lack of money for the army. In this bloody stalemate, the 
least illusory solution seems to be the most negative scenario for 
Ukraine: some severe military failure, which in turn opens the way to 
some compromise, just as the severe military defeats in the Donbass in 
2014 and 2015 paved the way for the previous peace agreements in Minsk. 
That is probably why Trump said "we'll see in 6 months", and his Kremlin 
colleague reacted so calmly to US sanctions. We predicted this almost a 
year ago.

The military collapse of the concentration camp could greatly facilitate 
the release of millions of hostages and allow them to find a more 
desirable place to live, although it is important to remember that if 
you still have to cross the border outside the checkpoint, in Ukraine 
this is still punishable by an administrative fine, while in Russia it 
is punishable by up to 5 years in prison. Therefore, we are talking 
about a war between two barracks of the same prison system.

- What do you think Ukraine will look like in the future from a social, 
economic and political perspective? Are you optimistic or pessimistic 
about this issue? Will there be room for left-wing policies at the 
national and local levels?

- Who can guarantee that Ukraine will exist next year? We adhere to the 
principle of "hope for the best, prepare for the worst". That is why we 
do not advise anyone to connect their future not only with Ukraine, but 
even with neighboring countries. We especially call for children to be 
taken out of Ukrainian schools, since only the totalitarian, 
misanthropic ideology of today's Ukrainian nationalism is taught there.

Ukraine is struggling with the heroes of anarchism even a century after 
their death: two years ago, in Verkhovtsevo, Dnepropetrovsk region, a 
monument to the legendary sailor Anatoly Zheleznyakov, one of the most 
famous deserters in the former USSR for his role in the social 
revolution in Petrograd, Kharkov and Odessa, mortally wounded at this 
station in a battle with the then Z-forces, was dismantled. Last month, 
the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance (the government body 
that decides what Ukrainians should think and discuss) included Mikhail 
Bakunin on the list of figures who should be excluded from the public 
sphere for "anti-Semitic views". Meanwhile, among the heroes of the 20th 
century canonized by this state, only a few were not involved in the 
mass murder of Jews, and the director of the institute himself is a 
former officer of the openly neo-Nazi 3rd Assault Brigade.

More personal questions (again, you don't have to answer, for me this is 
a way to better understand where your initiative comes from):
- Who are the people who participate in the "Assembly"?

- A small group of proud deserters and women who support them. Let's go 
back a little to your previous questions. Among those who liked the 
aforementioned text of the Belarusian ACS on Facebook, there are only 
foreigners, a few Ukrainian emigrants and a few media activists from the 
Ukrainian Information Troops. There are no ordinary Ukrainian workers 
who face the danger of being crammed into a "bus of invulnerability" 
and, if they cannot pay, probably dying even before arriving at the 
front from beatings or lack of medical care. This answers another 
question of yours: why do we care about how to escape from the army and, 
more generally, from the national prison, while for them this topic is 
irrelevant.

If some of you participated in previous initiatives, activities, or for 
example in the Maidan in 2013-2014, or took part in the anti-terrorist 
operation (as the Ukrainian government called it at the time) that took 
place afterwards, could you tell me about it?

- Of the current participants in the Assembly, one was a student in 
2013-2014 and followed these events as an independent observer, without 
taking sides. The ideas of creating an anarchist armed underground 
organization never materialized, as all the anarchists who did not join 
the neo-Nazis simply chose to withdraw from all activity. The rest were 
students at the time and did not have much interest in politics.

Even if we had been politically conscious in 2014, we would never have 
participated in the political games sponsored by NATO, knowing the fate 
of Iraq, Libya, etc. The war was started by those who in the winter of 
that year shouted "Muscovites to the knife!" and grabbed weapons, taking 
advantage of the hesitation of the then regime to suppress them due to 
pressure from the West. The Russian aggression, which began with the 
annexation of Crimea in March 2014, the subsequent creation of puppet 
ultra-conservative "people's republics" in Donbass and reached full 
force in February 2022, was the next stage - external intervention in an 
already ongoing civil conflict. The Kremlin used the rise to power of 
fascist street gangs (who shared the monopoly on violence with the state 
in Ukraine) for its own purposes.

- What will you do when the war is over?

- It depends on how and when it ends. We can assume that both Ukrainian 
society and the new diaspora abroad will have a strong desire to 
persecute those who are currently waging war against their own people. 
Let's see what happens...

Is there anything else you would like to add about the war, about the 
"Assembly," about life in Kharkov, the deserters, Ukraine in general (I 
apologize for being very general), or about the left in Ukraine?
- Down, down, down Ukraine! Glory, glory, glory to the deserters! No 
borders, no nations, fuck mobilization!

Thank you very much for your answers! I wish you luck in everything.

- Thank you for doing this and for reaching out to us. Good luck with 
your research!

Source

National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and Specialized 
Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine - transl. note

https://www.anarchy.bg
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