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With the anarchist movement seemingly completely lost interest in the situation in Ukraine, the May impasse in peace talks has become a catalyst for new things not seen since last year. Following the lull and apathy described in our interview, presented on the Balkan Anarchist Bookfair 2025, a new wave of public unrest is beginning in the country.
Since the evening of July 22, for the first time since 2022, political protests involving thousands of people are taking place in Kiev and a number of regional centers. The reason is the adopted law No. 12414 on curtailing the powers of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, which are being transferred from the control of Western embassies to the subordination of the Office of the Prosecutor General as ordinary bodies of the presidential vertical. At the moment, the regime is quite tolerant of these protests, since the protesters are not encroaching on its pillars – busification, closed borders and foreign funding of the war, but only demanding a more effective policy of using the country as a torpedo for NATO. Although the very fact that the various components of the system born by the far-right coup of 2014 are beginning to devour each other is also not bad. Possible destabilization of the regime may open up more space for anti-militarist activities.
For now, such flashes flare up spontaneously and suddenly fade away, under conditions of fear of prison terms and cruel tortures. On July 11, at the entrance to the Southern Railway in Kharkov, a crowd of disgruntled passersby, as the press service of the regional enlistment office claims, “put the life and health of the districtal TRC servicemen at risk.” One of the pixels fell from some slap. The investigative and operational group arrived at the scene. The regional police press service stated the next day that the TRC (territorial recruitment center) employees were escorting a military serviceman to a unit, during getting out of a service car, he began to resist, this attracted the attention of citizens. The 44-year-old participant in the conflict was detained “for causing bodily harm to a TRC employee,” he was notified of suspicion. A month earlier, on the evening of June 11, a 29-year-old previously convicted Kharkov resident, “invited to check the accounting documents” at the Novobavarsky District TRC, locked himself in one of the rooms, set fire to the fabric with a lighter and made his way out of the second-floor window. The area of the fire was 800 square meters. The flames engulfed several floors, and those inside managed to evacuate. The suspect was detained at night, and faces up to 10 years in prison. This is the first and so far the only case in Ukraine of such a building being destroyed by its prisoner during the entire war. Whether this is our influence, we can only guess, as the identity of the suspect is not disclosed.
Video is here
On May 29, in the town of Kamianets-Podilskyi in the Khmelnytsky region, about 100 civilians blocked an enlistment minibus where a man was dregged by force, and slashed the tires. The confrontation lasted for several hours – until late in the evening. What ultimately happened to the kidnapped one is unclear. That same evening, in the Transcarpathian village of Velykyi Bereznyi, a real battle broke out between border guards and a gypsy camp, against whose residents they were conducting an inspection raid together with the cops and the National Guard on suspicion of illegal border crossing or smuggling others. “During the clash, stones flew towards the border cars – two service vehicles were damaged. Shooting began, rubber bullets were used. As a result of the conflict, a woman was injured (in the stomach and arm) and a child was injured. Two border guards were also taken to the hospital. Eyewitnesses report that they beat the head of the outpost, the head of intelligence and his deputy. After the incident, the Roma tried to block the border unit in Velykyi Bereznyi, but it was unblocked.” Footage from Volyn was also appeared this week, showing how a Roma family chased away the enlisted men with flying stones, like the Palestinians on the West Bank…
On May 25, in Kremenchuk, during warning measures, two TRC employees knocked down a cyclist. After that, they were attacked by a mob of seven people, using pepper spray and a traumatic pistol. The recording shows that they smashed the SUV windshield. Poltava Regional TRC added that within 24 hours, two attackers were identified and taken into custody. On May 21, in Novyi Rozdil, Lviv region, former Maidan activist and now TCR senior soldier Nestor Didyk was rudely refused when he asked to show his military registration documents. Within a few minutes, about 8 people ran up, knocked him to the ground, kicked him in the head and broke his ribs. A few days later, the cops announced that they had identified four of the attackers: local residents aged 29 to 39.
The numbers of Ukrainian military personnel fleeing have remained stable since November 2024. Kiev right-wing journalist Volodymyr Boyko, who recently retired from the 241st Territorial Defense Brigade due to age, made a resonant post on his social networks on July 8:
“In the first half of 2025, 107,672 new criminal proceedings were registered under Articles 407, 408 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (unauthorized leaving of a military unit or place of service, desertion). Here are the data on the number of reports under these articles entered into the Register, broken down by month:
January 2025 – 18145
February 2025 – 17809
March 2025 – 16349
April 2025 – 18331
May 2025 – 19956
June 2025 – 17082
And in total, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion as of July 1, 2025, 230,804 cases of desertion have been registered in Ukraine (Articles 407, 408 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).
I would like to emphasize that the above statistics relate only to those cases of desertion for which criminal proceedings were initiated on the basis of materials of official investigations sent by commanders of military units to the SBI [State Bureau of Investigation] or specialized prosecutors’ offices in the field of defense. The real picture is much worse, since until October 2024, the SBI systematically refused to enter information on the facts of unauthorized leaving of units or places of service into the Register, and commanders of military units even had to appeal in court the inaction of the SBI investigators. At the same time, no one is looking for deserters and, despite the stories of the SBI leadership, they do not return to service. Thus, in the first six months of 2025, suspicion of unauthorized abandonment of military units was reported in only 3,538 cases (3.3% of the number of criminal proceedings registered during this period). During the same time, only 1,807 deserters (1.7%) returned to military service – this is the same number of petitions for exemption from criminal liability that were sent to the court. Another 1,079 (1.0%) criminal proceedings were sent to the court with indictments. The materials of the remaining 97.3% of criminal proceedings against deserters are covered in dust […] I wrote three months ago that the number of criminal proceedings will decrease – there is no point in military unit commanders submitting materials to the State Bureau of Investigation, since deserters are now not dismissed from service, but remain on the lists of personnel. Therefore, commanders report desertion only to the Military Law Enforcement Service.”
With the winter tightening of measures against unauthorized leaving (SZCh in Ukrainian) and desertion, the situation on the front lines has stabilized significantly: even Pokrovsk and Kupyansk, which were predicted to fall any day in the fall, are still holding out. But since the beginning of summer, the Russian Armed Forces have been advancing from Sumy to Zaporozhye at a record pace for this year. The reasons may be different, from a reduction in the rate of busification to a shortage of attack drones in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Commander-in-Chief Syrsky claimed in the spring that last year Ukraine mobilized 30 thousand serfs per month and that this rate should be maintained in the future; at the same time, the current mobilization figures are estimated at 20-25 thousand monthly – practically at the level of those taking up skis. This is the basis for the assumption that the Ukrainian Armed Forces will soon suffer a “cumulative effect”, like Assad’s army in Syria.
One way or another, it is still easy to meet people who have fled from their units, and no one is looking for them for six months or more. Nevertheless, Alex from Kiev, captured while trying to cross the border, told on June 8 about changes in his training ground since last year: “They took me from Verkhovyna to Ivano-Frankivsk and from there to the training ground in Rivne. It’s very difficult to escape now, a ditch about two meters deep and three meters wide has been dug around the company perimeter, they’re preparing posts for barbed wire right now and someone said that they’ll throw a tangled barbed wire into the ditch itself. In the evening, several instructors with thermal imagers move to the perimeter to make sure no one escapes, the beasts from the fifth platoon are sitting in secret on the outer perimeter))) who understood, those understood. They usually escape successfully during the day, just after the daytime formation. They often run across the river, but they also regularly pull out drowned ones there, just the day before yesterday they pulled one out. It’s a 10-stroke swim, but unfortunately, people drown with a certain regularity. Every day, 30+ people leave each battalion, running off to their homes, sometimes the river can’t cope + there are swamps, quagmires. Well, we have such a battalion, in the rest everything is simpler and there is no ditch. The battalion commander has his own rules, although we are slowly pushing through anarchy))) Here is a track, sometimes we listen to it near the tent on the speaker. We have already done all sorts of weird things here. The military law enforcement regularly drops in. Lyrics from real stories are here.” The anarcho-rap he sent with the words “We are not soldiers, we are SZCh” is available for listening in Russian and Ukrainian versions.
On the morning of July 16, at the Goncharivske training ground in the region of Chernihiv, a mobilized soldier from unit A3321 surnamed Koshel shot instructors with an automatic rifle. Senior Sergeant Kryshtal and Chief Sergeant Rekunenko were killed. Another serviceman, Senior Sergeant Skrypka, also came under fire, four bullets hit his bulletproof vest, so he was not injured. The shooting began when the soldiers were walking out to the firing line in pairs. Koshel suddenly turned around and started shooting at the instructors in the back. One of the dead reportedly saw him for the first time that day. It is known that upon arrival at the unit, Koshel stated that he was not going to serve and wanted to leave for Russia back in 2022. On trial he said that he understood his actions and it was not a state of affect:
The training center in Goncharivske is also known as Honduras. Perhaps because they accept everyone, regardless of health problems. Many recruits end up in a military hospital in Chernigov and run away from there
In the army of Russia, as our regular readers probably know, fragging is even more widespread. On June 7, news spread widely across Ukrainian media that in the Svatovo district of the Lugansk region, a group of Russian deserters allegedly killed a military police platoon commander and two of his subordinates, after which they disappeared. The owner of the pro-Ukrainian Telegram chat of Svatovo could not confirm or deny that this was true. Given the lack of information about the search for the fugitives, they could have been detained immediately after the shooting
On June 13, state TV aired the story about a contract fighter from the Kirovograd region named Ruslan, who since May 2024 served in the 57th Motorized Infantry Brigade in the direction of Volchansk. In January he returned there after being left without permission: “We had a case where a guy from the military police had his car burned because he was constantly beating up guys. So the next day, as soon as it got dark, I turned around and left. Because I started receiving threats because I was in SZCh. They decided to teach me a lesson.” After that, Ruslan ran away again, and is ready to continue serving only in another unit. There are no details about that incendiary attack.
The stolen armored vehicle. Photo from the State Bureau for Investigation
On July 3, the Sumy District Court convicted a senior soldier of an airborne assault unit who, on January 31, 2025, while drunk, stole an armored personnel carrier and drove it home to a village in the Lubny district of the Poltava region. He drove several hundred kilometers. Then he said that he abandoned the car on the side of the road because he was very tired and decided to rest, and when he woke up in a forest belt, the Military Law Enforcement Service was already nearby. Despite the fact that the accused joined the army voluntarily, expressed his willingness to continue serving, and the commander gave written consent, he was imprisoned for 7 years for armed desertion and theft of military equipment. Let others learn a lesson, otherwise what if the next hijacker comes to the government quarter?
In recent months we have published an interview about the enlistment basement in an ordinary historic civilian house with its escaped prisoner; talked about crossing the Ukrainian-Romanian border with a former Ukrainian border guard named Vadym who deserted after being ordered to transfer to the neo-Nazi 3rd Assault Brigade; gave the floor to the fugitive military servicemen who were detained right when they tried to cross the border and then escaped again, and also to the Ukrainian company commander how he deserted from the Kursk region to his home in Dnepropetrovsk despite a spinal injury and is now preparing to clandestinely cross the border into Romania…
As our 2025 fundraising shows, foreign anarchists and leftists are completely indifferent to the painstaking and exhausting work of supporting freedom of movement and saving one’s life. Well, this will not make us turn away from the chosen path. The lack of donations can only reduce the number of people we are able to help by our information and analysis. Even if a decision to stop hostilities is made at the September meeting in China, there is still need to somehow survive until then. The conveyor belt of death grinds up more and more new destinies every day.
From Los Angeles to the Carpathians – one path, one solution, one struggle!
source: https://libcom.org/article/los-angeles-ukraine-war-prolongation-brings-new-horizons-social-struggle