We present a report from the group “Deserters of the Capitalist Peace” on the solidarity event with deserters that took place in Athens on February 28, 2026.
/ English / Ελληνικά / Česky /
Our event, held together with Meetings against War and Peace of the Dominant, on political support for desertion and practical support for deserters from the Russo-Ukrainian front, took place in one of the few remaining occupied spaces that have managed to hold out against the Greek state’s repressive offensive. The turnout was strong and, overall, the event achieved its purpose. It created a space where part of the politicised anti-authoritarian milieu — those who refuse both the rival imperialist camps and the call to side with supposedly “wronged” states or national liberation struggles— could come together, and it showed that there is real interest in building a pole of war refusal from an internationalist perspective.
We would say that the event took on the character of a preparatory meeting, one that could lead to more practical steps and interventions in public space. On that same day, meanwhile, the bombing of Iran began and the war escalated further. So the event was very much embedded in the conjuncture itself, and developments since then have moved quickly. Some anti-war calls have already started circulating. Whether our own perspective will also find a public expression — the perspective of a proletarian internationalist refusal of all wars, whether branded “defensive” or “offensive” — remains to be seen, and will be decided in practice.
The substance of the event came not only from the contributions of comrades from groups that support desertion, such as Antimilitaristická Iniciativa [AMI] and Assembly, but above all from the interview we conducted, with the support of Initiative de solidarité Olga TARATUTA, with a Russian deserter.
We think that focusing on the movement of desertion on the Russo-Ukrainian front, and trying to convey the lived experience of deserters themselves, helped anchor the discussion in a solid material reality. It allowed the discussion to begin from the real movement, from what the working class is actually doing today, instead of drifting into abstract references to the First World War, Lenin’s revolutionary defeatism, and other historical formulas. What concerned the more than sixty people who took part was how refusals of war preparation — and of the possible widening of the war — can be organised, taking support for desertion as a concrete starting point. Being prepared for what lies ahead seemed to be the key priority.
The discussion that followed showed that there is a willingness not to leave things at the level of a general anti-war stance. The question that emerged was whether, and on what basis, a more stable internationalist anti-war intervention can be built in the present conjuncture — one capable of linking the refusal of war preparation here with the real forms of proletarian refusal that are already emerging elsewhere.
- λιποτάκτ(ρι)ες της καπιταλιστικής ειρήνης
- https://capitalistpeacedeserters.noblogs.org/