IN AN INTERVIEW, KSUSHA LOOKS FORWARD TO “DRONE COOPERATIVES, REHABILITATION OF THE WAR INJURED, CULTURAL PROJECTS, SQUATS FOR REFUGEES” ~ Cristina Sykes ~ An anarchist based in Kyiv has responded to questions from Kapinatyöläinen magazine in Finland about the activities of anti-authoritarian networks in Ukraine today. Ksusha described anarchists’ networked presence in the military units and involvement in civil support for the front line and their . In terms of future projects, she looks forward to “drone cooperatives, rehabilitation of the war injured, cultural projects, squats for refugees”. To “comrades in Finland, the Baltics or Poland” she recommended “first aid skills and attending public defense courses, building drones, as well as many other civilian hobbies”. According to the interview, the anti-authoritarian volunteer unit sponsored by Yuri Samoilenko “got stuck due to the attitude of the higher army management” and anarchists now “have people at different levels of the army, connections, understanding of war operations and how to work with people in the army. An understanding has been formed about what kind of things can be developed and what can be dangerous”. With this combination of understanding and experience, anarchists are developing practices that are “viable under wartime conditions”, while starting “small projects, sowing the seeds of anti-authoritarian cooperation methods in their own locations”. Previously in Kharkiv, Ksusha related she had been involved with renovations of a squat for war refugees and “joined an eco-anarchist group that worked against construction projects and deforestation, took action to stop fur production and organized free markets”. When the full-scale war started in 2022, she joined Operation Solidarity, described as a civic action platform organised to support comrades from the anti-authoritarian left who went to the front lines. “We supported socialists, anarchists, punks, hard core subculturers, anti-fascists, feminists – anyone united by some kind of progressive leftist views”. Later reorganising as the Solidarity Collectives, this “mutual aid network” now supports 80-100 “anarchists, anti-fascists, punks, eco-anarchists, feminists, squatters, LGBT+ people and union activists” with clothes and first aid equipment as well as “walkie-talkies and night vision devices, as well as tablets, laptops, cars, and even expensive airplanes and drones”. Organised as a decentralised network, the Collectives also aid those affected by the war, in house repairing projects and by supplying laptops for teaching use, while their media group works to make these activities visible and “be in contact with our comrades”. They emphasise work with unions which are “in danger of being suppressed” in order to help them “influence workers’ rights and disrupt the neoliberal reforms that are now so popular in Ukraine”. She emphasised that anarchist activity in Ukraine had only stared in the last decades, against a distrust of anything labelled as “Leftist” because of the Soviet past. “Everything had to be started from a scratch, and it was not possible to lean on any background, institutions that would have already been in operation for a long time.When we start projects in the military or in the civil society, we face demonization of our ideas”. The full interview is has been translated into English on Takku.net The post Ukraine: Solidarity Collectives & anarchists in the ranks appeared first on Freedom News.