Translation from Crimethinc., as part of a collection of anti-war texts from Russia.
ON MARCH 5TH, a solitary picketer stood in a public plaza in Ivanovo, a small city northeast of Moscow, with a homemade sign stating: “*** *****”.
This week, The Final Straw Radio spoke with Petr, a Russian anarchist member of the group Autonomous Action, who is living in Europe right now. For the hour we speak about the invasion of Ukraine, a bit about the resistance inside of Russia to the war drums and the Putin regime, the dangers of a nuclear conflict, the impacts of increased sanctions and anarchists organizing across the borders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus against the war and against tyranny.
Hi, it's Sunday and you are listening to our podcast «Trends of order and chaos». This is episode 44. Here are the main events of the past week: the week of the war.
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The theory of the state is the reef on which the revolutions of our century have been shipwrecked.1 During the revolutions of the Arab Spring, the people brought about the fall of the regime, but the institutions of the state remained intact. Elsewhere the revolutions were drained in protracted civil wars. Everywhere that the old regime has seemed to be thrown down, it has found new sources of strength and risen again. What would it look like to finally break with this cycle?
In the past, insurrections have managed to defeat the state, rather than just a particular government. Insurrection is something more than a wave of riots, militant protests, blockades, occupations, and so on. It is the opening of a rupture, the search for that point after which no turning back is possible. If the revolutions of our time haven't defeated the state, we argue this is because there haven't been insurrections: there have been nonviolent uprisings, riots, armed struggles, and civil wars, but not yet insurrection.
We visited Yango premises in the Lauttasaari neighbourhood of Helsinki, on the night between the 9th and 10th of March. Yango is a Taxi application of Yandex, an IT company connected to the Russian state. Yango has hastily hidden its company symbols from the premises, but there has been no announcment of withdrawal from Finland. We do not care if business with connections to the Russian state are against the Russian invasion or not. Capital of these companies is maintaining the Russian war machine every day.
War in Ukraine has already increased the level of repressions in Russia, but there are not yet any new criminal proceedings against anarchist or anti-fascist activists. In this new exceptional situation, we are channeling some of our resources to humanitarian needs which go beyond our usual narrow focus of supporting repressed anarchists and anti-fascists.
In picture: action of Left Bloc activists against FSB.
A group of Ukrainian anarchists living in Kyiv declared that they have joined popular resistance against Russian invasion and organized their own group- leading to many debates among anarchist circles. As long as we do not exactly know their own circumstances, one might think that they are purely pro-NATO people, confused nationalist-anarchists or even neo-Nazi supporters. Actually, they are not! According to their declarations before and during the war, they do exactly know what NATO, capitalism, nationalism and imperialism is; and they are against all of them.
The Russian army has invaded Ukraine. Putin has lost his senses and his army is bombing cities, shooting civilians, and killing children. More than one million people have fled the country in order to escape from Putin’s “liberators.”
Putin's aggression towards Ukraine continues. Protests all over Russia continue as well.
It is important that those protests don't stop. The world is watching Russian citizens, what will they do? Will they support the army that the Kremlin and billionaires sent to occupy the neighboring country? Or there is no one who is happy about this war. Do all Russians need this war or only Putin and his gang?
As the full scale military operation began this morning, it is important to show that the Russian people don’t need this shameful war. There were dozens of antiwar protests all over the country in the past days mostly in the form of single-person pickets, which according to Russian laws don’t need any notifications. But the majority of protestors were detained nevertheless.
Hello, it is Saturday, and we are continuing our podcast "Trends of order and chaos". This is episode 43. Of course, you know perfectly well what is the main topic of the last week.
Yesterday, on February 21, an extraordinary meeting of the Russian Security Council was held. As part of this theatrical act, Putin forced his closest servants to publicly “ask” him to recognize the independence of the so-called “people’s republics” of the Luhansk People’s Republic [LPR] and Donetsk People’s Republic [DPR] in eastern Ukraine.
The results of the first 30 years of “democracy” in Ukraine are, to put it mildly, unconvincing. The economy and the media are in the hands of rival oligarchs, corruption is at staggering levels, economic development lags behind many African countries, and in addition, the country has become the center of the neo-Nazi movement around the world. And these problems are basically home-grown, not the result of the Kremlin’s intrigues.
On Thursday, February 10, a Russian court handed down sentences for terrorism to three teenagers from the Siberian town of Kansk. The boys were arrested in the summer of 2020 for posting leaflets with political slogans on the local FSB building. After searching their phones and uncovering a “plot” to blow up a virtual rendering of an FSB building in the video game Minecraft, investigators charged the teens with making explosives and training to participate in terrorist activities.
The sentence in the case of the Kansk teenagers will be given on Thursday, the 10th of February 2022 at 3PM in Krasnoyarsk time (11 AM Moscow time, 8 AM GMT). Three anarchists from the Krasnoyarsk region are accused of “studying terrorism” and storing explosives. Nikita Uvarov, Denis Mikhayuulenko and Bogdan Andreev were arrested in the summer of 2020 for spreading leaflets that criticised the state, and for supporting political prisoners. At that time they were 14 years old.
This time around there's both good news and bad news, so lets start with the good ones.
Maxim ”Hadad” Smolnikov released from remand in custody
Although the online magazine "Assembly" is active since March 30, 2020 - as soon as there was a feeling in the air around that this hateful status quo had finally cracked - we consider September 6 to be the beginning of its real impact on the social life of Kharkiv.
The family of Maksim Smolnikov needs financial support to cover lawyer costs and the transfer to a pre-trial detention center. If you want to help, please transfer money to the ABC Moscow PayPal (abc-msk@riseup.net) or if you are in Russia directly to the family account: 4274320068140352.
Ilya Romanov needs support for rehabilitation
Ilya Romanov has been an activist in the anarchist movement since 1987. He was sentenced to prison twice, for 10 years in Ukraine in 00’s and 7 years in Russia in the last decade. In 2019 he almost died as a result of a cerebral hemorrhage. Due to the delay in the medical intervention, he lost the capacity to move the right side of his body.
The results of the first 30 years of “democracy” in Ukraine are, to put it mildly, unconvincing. The economy and the media are in the hands of rival oligarchs, corruption is at staggering levels, economic development lags behind many African countries, and in addition, the country has become the...
This blog as a podcast: Spotify, Soundcloud This blog as video. Kansk is a city with a population of 90 000 in Siberia, Russia. The closest city with a million inhabitants is Krasnoyarsk, 250 kilometers westwards. Two boys, who turned 15 years old last year, Nikita Uvarov and Denis...