AS WAR PROFITEERING NUCLEAR TYRANTS PROMISE ARMS-DEAL APOCALYPSE, ANARCHISTS CONTINUE TO RESIST IN UKRAINE ~ Josie Ó Súileabháin / Photos: Fran Richart ~ On the east coast of the United States of America a deal is going down. For the past week Ukrainian ministers have flown from Kyiv to Washington to discuss the exchange of drones for tomahawk missiles. This weekend Trump and Zelensky will meet to finalise the movement of long-range missiles to Ukraine, and the cut throat discount on Ukrainian-manufactured drones sold to the U.S. at 20% the going rate. The art of this arms deal is a threat. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said in response that the transfer of missiles would be “a qualitatively different level of escalation” as he claimed it would require U.S. army personnel on Ukrainian territory to operate the missiles. The armed forces of Russia launched over 71 missiles across the frontline on 5 and 10 October, along with hundreds of drones directly targeting the energy sector of Ukraine. The military have continued to bombard Ukraine with these mass drone and rocket attacks as Zelensky arrives in D.C. Among those killed was a 15-year-old girl with her family in Lviv Oblast, and a 71-year-old man who was sitting in a civilian train carriage in Sumy when it was attacked by Russian drones. Hundreds of items transported by Boeing and Airbus have made their way to Russia, according to customs data analysed by Investigate Europe. Some of the subsidiaries from India are themselves on sanctions lists for transporting military personnel into the DPR and other Russian occupied territories. All western companies deny knowledge of committing any crime. “The willingness of the groups management to supply ammunition even to warring nations,” wrote Otfried Nassauer, the late German peace campaigner, “and states that blatantly disregard human rights, is an essential prerequisite for the economic success of Rheinmetall’s ammunition business.” From Indonesia to Yemen via South African subsidiaries, Germany’s largest weapons manufacturer is attempting to repeat it’s historical economic successes of the first and second world war by arming the world through a shadow export business. Rheinmetall call this blatant war profiteering “taking responsibility in a changing world” as the company profits have multiplied following the outbreak of the Russian war in Ukraine. International support for Ukraine has been fickle. While western nations promise their support for Ukraine in the defense of Europe, arms-dealers are continuing to subvert international sanctions through third party countries. Ammunition produced by Rheinmetall is making its way into the hands of those resisting tyranny and occupation around the world. Flights with western cargo are continuing to land in Russia. Profit trumps peace, after all. In Berlin, the air-raid siren is blaring with the beeping of phones marking the emergency tone. The trams are painted camouflage and posters for political parties are replaced with recruitment for the security services. Germany is slashing social security and its arms manufacturer is making a killing. The lights go out in Ukraine but the residents of Europe are still sleeping, dancing a conscious delirium that now threatens to consume us all. As the Doomsday clock reaches 89 seconds to midnight, how long until we are awoken by the sound of bombs? “Everything is as pleasant and beautiful as possible,” Greta says walking through a park, on the frontline of the impossible spring of our waking nightmares. It is calm and peaceful. The sound of birds fill the air. Bakhmut has roses and Greta is eating a falafel. “Another interesting thing about the psyche…” Greta says, picking up a medic pack and rifle resting by the tree. “When you fall asleep in such conditions on the frontline you usually have very good and pleasant dreams, things I don’t have in my normal life, the complete opposite of all the horrors that is… and this is interrupted when I am woken up. Because I am a medic rifleman. When I hear that one of our guys has been wounded I have to quickly get my shit together to help him.” Greta is awake, moving into position on the frontline with a comrade. Something felt wrong. A Russian solider ambushes their position and throws a grenade, destroying Greta’s automatic machine gun. Grot had managed to wound the Russian soldier, Greta tells Solidarity Collectives. It probably saved their life. Grot “had been hit by a bullet and had multiple shrapnel wounds,” Greta says. “I thought he was dead… I think the experience could have had a strong impact on my perception because it felt like I had died at that moment. I thought that was it. I didn’t expect to get out of there and survive… that moment was psychologically tough.” After being deployed to Klishchiivka close to Bakhmut, Greta requested rehabilitation in Odessa. “As a medic I provided assistance to both comrades and allies, but this deployment was simply ineffective,” Greta says. “I spent 8 days in a basement, completely confused because drones filled the entire space and field.” Solidarity Collectives have interviewed international anarchist medics in Ukraine since 2022, and spoke to Charlie this year. “During work, there is no space for anything but work,” Charlie says, “I mean when we have a wounded person and we need to, you know, do something about it, stop the bleeding and all that, this is what you do and it has nothing to do with politics.” “The fact that I’m here, it’s already connected with the fact I’m an anarchist and believe in solidarity with the people… all the decisions I make, they actually come from what I believe in and what I think is right.” Charlie started working as a medic on the frontlines with anti-authoritarian units in the armed forces of Ukraine and has been there since 2022. “I actually came to Poland for a short holiday for just a couple of weeks to see my friends,” says Charlie. “We got up in the morning and saw the news and I realised that I am not going back. I’m not going back to Belarus. I am not going home because it was just impossible for me. My country was bombing another country.” “Very often anarchist movement becomes extremely marginalised and impenetrable for people from outside,” Charlie reflects. “Anarchism and feminism and veganism, for me it’s first of all not struggle but first of all it is care. Care for people, care for women, care for animals and on the second place it is struggle. Very often activists are caught in this struggle and forget about care.” “The deepest feelings, of course, I have towards Bakhmut,” Charlie says. “I remember it as an extremely beautiful city with a very beautiful cape. Like, there were these swans and this nice river and full of roses. I arrived there at the end of summer, the weather was beautiful and it was all green and there were many flowers. So I have a strong bond with the city, completely destroyed now, just a graveyard… we lost a lot of comrades and Marcy isn’t with us today.” Marcy was a gardener from London who came to Ukraine to support people during the invasion. He drove an ambulance with Charlie as a volunteer in Bakhmut. After joining the armed forced he was killed in Avdiika. “The vast majority of people we are picking up from the frontline”, said Marcy back in 2022, “who have horrific wounds are ordinary working people. I think they should ask for free healthcare and free education after this is done because I smell that blood everyday and they have paid…” “They should see all the desperate people in Bakhmut, who don’t have anything as civilians,” Marcy reminded us, “just been left behind there.” Solidarity Collectives work alongside Solidrones for the construction and assembly of UAV drones, as communities seek to defend themselves rather than wait for the delivery of tomahawk missiles. What does victory look like when we fight for our freedom? “I really want people to win,” says Charlie. “Not the governments. Screw governments. I want people just to breathe freely without being afraid to be killed by some random aviabomb.” For the last 20 months, the frontline has been moving towards the mining town of Dobrophillja, with an attack on a market and shopping centre in July causing the authorities to evacuate most of the population of the mining town. The Russian Federation currently occupies around 70% of the Donetsk Oblast in the east of Ukraine, declaring a de facto client state along with other territories in 2014. Those who have escaped are finding themselves constantly bombarded. “For ordinary people like us, it’s just misery,” Ivan told Медузы (Meduza). “So now, I’m about to leave with my wife. She packed herself a bag full of medicine, and well we’re heading out. My wife hasn’t slept for three nights. She is afraid of everything,” he said. Those who remained in the town despite the danger where the elderly, the disabled and internally displaced persons from Bakhmut. On the other side of the frontline, a show trial is commencing for the second time. As observed by Медиазона (Mediazona), at least 26 prisoners of war were convicted by the Supreme Court of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) multiple times for the same crime. Among the prisoners of war were former Azov brigade fighters, six convicted for the same act of terrorism on two occasions. A lawyer working in Donetsk has commented that by bringing repeated cases against far-right Ukrainian soldiers, Russia could “justify the invasion” under it’s own propaganda to portray Ukraine “as a nationalist and pro-fascist state,” the legal worker testified under anonymity. This violation of the law has become established practice in the show trials of prisoners of war. In the Russian occupied city of Enerhodar, the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant has been running on back-up generators for almost a month since it was severed from the electric grid following continuous shelling in and around the plant. “This is an extraordinarily challenging situation,” said International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, as Europe’s largest nuclear power station is now kept from meltdown by eight diesel engines. In the early days of the Russian occupation of Enerhodar, an anti-fascist punk spoke of collaborators, arrests and interrogations by Russian soldiers, including staged photographs of an underground far-right element as ‘proof’ of the need to de-nazify Ukraine according to Russian state propaganda. These photographs and videos are then disseminated for both Russian and western audiences, appealing paradoxically to those whose politics are the polar opposite to the Russian Federation. “I think there is quite a big resistance against understanding the situation in Eastern Europe,” Belarusian anarchist Nikita Ivansky tells me. “Certain dogmas used within anarchist and left circles are not working in such a complicated situation. Instead of adapting the ideological ground for such a conflict and applying our values within the conflict – and find our place according to those political values – a lot of people try to stick to those written political ideas from the past”. “Anarchist movement has no mechanisms of dealing with disinformation – It is very easy to plant a certain narrative delivered via state propaganda channels and make it grow without serious push back,” Nikita writes. “The discussion about Maidan in 2014 is one of those perfect examples.” The fetishisation of far-right Ukrainian Nazi groups in certain ‘left’ publications risks blinding us to the actions of those putting anarchism into action on the frontline. Even in the western anarchist movement there are some who echo the paranoia of the Russian Federation in labelling the Maidan Uprising as a Nazi putsch, like a judge at the Supreme Court of the DPR. But away from headlines that promise apocalypse and despair from nuclear tyrants, anarchism continues to fight on the frontlines. Anti-authoritarian fighters are continuing to resist Russian occupation, as well as supporting internally displaced people and abandoned animals with mutual aid across the country. In the predictable failure of the charity of nuclear tyranny and the security of borders over solidarity with the people – all we have to fight for is each other. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photos taken in Sumy and Kharkiv regions, the persons in the photos are not connected to the article The post Frontline solidarity at 89 seconds to midnight appeared first on Freedom News.

DEDICATION AND TRAUMA AMID THE UNEXPLODED REMNANTS OF WAR ~ Josie Ó Súileabháin ~ “If people are tired of this war, tell them to come and join the fight. People are fighting and struggling here, and people need help. This is not a video game”.—Joy (Marcy–Yusef) In a darkness demanded for survival, an old man speaks to volunteers in Kupyansk, Kharkiv Oblast following the retreat of the Russian army. “They attacked here, first with airstrikes, bombing the area”, he says. “They dropped bombs here—I still have some in my garden”. “And did the animals survive?” the volunteers ask. “You see you were putting yourself at risk…” “I let them go when the Russians forced me to evacuate at gun point… a missile hit the yard, and the garage and the barn burnt down. The ducklings burnt to death… but the chickens managed to survive… people left everything behind. Many people lost their legs because of the ‘Lepestok’ mines”. “Clearing the gardens of mines?” he is asked. “Sometimes by accident”, he replies. “Most of them lost their legs and a lot of de-miners blown themselves up here”. The ‘Lepestok’ (PFM) mine is a scatterable munition that is identifiable by its green, petal shape and timed to explode. Ukraine has inherited millions of these small mines from the Soviet Union and destroyed at least half of them under efforts lead by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. During the full-scale invasion, the Russian occupation has been documented using them around hospitals and in residential areas. “I remember these petals scattered all over the hospital”, a medical worker at Izyum Central Hospital told Human Rights Watch (HRW). During the Russian occupation of Izyum, the Russian army set up a field hospital in the basement within the central hospital to treat their own wounded. At one point, there were only seven members of staff for Ukrainian patients. “I heard a slam in the sky”, a neighbour to the hospital reported to HRW. “Previously I knew that if a cluster munition explodes above our heads, the submunitions would go over us because of inertia. Because of where they were, I understood they would fall on us. So I told my wife and we went to hide in the basement”. “But there was no explosion. And our neighbour said: ‘Have a look, a petal on the ground.’” Burial site outside Izyum When the Russians retreated from Izyum, they detonated the PFM mines around the hospital with their rifles to form a path of escape. Outside of the major urban centres, the situation is much worse with almost no access to medical care. Ksenia Kozeniuk, a volunteer with Solidarity Collectives, explains the situation. “Six or seven villages, I think, we’ve visited and the situation is really upsetting because these people are living extremely difficult conditions”, Ksenia says. “We were in Kupyansk, delivering food for an elderly woman who has about 40 cats under her care”. “We walked with the cats”, the elderly woman tells volunteers outside of her home in Kupyansk. “The neighbours have little kids; they went to Poland and abandoned their pets. Just as they left, a missile hit the house. And my house was hit by a missile – the roof was blown off over there, and here the roof was torn off. The gas was cut off, the water was cut off, the sewage was cut off, and then they fixed the gas but not the sewage. No one will fix it”, the woman says. “In 2022, the frontline passed through the villages of Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, and they were completely destroyed”, Ksenia says. “Now the locals are slowly starting to return despite the fact that conditions are terrible because they have to rebuild their homes almost from scratch”. A volunteer asks a young child holding a cat; “did you come back here with your mother or did you never leave?” “I came back here”, the child replies in the darkness. “And your going to stay here, right?” the volunteer asks. “Well, yes, we live here now”, the mother replies. “We have repaired the house a little; it was my fathers house. Our house is destroyed. We lived on Kamianska street, there’s just a foundation left, and this house remained. I put a glowing bracelet on his arm”, the mother says, showing her sons arm. “And only by it when it’s dark I can tell where my child is”. “UKRAINE IS A SHIELD NOW” Darkness is required to move within a ‘zero’—an active battlefield—with drone flights and other Russian aircraft threatening death from above. Light is needed to see the Unexploded Remnants of War (URW) and other unexploded ordinance that literally is designed to imitate nature in order to kill. These humanitarian trips are described by Solidarity Collectives volunteer Serhiy Moychan as building long term connections with the community beyond war, “so that in the future we can fight together with them for… social rights and guarantees”. “Social and economic justice is the basic core, the basic principle by which we fight”, Serhiy asserts. The work of Solidarity Collectives in supporting anti-authoritarian armed resistance against Russian occupation has spilled over to directing aid to civilians living on the front. “The armies of authoritarian regimes, they’re always stronger than those of some ‘democratic’ countries. They spit on people’s rights and freedoms and invest in specific interests, in this case war. And when there’s this fragmentation of opinions or the set phrase ‘not everything is so clear’—it all fragments and gets complicated”, says Lastivka, an anarchist, feminist, activist and squatter and commander of a UAV drone unit. Lastivka interviewed by Solidarity Collectives “I haven’t heard of European anarchists ever taking a stance on this war”, Lastivka continues, “I hope they don’t have to face the hardships that Ukrainian activists have had to. But that depends on us too”. “How so?” Solidarity Collectives ask. “I really do fully support the idea that Ukraine is a shield now”. It appears that despite many declarations affirming the basic principles of armed resistance to occupation and mutual aid with those struggling to survive, some among the anti-authoritarian fighters in Ukraine still perceive a lack of international solidarity from western anarchists. Resistance against imperialist occupation has led to the deaths of comrades on the front line, as well as the imprisonment and torture of others. The comrade Joy—quoted at the top of this story—would have been 36-years-old in March this year if he was not killed by the Russian occupation in 2022. Vladyslav Yurchenko ‘Pirate’, Ruslan Tereschenko ‘Skrypal’ and Roman Legar were all killed in the last year fighting the Russian invasion. Ihor, Kolyah ‘Vagon’ and Atton – all members of the Kharkiv Hardcore Group were also killed. Still missing-in-action are comrades Cooper Andrews, Finbar Cafferkey and Dimitri Petrov who were last seen alive on the “road of life” after fighting in the battles around Bakhmut. These internationalists brought together perspectives from different struggles as praxis for resistance. Finbar brought the ideas of Rojava, Dimitri brought together movements in Europe, Ukraine, Russia and Syria, and Cooper brought the ideas of black autonomy in the U.S. for the fight against Russian occupation. There are 17,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war held either in the 20% of Ukrainian territory that Russia occupies, or within the empire itself. The anti-authoritarian journalist Maksym Butkevych was recently released as part of a prisoner exchange from the occupied Luhansk Oblast. Maksym reports that both soldiers and civilians are being held in these prisons and urges those outside to not forget them. “I witnessed torture, humiliation, beatings, electrocutions, starvation”, Maksym reports, “and other methods to humiliate people, undermine their health, and break their morale”. Some like Denys Matsola and Vladyslav Zhuravlov are still in prison after three years with no sign of release. Denys and Vlad were fighting together in the 505 Battalion when they were captured in Mariupol. Denys was placed in solitary confinement in the Ivanovo Region of Russia. Vlad is also in Russian captivity and at risk of torture, but his whereabouts are unknown. “The start of the war was worse”, says Lastivka, “but at the start of the war we knew absolutely nothing and it was only fear… if you’re talking about how we saw missions then we were like helpless kittens… the scariest missions are when you are in unknown territory, when you feel how weak and vulnerable you are, with no control over your own life, with destruction all around you…” “… we didn’t know where the enemy was”, Lastivka says. “I’m so happy that I’m not alone. There are people with whom I can share this experience. I can’t imagine how hard it is when a person finds themselves somewhere alone, isolated. That’s scary too. Although I like to criticise everyone and everything and say that the worst is yet to come, in reality my imagination carries me forward”. “Doing our job wasn’t the hardest thing”, said Dr Yuri Kuznetsov, one of the last surgeons working at Izyum hospital during the occupation, “the hardest thing was just staying alive”. “Several weeks ago, my office door opened, and the man came in and said ‘doctor, do you remember me? I’m alive!’ We have all had moments when we thought of fleeing. We’ve all had meltdowns and periods of depression, but its moments like that and the solidarity of my colleagues that have kept me here”, says Yuri. “People helped us lot. You know, to put it mildly”, Yuri reflected, “there was nothing to eat, people looted shops and pharmacies. What they didn’t need, they brought to us. Every day bags were brought and left under the door”. Yuri’s shift at the occupied hospital lasted four months and a half. Dr Yuri Kuznetsov at Izyum Central Hospital in the Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine The slashing of USAID funding under the Trump Administration has consequences for both military and healthcare operations in Ukraine, including the funding of clinics for recovery from trauma and amputations associated with war. Two projects have suspended funding to a healthcare system that has endured over a thousand separate and direct Russian military attacks to health infrastructure and workers in Ukraine. Black Flag Medical have been supplying both frontline fighters and civilians with medical mutual aid. Solidarity Collectives supports those fighters who are injured and need recovery. 100,000 amputations have been performed in Ukraine since 2022 and Izyum hospital has treated over 400 patients with injuries directly from mines like PFM. It is predicted to take decades to clear the area of this ordinance. How long does it take to recover from trauma? Against the Janus face of nationalist humanitarianism from the U.S. and imperialist occupation from Russia, our power is solidarity. Instead of debating conspiratorial geopolitical madness to hide defeatist political inaction—we must learn from our comrades east. Solidarity begins by listening. From collectives in Czech Republic that teach anti-authoritarian fighters how to contruct, program and deploy drones as a means of community defence—to events across Europe that have raised money for equipment in the fight against Russian imperialism, “you do not win a race by running alone”, Solidarity Collectives write to European anarchists, “you only run alone like an idiot”. Anti-authoritarian fighters on the front line in Ukraine. Solidarity Collectives “Strength comes from connection, from solidarity, from collective struggles. Solidarity with the people’s who resist is a political gesture which we can’t let be manipulated into a threat to gain benefits”, Solidarity Collectives write. “Anti-fascism is not contemplation but action”. “Some people turn their eyes from the war”, said Lastivka, “how much more of that can I stand? Some people are just tired and want to live normal lives but in order to live normal lives, and for you not to be bothered by news of war…you have to do something about it”. The post Ukraine: On the ground with Solidarity Collectives appeared first on Freedom News.