A response to the recent Crimethinc article on Ukraine from Anarchist Fighter (originally posted here: https://t.me/b_o_ak/6067)

The text "War and the Anarchists," recently released by comrades from Ukraine, has already been very widely circulated. If you haven't read it yet, it's about time. It's time to write reviews. Especially today is a relevant date: the anniversary of the beginning of the final clashes on the Maidan on February 18, 2014, after which a new stage in the history of Ukraine, and the entire post-Soviet space, began.

The text is very interesting. Its greatest strengths are its factuality, its chronological framework, and its details. We learned something from it for the first time. The ending about the modern situation of libertarians in the country is interesting. However, some parts of the text require critical commentary:

📌 "The degree of violence [on Maidan] was high, the protesters had no place to retreat to, so they had to stand to the end" (c) - there was a place to retreat to, Maidan was not a besieged fortress. A higher level of resistance than in Russia and Belarus was due to:
1) The smaller scale of repression and arbitrariness on the part of the police in the pre-Maidan period;
2) The presence of organized groups willing to use force among the protesters. Their cumulative number was not so small, and these structures existed for more than a year;
3) In general, the greater "impudence" and "unafraidness" of Ukrainian society, where the representatives of the authorities were never looked upon as celestials in the post-Soviet period.

📌 Perhaps the most vulnerable point of the publication is the almost complete lack of reflection on the internal politics and social structure of Ukraine. For example, the post-Maidan Verkhovna Rada itself, with its "bill No. 5670-d," aimed at restricting the use of the Russian language, partly gave the champions of the "Russian world" a trump card. It is noteworthy that some pro-Putin Crimeans point to better social security under the new order than in Ukraine. This in no way whitewashes Putin's regime, which has taken money from other Russian regions for its populism in Crimea. But poverty in Ukraine is related to its neoliberal order, the lack of labor protection, and the lack of real control of society over those in power. These phenomena have not disappeared, and partly even worsened after the Maidan.

📌 It is not very clear why we should focus on memes about "khido-Banders", when the users of these memes on Maidan were much less than the real admirers of Bandera, organized and purposeful. It was their work to promote the far-right agenda, and not the fact that "trolling got out of hand" (c) that allowed the pro-Putin propagandists to paint Maidan as a fascist uprising, not a popular uprising.

📌 The claim that anarchists represent "the most radical approaches and views in the democratic camp" and the somewhat dubious (in any case unprovable) thesis that "Russia has long-term plans to destroy democracy in Europe" (which is usually voiced by extreme liberals) are surprising. First, the very notion of "democracy" is extremely general and speculative. In modern political parlance, this is what liberalism/neoliberalism is usually called. In simplistic terms: representative democracy in politics + capitalism in economics. Clearly, this is not something that anarchists are a part of at all, nor is it something we should cheer for in Europe.

On the whole, it is gratifying to see that the comrades who wrote this text are eager to get actively involved in politics and participate in the struggle against Putin's imperialism, which, as we have already written, is a good thing. However, a revolutionary and libertarian stance on the situation requires much more work. We hope that with joint efforts and comradely discussion, our community will eventually work it out.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

CW: repressive gun violence
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Multiple people shot, at least one fatally, in an attack on an #AmirLocke demo in Portland (Oregon). Şehîd namirin.

ngo did did a similar thing for border solidarity event before the el paso mass shooting