Interview for comrades from Communaut and PEK-FAV (in Germany and Hungary respectively) on the current situation and deeper issues. Prepared specially for the International Conscientious Objection Day, and also as a contribution to the Balkan Anarchist Bookfair 2025.
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– A rally of Ukrainian anti-war protesters against the authoritarian Zelensky government has already taken place in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. In January 2024, you spoke of a potentially revolutionary situation due to the growing dissatisfaction with the government. In an article from November 2024, which describes the massive desertions, you take up this question again. Although you write that it is not yet possible to speak of a revolutionary situation, you also write that organized and collective desertion has increased. In a current article from January 2025 you write that there’s “no visible patriotic upsurge among the population of Ukraine. Too many working people no longer see any fundamental difference in who will rob them.” What has happened in this respect in 2024? How did the anger towards the government and its authoritarian measures spread, how does it express itself and how can it organize itself at all under the current authoritarian conditions?
– Yes, last year, through the dark clouds of war, there really was a glimmer of a revolutionary situation approaching. Official statistics show that the process continues: in January-March 2025 alone, 44.5 thousand Ukrainian military personnel left their units without permission, and another 7 thousand deserted – while over the entire last year, 62.5 thousand criminal cases were opened under the first article and 22.3 thousand cases under the second. Though such growth may also be an indicator that such acts have simply become more actively registered: many of these acts could have been committed last year and only registered in 2025, because our own sources, on the contrary, report a decrease in the decomposition of Ukrainian troops. At least, protests by entire military units, as was the case at the end of last year in the 155th Mechanized Brigade or the 123rd Territorial Defense Brigade, have not been observed since then. Complete military defeat now threatens Ukraine if it continues to wage war without the United States, using only the resources of European neoliberals and their “black”-brown minions.
In the Russian Armed Forces, if we are to believe available leaks, 50.5 thousand cases of absence without leave were recorded in 2024. From other hand, with the start of peace talks, the rate of recruitment of contract soldiers has increased, due to those hoping to have time to receive a huge lifting allowance and not have time to appear on the front.
The problem is that a revolutionary situation cannot be reduced to formal figures. The anger towards the government and its authoritarian measures is not enough – it also needs an idea of social change for the better and a willingness to unite for it. In this sense, there have been no changes: no sustainable unification to fight for even the most minimal vital rights is still visible. In such conditions, not only can there not be mass interest in revolutionary solutions, but even any significant social movement for everyday needs is impossible.
Accordingly, instead of revolutionary ideas, in such conditions only different varieties of right-wing populism can enjoy success. “You die today, and I tomorrow”, “not my own – no pity”, “man is a wolf to man” – these are the prevailing everyday attitudes in Ukraine, regardless of the opinion about the government and understanding that in a clash between two gangsters, it makes no fundamental difference which of them fired the first shot.
Of course, we would really like to believe that people tend to change. As it was laid out about the territorial recruitment centers (TRCs) by an ex-recruit from Nikolaev, having fled from a training unit last year and crossed the border through the Carpathian Mountains:
“It has been known for a long time that they have crossed the line, but since our people are wild and do not help each other, there is no rebellion against them. If they can maim, then why can’t they? I had a situation when I was still in Ukraine: I was just driving past a bus stop where the TRCists started to press a guy, I stopped and called out to him “jump in”, the guy managed to sit down and run away from them. And all the other videos I watch – they beat the guy, twist him, not a single beast will stop, will not help him escape. But everything is moving towards a civil war against Zelya. Because the lawlessness is growing more and more. But it is all delayed while people cannot unite. Even abroad, Ukrainians are not very friendly with Ukrainians. Here [in Spain where he lives] Ukrainians cheat Ukrainians out of money, housing, work. But the further, the more people unite. Not against Putin, but against the TRCists. They fight off the guys. As one military man said: “Why fight for a country that will spit in your back anyway.” I like the news even more, like in our region in Voznesensk [in late February, a drunk runaway military man threw a fragmentation grenade onto the enlistment office’s territory because of a quarrel with his wife and “negative perception of their activities”, the explosion disabled two service cars, he was taken into custody without bail being set]. Many military want to do the same, or shoot up the TRC, or blow it up. This is not even a desire, but plans for the future – because everyone I know who serves, all express a desire to take revenge on the TRCs for dragging them out. In training, one guy was a mountain guide in Uzhgorod, and his fellow villager from the TRC got caught. He promised him: when he gets back, he will shoot dead this asshole.”
Nonetheless, clashes with state forces, being already numerous in the same Kharkov, at best lead only to the rescue of a kidnapped passerby, and at worst – only strengthen the general atmosphere of apathy and demoralization. There is also little chance that the military having came back from the front will become the driving force for some revolutionary ideas. The largest group is “as soon as I see a crack in the fence, I’m leaving this country, do whatever you want.” Others are completely broken people who will go to the bottom after the army, if they survive. The rest of them just want to return to their usual profession and live like before the war. None of these categories wants or intends to decide and change anything, people are simply tired of everything and want to be left alone. After the war, rather the executioners from enlistment centers, studio warriors from the Barbershop battalion and their patrons with big stars on their shoulder straps will go into politics. And many civilians will vote for them, because they will hear on the telethon how these invincible heroes saved the country. If even in much less selfish and much better educated societies there is a rise of right-wing populism, what can we expect in such backwaters of Europe as Ukraine? Just like in Russia, society here can hardly be called a society at all; it is simply a number of groups by friends and relatives.
Clashes with police and the TRC near Sun Mall in Kharkov, on the third anniversary of the full-scale war. The wanted draft dodger managed to flee from detention, the cops used tear gas against the crowd.
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Revolutionary schemes from 1917-1918 do not work in our places beyond desertion: if the choice is only between marching to the slaughter and at least a minimally stable cohesion for one’s life rights, the typical worker in both Ukraine and Russia will prefer death. For the previous generation of those in the trenches of the positional meat grinder, three years from its beginning were enough to carry out the February Revolution (by the means of general strike and the rebellious soldiers’ capture of Petrograd), as well as to shake the chair under Kerensky, who demanded to continue the war. Neither the lack of the Internet, nor the illiteracy of the population majority, nor the support of the war continuation by the Entente allies prevented it. This spring we see that a year and a half of war was enough for mass anti-war and anti-government demonstrations by the population of Israel and Gaza. This is despite the fact that their history of hostility is fueled by religious strife and goes back many generations, while for our region this war is fratricidal in the literal sense of the word – half of Kharkov has relatives in Russia, the front line literally passes through families.
The Zapatistas stated in their March 2022 proclamation: “The war must be stopped now. If it continues, and escalates as can be expected, there may not be anyone left to give an account of the landscape after the battle.” It looks like we in Ukraine have already crossed the line before which something could still be changed.
– The situation has changed dramatically since February 2025 with the radical turnaround in US strategy by the Trump Administration. In mid-February, US Secretary of State Pete Hegseth announced the new US orientation in Europe: exclusion of NATO membership for Ukraine, no return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders, renunciation of US troops and no further military equipment for Ukraine. At the same time, the contribution of NATO member states should be increased to 5 percent of gross domestic product. At the same time, Trump began to prepare bilateral talks with Russia, with the Europeans ruled out. In Germany, this huge shift resulted in a massive push towards militarization. How is this new course being received in Ukraine? What do you think of this and how does this affect your strategic orientation?
– It is hard to say how radical this is, because this war has been a fixed match since February 24, 2022. The state scum have given each other guarantees of personal immunity from the very beginning: not a single Russian missile has ever hit or will hit the military and political leadership of Ukraine – more suitable targets for them are the residential buildings of ordinary people, energy infrastructure, humanitarian aid points, food warehouses, knowing full well that Ukraine holds civilians hostage as human shields behind the closed borders… Even when the top cannibals of Ukraine arrive almost at the front line, no Russian shelling threatens them. Likewise, when two drones attacked the Kremlin in 2023, such symbolic damage already caused discontent of their Western puppeteers, and the Ukrainian regime denied its involvement. Those above have it much better with class solidarity than the lower classes.
That’s why our strategic orientation is best conveyed by these words of Netherlands-based former journalist from Donetsk:
“Three years ago, another wave of migration from the damned territories to the West began.
These waves are endless. And always in the same direction. Yesterday, today, tomorrow.
Thank you again to Europe for opening the borders, saving millions of lives. Supporting people financially. Helping them integrate and not handing over men who escaped from concentration camps to the slaughter.
The patriotic hysteria of 2022 is in the past. Despite the efforts of propaganda, it was not possible to contain it – today we have witnessed the most massive anti-war protest of an enslaved people in history.
Evasion of collaboration with a criminal state is more popular than ever. This is the civic duty, if the state has become criminal – not to defend it and not to collaborate.
Many criminal quasi-states arise and disappear in the damned territories. There is not enough life to die for each one. And they constantly demand it, because they cannot live without war, without robberies and murders.
The damned territories are damned because they have been cursed by millions for centuries. We are not the first, we are not the last.”
It is quite symbolic that the Assembly’s activity initially was inspired by the experience of self-governing rebel communities in several Mexican states and their autonomous media. We already mentioned in 2022 that in the first weeks of the war they showed the best example of anti-authoritarian left mobilizing: while world anarchism was composing empty, routine declarations that hardly commit anyone to anything, they took to the streets against this war as a whole, condemning aggression of Russia without supporting the defense of a diminished parody of it. Since last year we have turned to another their internationalist communique: The Walls Above, The Cracks Below (And To The Left). Written shortly after Trump first came to presidency, it helps answer many questions about Ukraine today.
– In our last interview, you describe life in Kharkiv and your political work, which you can only do as a group online. At the same time, you also describe your participation in ecological struggles and measures. What did your political work look like in 2024? What kind of struggles do take place in Kharkiv currently?
– It is already clear that in a country where everyone hates each other and no one trusts each other, conditions for the libertarian non-partisan left are not much easier than on Mars. This is not only about our need for financial support, which our readers are welcome to contribute too, but much more globally – revolutionary changes in Ukraine are possible only as part of an international process, when the right-wing wave in Europe begins to decline, and only if that the European anarchist movement can take advantage of this opportunity. In Brazil, for example, this trend has already been reversed; another question is whether it is possible to talk about the return of Brazilian anarchism at least to the influence it had in the first half of the 2010s…
Yes, last summer we had a really successful example of community forest protection on the outskirts of the city (there was in English or in Russian about this). It became successful due to a unique combination of factors, it was just a drop in the ocean, whereas rules are not built on exceptions. This suburban location is not like a typical Kharkov street, where there are almost no people and the “buses of invincibility” drive like gas vans in 1942. For example, no labor strikes have been recorded in Kharkov after the small protest of municipal transport workers early autumn 2022. The only example of a labor strike we have recorded in Ukraine since last year occured on April 5 in the western town of Drohobych where route bus drivers did not show up for work. Before this, last strikes known to us took place back last May and last July. Someone still hope that Russia will come and open the border for departure, some are waiting for Trump to lose patience and impose sanctions against the hoarse gnome with his friends, some are not expecting anything at all and are living one day at a time.
Everybody is on their own not only in the urbanized areas. For example, from a letter to our editorial office from the Chernigov region, a month and a half ago:
“One of my childhood friends got taken away. A month ago. He lived in the village, worked in the production of monuments and fences. A woman from the village council came and brought the TCR. She knew he was there. She held the boy by the hand herself so that he wouldn’t run away. Even the TRC didn’t hold him. She was alone. He was all dirty, he said: “Let me go and change clothes.” And she told him, “Call your mother, let her bring it.” It was a month ago. The day before yesterday, his parents received a notification to go and take a DNA test. The boy is missing. A month, a bitch. One month and there is no guy.
A little about the beast from the village council. The husband is a retired cop. The daughter is in the footsteps of the dad. I don’t know how she will live. But somehow she will, I think. She has already killed more than one person like that. And she is still alive.
And the village there is not united. During the occupation in 2022, people in the region of Chernihiv themselves looked after order, there was no cops, crime such as looting was quickly stopped. That’s true. It was. But not for long. What’s past is past. Somewhere since the fall of 2023, horror began. The TCRists go not to the person, but to the village council, to her. And she already leads to the guys. She has eyes and ears everywhere. They turn each other in.”
Both in our city and throughout Ukraine, some particularly desperate people commit individual acts of armed self-defense or even lynching – so-called spontaneous black terror. For instance, two cases that happened back in 2024, and only recently came to light through court decisions. A 79-year-old resident of the Bogodukhov district in the Kharkov region without a criminal past received a 4-year imprisonment with a probationary period of 1 year for burning down his village council building with a bottle of gasoline. The pensioner fully admitted his guilt and sincerely repented. He said the reason for the arson attack was a long-standing conflict with the village council that had refused to assign him a subsidy in 2017. He had gone through many years of bullying by village officials who also were ignoring his complaints. The other story took place in the city of Kharkov, where a military serviceman from Transcaprathia faced trial for especially aggravated hooliganism. The man had been repeatedly convicted in the past. According to the court records, the man had been outraged at his unit’s commanders for the lack of a response to his request for leave. One day, he drunkenly entered the headquarters with two fragmentation grenades. After saying “do you know what this is?!”, he detonated them on the table. The commanders managed to run outside and were not hurt. The judge closed the case due to the defendant’s death. The cause of his death was not indicated, only the date: May 29, 2024. In fact, such actions do not change anything, except that the regime gets the opportunity to catch and condemn the most disloyal citizens one by one.
Thus, the most anarchic struggle in today’s Ukraine becomes helping to overcome the new Iron Curtain and giving readers some elementary education to integrate into revolutionary movements in their new places of residence (in the case of having sufficient language level). So, over the past year, our online magazine has effectively become a mouthpiece for Ukrainian clandestine border crossers, let even if we are still very far from the Underground Railroad heroes. We never suggest specific routes in our consultations, because if any detail is inaccurate or outdated, the price may be human life. Of course, no mass columns in the spirit of migrant caravans from Latin America are visible either. People prefer to only exchange information in the thematic chats or on our website and get together in twos or threes, rarely more. Many do not even look for a mate because they do not trust anyone. Two Ukrainians are a guerrilla squad, three are a guerrilla squad with a traitor. In any case, it is better to be a termite, little by little weakening the edifice of militarism, than a flea on the tail of one of the squabbling dogs.
One way or other, those who escaped slavery and death will subsequently be able to join any revolutionary struggle, whether back in Ukraine or somewhere else. Look at those who demand that the war continue until Ukraine regains its borders: most of them do not live in this country and even have never lived. Why can they, and others cannot? Why someone can love Ukraine from somewhere far away, narrating how we do not realize our happiness, but those who have seen nothing from it except prohibitions and robbery are obliged to live in it?
The story of a Ukrainian deserter’s rescue: breakthrough abroad from the marine training center.
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– You live and operate in Kharkiv, which means you are not far from the Russian-occupied territories. Do you have access to information from these areas? How can we imagine life under Russian administration? Or is it completely sealed off?
Not all of us live in Kharkov, but the Kharkov region borders the Russian-occupied since 2022 part of Lugansk region. Therefore, many people in Kharkov have ties with those living there. If we talk about the segment that contacts us, they are not very happy about the annexation, nevertheless hope for the something best and do not want the return of Ukraine, with which they no longer associate any good expectations at all. “I’m for Ukraine but my Ukraine died in 2014” – this is probably how one could describe their sentiment. Of course, this is not the entire public opinion – there are also supporters of Russia and supporters of Ukraine (there are hardly many of the latter, because the majority left long ago). Anyway, many other people in Kharkov say approximately the same things from their interlocutors, so this category is probably numerous there.
In general, pensioners are in the most satisfied with life there – due to receiving a double pension (from Russia and Ukraine) and minimal utility rates. Some workers also say that the departure of half the population, especially young and middle-aged people, has led to higher wages and lower unemployment. We do not have precise statistics on whether the promised salaries are actually paid. Even movement between villages requires permits, partly due to the fight against desertion, no unauthorized street actions are possible, the last strike we know about was in the fall of 2023. There is no busification, but there is conscription for the guys 18-30 years old and coercion to sign contracts for committing some criminal offense. Due to a dry law the cops walk around with breathalyzers, if they see someone drunk – immediately arrest for 15 days. And they do not just let you out. First to the bank, escort, pay the receipt, then release. Curfew from 9 pm. Very strict, if you stay outside for 5 minutes, they immediately take you. No streets or monuments in honor of those who massively massacred Jews in the last century, instead of this – the tricolor of the Vlasov’s collaborators who fought under this flag for Hitler against their own people. Forced assimilation also exists: if in Ukrainian schools the state forbids speaking Russian even during breaks, there the teaching is in Russian, even in the Ukrainian-speaking parts of the Lugansk region, but speaking Ukrainian to each other is not prohibited. Ukrainian books are also not destroyed because of the language they are written in, as Ukrainian officials and activists regularly do with any literature in Russian. As for us, we stand for complete freedom to use the Russian language in Ukraine, and at the same time publish Ukrainian-language content without translation so that readers from Russia can learn Ukrainian at least a little.
If you can be shot in the back or tortured to death in a basement when trying to escape from Ukraine, from the Russia-annexed territories you can go whenever you want. But if you cross the border outside the checkpoints to get there and are caught by Russian border guards, they will conduct a long filtration and a court can even give you a prison term up to 2 years for illegally crossing the border. Runaway from one prison cell to another.
Of course, if someone in the annexed territories suspects you of political danger, they can do anything to you and no one will save you. As well as in the so-called free country: as it became known on February 1, five young Marxists from several regions – Kiev, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa, Poltava – appeared in the dungeons of the Security Service of Ukraine. They allegedly, “on orders from the Kremlin,” disrupted the mobilization by street leaflets where called on civilians to evade it, and on military personnel not to follow orders, to desert, and to create soldiers’ committees. Here it was in English or in Russian. On April 4, the regional court of appeal of Chernivtsi confirmed a prison term for Angela Gurina from December 9, 2024. She worked for two local news outlets and was sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment for coverage of mobilization violence. Also a month ago, Yana Galichenko from Odessa was charged with a criminal case for helping men against enlistment kidnappers. Grigory Osovoy, chairman of the Ukraine’s Federation of Trade Unions, was detained in a criminal case on April 9 in Lutsk and the next day was placed under house arrest by a Kiev court on suspicion of illegal alienation of some union’s property object about 10 years ago. They claim that this was intended to make an atmosphere of uncertainty ahead of the vote on bill No. 6420 on the alienation of the trade unions property into state ownership. (By and large, this organization was long dead, so the state tolerated its existence as a “canned food” to be eaten in the worst times, and now they have come.) Since our media is not nationwide, we do not know how many such cases there are in the entire government-controlled part of Ukraine even this year alone – these are only the ones we know about.
In short, there are two barracks of one camp, and there is no point in wasting time trying to figure out which of them has a bit less harsh whip. The world is not limited to Ukraine, it is only 0.44% of the world’s territory, even within internationally recognized borders!
– In a recently published article one can read that numerous anarchists and anarchist groups, who chose the path of national defense, fought alongside fascist battalions, joined them or even openly appeared with fascist symbols. At the same time, it has always been claimed that the fight against Russia is an anti-fascist war of defense. How do you explain this paradox and what influence did the war have on these anarchist fighters?
“The state is your enemy”: somewhere on the Ukrainian walls, summer 2024.
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Why complicate things so much? If someone calls for strengthening the dictatorial state like a fascist, uses fascist paraphernalia, and follows orders from fascist commanders, most likely it is a fascist too. This question is similar to the question of why the botox lord of the Kremlin talks about “the fight against fascism in Ukraine” and openly justifies Hitler, who “was forced by the Poles to start the Second World War with them.” Or why he invaded Ukraine under the pretext of a “threat from NATO”, in whose countries his oligarchs and officials are accustomed to calmly storing their assets and educating their children. In the same vein, why are those who are the occupiers themselves the loudest in shouting about the “NATO-led war against the fascist colonial imperial occupation”? If the cap fits, wear it: they came to Ukraine from Russia, serve the regime that is hated by the majority of locals, enjoy the privilege of freely walking the streets (unlike those who have not been able to go beyond their own yard already for 1-2 years), downplay or keep silent about its crimes against the Ukrainian civilian population. In the case of Russian occupation and even if the war in Ukraine ends like the Georgian scenario, they could face deportation back to their native lands, where they will end up in basements like those where the ones who refuse to serve Ukraine are tortured now. Naturally, they consider this a terrible injustice, so meat grinding any number of Ukrainians to defend their relatively free and safe life suits them just fine. It is amazing when internationalists accuse such characters of “abandoning the class approach” and at the same time (forgetting about this same approach) call on those who have something to lose in Ukraine to take stand against their interests. It is no less amusing than when those who like to emphasize that Bakunin called the republic a thousand times better than the monarchy (hinting that today he would definitely be for Ukraine) fall into a stupor being asked did Bakunin and his comrades support the small republican Paraguay against its occupation by the large and monarchical Brazilian Empire.
It seems many of war opponents since 2022 still think that if a few dozen far-rightists stop positioning themselves as anarchists for a naive foreign public, the war will end. At least they discuss them with a tenacity worthy of better use, as if they thought so. Perhaps it is better not to consider oneself anarchist at all, if arguing about who is a true anarchist leaves no time for anything else? Several dozen non-player characters do not influence the outcome of the war in any way; it is necessary to strike at the states that control them, without it they are nothing and “will perish like dew in the sun” (as they sing in the Ukrainian anthem). This applies equally to Z and Ze “left-wing” foot mats. By the way, if a year ago they called us “career officers of the Ukrainian/Russian special services,” then now we have become just “supporters of Ukraine/Russia.” No one explains the reasons for our dismissal and where we can receive severance pay…
– Last January, you mentioned that there were major conflicts within the ruling class between Zelenskyi and the former General Saluschnyi, which Zelenykyi was able to win. You also wrote that Zelenskyi’s support is fragile and comes mainly from the bureaucracy and the repressive apparatuses. At the same time, the Chocolate King Poroshenko seems to try to return. What is the current situation within Ukraine’s ruling class, especially after the shift of US-strategy? Have certain capitalists/oligarchs been able to accumulate power and property or eliminate others?
In the fall of 2023, after the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, the butcher general made a statement in The Economist that the war had reached a dead end. After this article, he began to have disagreements with the pianist, which led to his resignation in the spring of 2024. Most of the people close to him have already been removed from the army command. Now Zaluzhnyi teaches Ukrainians to die in trenches while living in London himself: “It’s not enough to die for Ukraine. You have to be ready to kill for it.” But for some reason he keeps quiet about another option – to get away according to the fictitious medical examination, as he did it himself. It is just an option for the elite and not for serfs. The rhetoric of the chocolate hetman and others like him is the same: a truce, we will rearm, and then we let’s fight again. Azov’s commanders Biletsky and Prokopenko have good chances to take the top positions in Ukrainian politics after the end of the war. Now they have become corps commanders – and under their command there are 20-25 thousand bayonets (Prigozhin had about the same number during his rebellion in Russia). Both are abundantly present in the media. They, as well as their subordinates, from time to time give political assessments of what is happening. Including critical ones regarding the authorities and the military command.
In political circles, it is believed that both Prokopenko and Biletsky are financed by the biggest Ukrainian businessman Rinat Akhmetov, and through him are controlled by the President’s Office, which views them after the war as the basis for the formation of political projects, to enter parliament and create a majority there together with the pianist’s party, thus preserving control over the parliament and the government for the unshaven dwarf. That is why it gives them the opportunity to conduct their own PR campaign now. At the same time, Biletsky and Prokopenko reportedly have very tense relations with each other. Incidentally, this also applies to other military units. There is strong internal competition between their commanders, encouraged by the authorities, and often mutual hostility. Even if one of them raises a mutiny, the others will oppose him and defend the power.
This spring, talk began about creating a new conservative anti-globalist party by some pro-Trump politicians and bloggers. The regime has preemptively imposed extrajudicial sanctions on many of them. They put forward slogans of peace, national sovereignty, the release of political prisoners, the protection of the Russian language and culture. However, it is currently unknown whether Trump is aware of such plans or whether he is interested in them after signing the resource deal. If he is no longer so interested in changing the Ukrainian puppet administration, the idea of ending the war by soldiers turning their weapons against the states is getting a new lease on life!