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Title: On the Ukrainian war
Author: Autonomous Action
Date: 19 October 2014
Language: en
Topics: Ukraine, war, Russia
Source: Retrieved on 16th December 2021 from https://avtonom.org/en/news/moscow-autonomous-action-ukrainian-war
Notes: Written by the Moscow branch of Autonomous Action.

Autonomous Action

On the Ukrainian war

This text was written as an answer to our foreign friends’ questions

about situation in the Eastern Ukraine and Russian anarchists’ attitude

towards that. We hope it will be of use to everybody interested in these

matters.

The situation is complex and controversial and you should understand

that the text below does not (and can’t) reflect the opinion of all

Russian anti-fascists and anti-capitalists. We discussed this within our

group, but even here we have a couple of contradicting points of view.

Anyway, our organization (“Autonomous Action”) mostly agrees to this

anti-war statement of left-wing movements. We do not support Ukrainian

government (neither government, in fact), and undoubtedly there are some

harsh nationalist tendencies in the Ukraine today. However, even less is

our support for Russian government and for so called ‘Novorossiya

republics’. It seems that fascists are fighting each other at both sides

in this war, backed by capitalists. Additionally, for Putin this war is

a chance to distract Russian people from financial crisis and recession

in country’s economic system, while for Poroshenko the war is useful as

a way to channel people’s strive for changes into patriotic madness,

instead of trying to continue what had started in Maydan and establish

real self-government.

Concerning the attitude of Donbass people, we would say that most of

them do not want anything except ‘stop bombing us, both of you’. Leaders

of pro-Russian paramilitares several times told in public that “Donbass

people don’t want to fight, that’s why Russia must directly invade”. In

fact, politically passive population is characteristic for many exUSSR

territories. However, it is known that in the spring of 2014 opinion

polls showed that only about 20% of Donbass people supported separating

from the Ukraine and joining Russia. Of course, right now it is very

difficult to conduct any opinion polls in war-torn land. Moreover, tens

of thousands left Donbass as refugees — both to Russia and to western

Ukraine.

We do not support the view that Donbass war is some kind of ‘resistance

against Ukrainian fascists’. As stated before, there are nationalist

tendencies in contemporary Ukraine, but hardly more than in any other

exUSSR country. In Russia, patriotic, imperialist and outright fascist

propaganda is at least as often heard as in the Ukraine or even more.

And pro-Russian ‘people’s republics’ of Donbass mimic this. Judging by

what we know from there, there is no sign that any changes happen there

which can be considered ‘leftist’ or at least ‘social democratic’. Vice

versa, they keep issuing ‘laws’ like prohibiting homosexual relations or

establishing ‘dominant role’ of Orthodox Church in the region. The

rhetoric of their leaders is exactly what you call ‘red-brownism’: a

paradoxical mixture of right-wing conservatism and Soviet-like

imperialism. We know about cases of ethnic cleansing under their rule:

at least it happened with Jews and Roma people. So, it comes as no

surprise that European fascists are joining them.

Thus, we believe that ‘anti-fascist struggle’ is here a simple label,

which does not have anything to do with the reality. And the reality is

that these ‘republics’ are an attempt of Russian imperialists to back

pro-Russian nationalist groups in the region and to provide them with

weapon, equipment and lately with armed forces in order to create havoc

there. The final aim is, perhaps, to use the situation as a tool in

stopping the Ukraine from joining NATO, and, as stated before, in

distracting attention of Russian population towards some external enemy.

It is ironic that at the same time Russian laws proclaim any call to

separatism to be a grave crime, and you can be sent to prison for

several years if you demand a referendum like the one conducted in the

Crimea in March 2014.

It’s difficult to say anything about left or anti-capitalist resistance

in Donbass right now. The region is in the hands of tens or hundreds of

paramilitary groups, only very loosely united under self-proclaimed

‘ministers’ and ‘governors’. It is very possible that some local leaders

can stick to left-wing political views. However, there are no signs from

them, no clear political statements. Additionally, it’s obvious that the

region is under heavy Russian influence (enough to say that large part

of military leaders are Russian citizens), and of course Putin is not

very much interested in real anti-capitalist resistance there.

Nationalists, monarchists and Orthodox zealots are much better for him.

We understand that Putin’s propaganda really works well on people in the

Western countries, because they are sick and tired of their own leaders

and Putin looks like ‘hooligan’ who threatens these leaders and scares

them. This propaganda already drove some international fighters to

Donbass republics. However, we, living under Putin’s regime, would like

to warn you against thinking about him as some kind of Che Guevara. He

is not. Contemporary Russian elite is a rather plain company of rich

capitalists, mostly united around persons who are either Putin’s old

friends or somehow related to Russian secret service (‘Federal Security

Service’, FSB). It would be absurd to think that they are progressive

from any point of view. They simply want to stay in power for as long as

they could, because in case they lost this power, they would be

immediately sent to trial (corruption among the authorities is immense

here), and they clearly understand that. That’s it.

Having said that, it is important to emphasize that Russian

anti-fascists (even those who were considered to be left-wing or

anti-authoritarian) do not have a unified point of view on the Ukraine

war. Some believe that even these right-wing Novorossiya republics are

better than ‘Ukrainian fascists’. Several antifa groups declared

themselves ‘Russian patriots’, and, to our mind, are now a kind of

‘left-wing fascists’. We know of at least one Russian militant antifa

who was killed while fighting for Novorossiya. At the same time, several

Ukrainian anarchist anti-fascists fought against Novorossiya, within

Ukrainian volunteer squads. Sadly, it looks like the whole notion of

‘anti-fascism’ is so much worn out in propagandistic use (from both

sides of the conflict), that it is impossible to seriously apply it to

anything or anybody.