Exploration trip in war-torn Ukraine
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Український переклад незабаром…
One of the members of our initiative visited Ukraine in April 2024. The objective of this first stay was to meet local actors from the communities concerned in order to better understand the general context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as the state of mind of the local population, but also to see what is being done in terms of popular solidarity initiatives and identify their needs.
I have already been to Ukraine, but a long time ago, on my way to Russia where I visited almost every year for twelve years. It was before Maidan and before the war. I speak Russian and I had links for several years with libertarian political activists from Belarus and Russia, who are fighting against the totalitarianism of the Russian state and its imperialism on its external borders. Since the outbreak of the 2022 offensive, I have been obtaining snippets of critical information from my contacts in the region, but to be sincere, the understanding of the issues eluded and still largely eludes European societies, including political activists. Although I am very familiar with the social reality and the geopolitics of the region, having also worked for years with the Chechen refugee community, what this war entails nevertheless remained a mystery. To understand is to get there.
April 2022, I take the bus to Warsaw, then the train to Kyiv. Two contacts on site had written to me that I was welcome.
Kyiv, project « BeSt »
First, I meet Petro*, Slava*, Kira* and Matviy* (* aliases) in a workshop located behind a rundown building in the Shevchenko district of Kyiv. Many other faces will pass in the small place during my short stay, but my exchanges will mainly be with those four.
They are not activists. For them, political organization seems to be a game of sectarian representations and a waste of energy, which they simply leave to others. At the beginning of the Russian invasion, Petro was carpenter and video-artist, Kira had opened a beauty salon, Slava was a hairdresser and musician, Matviy was a graphic designer. Russian imperialism abruptly interrupted their projects and they found themselves in Kyiv because of the necessity and providential meeting, and because their desire to resist Russian colonialism and to be in solidarity with their friends who had gone to fight led them to join a common project. Petro is working on the development of electronic devices and systems that will help the fighters to resist and survive on the front. Matviy lends a hand on the manual work necessary for the operation of the project, while Slava contributes to the computer engineering work. Other people lend their help on small tasks or logistical support.
Only Matviy lived through the Maïdan experience (popular uprising of 2014), and for him the story begins at that point. For the others, it doesn’t play a crucial role in what’s happening today. The “Russian problem” is much older, and has always somehow existed. Slava seems the most attached to his Ukrainian identity, which he strictly separates from the Russian one: for him, these are two worlds that have little in common. He legitimizes Ukrainian nationalism, which he contrasts with European forms of nationalism, which he describes as fascist. For him, Ukrainian nationalism has no intention or purpose of oppressing racial and gender minorities, while Nazism is a European evil that cannot be transposed to Ukraine. Like the rest of the group, he has migrant and queer friends, attends the alternative music scene and feels no contempt for anti-fascist activists, whom he repeatedly refers to as just another legitimate component of society. When you listen to him, his nationalism seems compatible with democracy, as well as openness to the world and to Europe. Ukrainian identity is defined simply by an attachment to the culture of the Ukrainian people and their strong desire for self-determination. Slava explains that this specificity is summed up by the Ukrainian word “VOLYA”, which is a blend of the notions of freedom, will and desire.
For the group as a whole, resistance goes without saying, and those who shrink from it jeopardize the freedom of all. While not being on the front fighting, they organize themselves to provide logistical support to the fighters and humanitarian aid to those left behind in the regions directly affected by the Russian bombardments. This is their contribution until they are called to the front. When the time comes, they say they’ll go without a second thought, despite the fear they feel. Matviy is the most hesitant, less zealous, and doesn’t believe that his individual involvement as a soldier would change the course of war, which depends more on technology and the power of non-human means employed, and therefore on political decisions beyond our control. He thinks he’d be more useful without a weapon, in logistical or infrastructure-building tasks. Slava encourages him to learn how to fly drones, to stay away from direct combat and because their use has become commonplace in this war. Since Ukraine’s allies are failing to deliver the weapons needed for a decisive response, killer drones are replacing rockets and missiles. From the front come images set to music of these small remote-controlled devices dropping shells and grenades directly on the heads of enemy soldiers. This is the new paradigm of modern warfare: hundreds of drones are manufactured daily by civilians and sent to soldiers on the front line. And as the latter are still insufficiently trained in their use, the contribution of experienced pilots is much appreciated.
However, since volunteers are required to join the regular Ukrainian army, their specialization is not taken into account when they arrive at the front, and my contacts criticize this amateurism on the part of a backward military staff. They explain that it’s different with the Azov battalion, which offers more room for maneuver. Nevertheless, Slava deplores a lack of commitment from Ukrainian youth, who have already got used to this war of position far to the east of the country and continue to live a normal life. He is not very optimistic and says there is no choice but to liberate the whole of Ukraine and bring the war to Moscow, otherwise Russia will never stop crushing its neighbors. Russian colonialism is a constant that must be put to an end once and for all: for Slava and the Ukrainians, it’s freedom or death. And in Slava’s words, one senses resentment towards Russian society, which he accuses of not giving itself the means necessary to put an end to Putin’s dictatorship and the war. If they were truly horrified by this fratricidal war, they would rise up and take up arms against the government. He doesn’t want to know what’s going on in the minds of the Russians, whom he sees as an alienated mass that accepts its fate and sends thousands of its men to be slaughtered without doing anything to stop it. The Ukrainian government claims that around 180,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since February 24, 2022, while the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed is estimated at 31,000.
Where Matviy and Slava, each in their own way, express a moral aspiration and a kind of inner wound of legitimate anger or disillusionment, Petro seems more pragmatic, committed to doing what has to be done, without necessarily letting himself be too affected. At least, that’s what his composure suggests. Perhaps the fact that he grew up in a military family contributes to this rationality. During the few days I’m in their workshop, he’s always active, operating 3D printers, soldering and fastening together oddly shaped parts. When I begin my interview with him, he struggles to describe his activity and prefers to launch the discussion on the absence of foreign military support: “Where are the F16s?”. He goes on to describe the feeling of abandonment and collective powerlessness of an entire people, who are watching the missiles fall helplessly, since there are no weapons to prevent the bombs from landing on Ukrainian cities. This observation is echoed by many Ukrainians who describe themselves as “zhduny”, in reference to the famous sculpture created for the hospital in Leiden (Netherlands) by the artist Margriet van Breevoort, i.e. as “ordinary patients calmly awaiting diagnosis in their doctor’s waiting room, hoping for the best”. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian army is losing ground.
A few steps away, Kira has set up her artistic and humanitarian project: she creates all kinds of pieces of art from objects found in the ruins or picked up here and there, and which help to finance the efforts of the collective as well as actions to help the populations located just behind the front line. She also travels to Europe for exhibitions and informative events, in connection with a collective of independent directors, « Free Filmers », and a support fund for Ukraine, « Medychka Fundraiser ». I also briefly meet Sashko, director of the Free Filmers collective from Mariupol. He gives me an interview during which he describes their various actions: distributing their films and raising awareness in the West, supporting displaced Roma communities in Zaporizhia, rehabilitating houses behind the front line and sending medical supplies to combatants. He gives me a pragmatic and effective list of humanitarian needs, explaining in passing that international NGOs are often out of touch with the reality of these needs. The interview is brief, with Sashko evading my questions about his personal analysis, which he considers too abstract. I understand: in this context, you don’t necessarily want to get lost in theoretical convolutions. Unfortunately, we won’t have time to discuss her vision with Kira either, but it’s thanks to her that I make contact with the people of Kherson. Slava convinces me to go there to “really understand”, but also because he thinks I need to experience this fear to know how I stand in the context of war. He says it’s like a “sobering pill”.
Interview with Matviy
Interview with Slava & Petro
KYIV, « SOLIDARITY COLLECTIVES »
Before leaving Kyiv, I also meet members of another network active in resistance to Russian imperialism, “Solidarity Collectives”. Housed in the premises of a foundation in the Solomyansk district, the collective’s political identity is clearly on the radical left, i.e. anarchist, libertarian communist and anti-fascist. They supply equipment, vehicles and medical supplies to libertarian fighters on the frontline, as well as attack drones ordered in parts and assembled on site. Well-connected with networks of European and international left-wing political supporters, their logistical organization was set up at the start of the Russian invasion, before changing its name in July 2022. They have links with a number of libertarian fighters in various frontline battalions, but also organize humanitarian missions in various localities in the unoccupied zones.
On April 19, I meet up with around thirty activists on Shekavitsya hill to plant oak trees in memory of three internationalist fighters killed on April 19, 2023 during the Battle of Bakhmut, Dmitry Petrov, Finbar Cafferkey and Cooper Andrew. Among those present are other libertarian fighters temporarily back from the front. Dmitry’s father shares his feelings and gratitude by phone, the moment is humble and convivial.
Finbar Cafferkey
Dmitry Petrov
Cooper Andrew
Serguey, one of the active members of “Solidarity Collectives”, talks to me a few hours before my train to Kherson. He describes the enormous amount of solidarity work that has been set up over the past two years, as well as his analysis of the current situation. Before the war, he ran an anti-fascist political media and knows that the lives and freedom of activists like him, but also of a significant proportion of the Ukrainian population, would be seriously threatened if the Russian army occupied Ukraine. He believes he has little chance of surviving a Russian military occupation. Internationalist, egalitarian and pacifist, Serguey has not renounced his principles, but readily admits to having changed his order of priorities: yesterday’s social struggles and political divisions have been partially put on hold because of Russian aggression. He and his entourage had no choice but to reconcile their values with the reality of war, by taking part in armed resistance on the one hand, and supporting the regular army on the other, even if it meant resigning themselves to the militarization of minds that this implied.
However, his decision to support libertarian comrades as a priority reflects his determination not to give in to nationalist logics, and to participate in the “war effort” without renouncing his anti-fascism. He acknowledges the predominance of reactionary thinking in Ukrainian society, but believes that a capitulation by Ukraine, which Putin would present as a victory, would lead to even greater right-wingization, as well as a complete collapse of the social fabric and a threat to progressive circles. At this stage, war-weariness has already taken hold of Ukrainian society, and if Serguey remains optimistic, it’s because he doesn’t rule out a turnaround in the situation, which unfortunately depends solely on political decisions beyond his control, and in particular on the delivery of armaments capable of rolling back the Russian aggressor.
Entretien avec Serguey
As I walk up Kyiv’s grand avenues to the train station, I continue to stare in bewilderment at the posters advertising regiments and military equipment all along the sidewalks: “Glory to the Armed Forces of Ukraine (ЗСУ)”, “The death of the enemy begins with us: be part of the great story”, “Security Service (СБУ): Together for Victory! “, ‘Protect your own, join the armed forces of Ukraine’, ‘An unshakeable Kyiv for an unconquerable people’. Dying for the country where you were born has never made sense to me. Dying for one’s ideas, perhaps, but the nation is not an idea. Freedom and social justice are far more important. But deep down I believe that if you can and must be a pacifist to prevent war from starting, it’s foolish (and too late) to maintain that position once war has arrived on your doorstep. The pacifists and campists who, from their armchairs in Europe, pass judgment on the libertarians resisting the Russian invasion, seem to have forgotten that self-defense is at the very foundation of the principles of political autonomy. And even if the Western powers support the Ukrainian government, this in no way means that popular self-defence becomes an accomplice of their imperialisms: the fighters on the Ukrainian side are not participating in a war of conquest in the name of the Ukrainian state, but in a war of liberation in the name of the people. The struggle against imperialism begins by preventing colonization wherever it is carried out by force of arms. Then, once the military threat has been removed, there’s plenty of time to focus on the fight against capitalism, corruption and state authoritarianism. And there too, alas, it’s not certain that we can succeed without arms…
KHERSON, CITY BEHIND THE FRONT
On the train to Kherson, all these thoughts are running through my head: nationalism, militarization, drones… I’ve come because I need to hear from the people concerned what they think, to better understand what’s at stake, and to clarify my position. During the night journey (9 hours), I shared my cabin with an old lady and a special forces officer. He gives me his number and tells me to contact him if I have a problem in Kherson. I accept out of politeness, with no intention of following up his offer of help, especially as he spontaneously and without asking me scanned my number into an application to check whether I had been flagged by the authorities. After a four-hour stopover in Mykolaiv, I got back on the train for another hour and a half. In Kherson, I got off the train between two thick walls of sand and under the gaze of several heavily armed soldiers. Immediately, the air raid siren went on and two loud explosions sounded. In the station square, and then all the way to the hotel where I meet up with my contact, the buildings are mutilated, gutted, their windows shattered or covered with wooden planks, and the streets are strewn with shell holes filled with sand and rubble. Every so often, a detonation shakes the city, with no way of telling how far away the missile fell. I immediately feel this terrible sensation in my spine, as if a persistent threat were hanging just behind me and urging me to leave the public space as quickly as possible.
I’m staying in what appears to be the last hotel in town. It did take a drone and a rocket, but it’s still standing near the central market. Here I meet up with another Serguey, who runs the hotel housing mainly internally displaced people (IDPs) and provides humanitarian aid here and there where it’s needed. After asking me what I was actually doing here, he pulls me along in his van on his drinking water supply missions. He fetches water in the north of the city, from a huge church invested by the American Christian NGO “The Samaritan Purse” in the Tavrichesk district, then takes it to the east of the city, in the Sklotarne district, where a building houses food distributions under the aegis of the “World Food Program” (WFP). On the way, he describes the various missiles and rockets that fall on the city: 500 kg “KAB” guided bombs, 500 kg “FAB” dropped bombs, 122 mm “GRAD” ground-to-ground rockets. Every day, the Russian army also sends kamikaze drones, the Shahed-136 patented in Iran and then produced in Russia under the name Gueran-2, to crash into civilians or moving vehicles. Serguey shows me a crater left by a rocket in the asphalt: “See this, it fell three days ago. If we’d passed by then, we’d be two dead bodies”.
During my short stay here, I live with constant anxiety, and above all I understand that the buildings don’t protect me. Nothing and nobody is protected here, and the Russian army is shelling without specifically targeting military infrastructures. Around twenty villages on the right bank are targeted daily by Russian missiles, as well as the outskirts and center of Kherson. Every day, homes are destroyed and civilians wounded or killed. On April 26, two schools were pulverized. I follow local news on several Telegram channels: @suspilnekherson, @kherson_monitoring, @kherson_non_fake and @hueviyherson. Every siren and bombardment is reported on these news feeds, and images from both sides of the river are regularly broadcasted. On the other side, soldiers from both sides are engaged in trench warfare that has left nothing of the villages that once stood there. During my stay, the Ukrainian army recaptured Krinky, but the images from there show only a tongue of scorched earth dotted with shell holes and ruins.
I don’t get within 350 meters of the Dnieper, which is already too close. The Russian troops are across the river, 5 kilometers away, in the village of Olechky. The closer you get to the river, the more the streets take on the air of a ghost town: I feel like I’m in the post-apocalyptic video game Fallout, or Chernobyl. It’s terrifyingly quiet, and the streets are deserted. Nevertheless, in this no-man’s-land, old people regularly walks down to the river with a shopping bag, or weeds the lawns and sidewalks of the dead city. When the detonations of fighting and bombing are not heard, birds and dogs seem to agree to fill the silence. Especially at night, when the bombardments intensify, it’s as if hundreds of dogs are barking between two detonations. But the humans are silent. Kherson had a population of 360,000 before the war. Today, more than two-thirds have left.
Through Serguey I meet Igor, who has set up a local NGO called “Strong because free”. Their premises occupy the first floor of two buildings in the Korabelnyi district. Igor worked in construction in Poland before the war. In July 2023, he set up his association, which today does a considerable amount of work: evacuation of bombed-out areas, assistance to families whose homes have been damaged by explosions, assistance to the elderly and disabled, assistance to animals victimized by war, assistance to families whose homes have been flooded following the explosion of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station, distribution of daily lunches and bread, distribution of medicines, clothing, hygiene products, activities and classes for children… In collaboration with the “San Martin Christian Center” and “Save Ukraine”, they are provided with a minibus and a 4×4 with armored windows, with which they regularly drive into areas directly affected by the bombardments to evacuate inhabitants, particularly the elderly, who have been trapped under enemy fire. The 4×4 has already suffered several impacts, including the perforation of the driver’s side window.
Despite his hectic schedule and constant phone calls, Igor takes the time to show me around their premises. I get a glimpse of the scale of the work accomplished in a year and the dynamism of their team, who are sorting dozens of bags of clothes as I arrive. He then takes me to a small café that his wife has just opened on the avenue next to the association’s premises. Despite the context, despite the pressure, I’m warmly welcomed. But Igor confides in me that he’s exhausted, and that they’d need a lot more volunteers to do everything they’d like. He also explains that he had to live in hiding under the Russian occupation, and that the prospect of their return is a source of anguish for everyone.
I’m taken back to the hotel in the 4×4 with bulletproof windows. After another night of explosions, Serguey takes me back to the bus station. Before I leave, police and military officers check my identity and the contents of my phone. One of the officers explains at length that it would be more appropriate for me to report myself to the local authorities and offer my help as a humanitarian volunteer through them. Two days earlier, however, the same authorities had told me that they preferred not to use foreign volunteers, for reasons of security and liability in the event of an incident.
After a stopover in Odessa, where the sirens also sound on my arrival, I set off again for Bucharest during the night. End of the expedition. Now I’ll have to go back and process all this information, and think about what to do next.
A few historical notes on two often-mentionned Ukrainian national figures.
The Ukrainian national pantheon is made up of two contradictory figures: Stepan Bandera (1909-1959) and Nestor Makhno (1888-1934).
Putin’s propaganda rhetoric uses Ukraine’s complex history to essentialize Ukrainians, accusing them of being Nazi sympathizers overall. Beyond the fact that this shortcut is utterly defamatory and grotesque, it relies on the fact that nationalists clearly gained the upper hand over progressives and libertarians in the aftermath of the violent repression of the 2014 democratic revolt. This was particularly true of the “Svoboda” and “Right Sector” movements, whose involvement in the Maidan uprising was generally welcomed by anti-government forces. Both ultra-nationalist parties proudly claim Stepan Bandera’s legacy. For many Ukrainian patriots, if Bandera was led to collaborate with the Nazis between 1934 and 1943, this can only be understood in the context of the emancipation struggle against Russian (Soviet) imperialism, responsible for the deaths of millions of Ukrainians between 1929 and 1933 (dekulakization and holodomor). This analysis, while explaining the anti-Soviet motivations of Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B), nevertheless denies the involvement of its fighters in the massacre of thousands of Polish and Jewish civilians in Lviv in 1941 (around 8,000 dead). Versions of the OUN’s involvement in the pogroms differ, as Bandera was arrested by the Germans on the eve of the massacres and placed under house arrest in Berlin, before being sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in January 1942 (Nota bene : It has been established that Bandera’s conditions in detention were not those of most of the deportees, and that he benefited from privileged conditions at Sachsenhausen). Two of his brothers were killed in Auschwitz in September of the same year, as Ukrainian nationalists opened a new front against the German occupiers, in addition to that against the Soviet occupiers. Despite the denial of the Ukrainian nationalists, a number of documents attest to Bandera’s responsibility in planning and approving the anti-Jewish and anti-Polish massacres. There is therefore no question of rehabilitating Bandera on the pretext of opposing Russian propaganda. Whatever, the influence of ultra-nationalists on the current Ukrainian political landscape needs to be clarified: beyond the often-mentionned ultra-nationalist factions “Svoboda” and “Right Sector”(they claim around 25,000 members and won around 6% of the votes in 2014 and 2019 elections), nationalism, conservatism, traditionalism, religious fundamentalism and anti-communism remain strong within most of the other political parties aswell as in the Ukrainian society. This does not mean, however, that Ukraine is any more nationalistic or conservative than Poland, Hungary, Italy or Russia…
If we had to choose a folk hero, it would certainly be more interresting to delve into Nestor Makhno’s legacy. Between 1917 and 1921, Nestor Makhno, but also Maria Nikiforova (who is less well known, no doubt because she was a woman) led thousands of Ukrainian peasants in their armed insurrection against Russian imperialism (monarchist, then Bolshevik). In the areas liberated by the Ukrainian revolutionary, libertarian and anarchist insurrectionary army, almost 7 million Ukrainians temporarily experienced a stateless communalist political system. The “green” and “black” armies gathered up to 100,000 fighters in a relentless struggle against the requisitioning and plundering of Ukrainian agrarian resources by the German, the “White” and the Russian occupying armies, and later against the Bolshevik dictatorship. Wrongly accused of anti-Semitism, a charge denied by a number of historians and not attested to by any historical documents, the Makhnovist movement was finally crushed in blood by the Bolsheviks, who then applied relentless repression against the entire Ukrainian population and peasantry. Today, the town that was the nerve center of the Makhnovchina, Houliaïpole, lies behind the front line after being occupied by the Russian army for less than a week in March 2022, and has been under constant bombardment ever since.
