About the organization of anarchists in Ukraine: point of view of a member of a local action collective

In this article, a comrade in Kyiv talks about the current state of anarchist activities and future prospects in Ukraine. She also points out what could be learned in Finland from the Ukrainian experience. The interview was done verbally, and in this text the comrade's narration is tried to be presented as it was.

First, I'll tell about my background and myself. I'm Ksusha, an anarchist from Ukraine. I currently live in Kyiv and am involved in Solidarity Collectives. Ideas near to anarchism started to interest me during the Maidan of 2013 and 2014 in Kharkiv, where I was born and lived at the time. In the post-Maidan period, when Russia attacked Luhansk and Donetsk and the first wave of refugees from those areas started, anarchists in Kharkiv started running a squat accommodated some of the refugees. The purpose was to help them get back on their feet and to offer instantly a place to stay for the beginning. A friend of mine, who was a member of an anarchist collective, invited me to participate in the renovation of an occupied building. So I joined anarchist activities. From then on, I constantly took part in anarchist projects, I was involved in various actions and, for example, demonstrations against the police state. I also joined an eco-anarchist group that worked against construction projects and deforestation, took action to stop fur production and organized free markets.

Six years passed like that. Then I moved to Kyiv, and my anarchist activity faded away because I couldn't find a suitable collective. When the full-scale war started in 2022, I still had no active connections with the local anarchists. It wasn't until about a month later that I got in touch with a mate, through whom I joined the platform organized by anarchists, still at that time called Operation Solidarity. It was a civic action platform, the purpose of which was to support comrades who went to the front lines. The people supported were, broadly speaking, of the anti-authoritarian left and the spectrum was quite broad. We supported socialists, anarchists, punks, hard core subculturers, anti-fascists, feminists – anyone united by some kind of progressive leftist views. That was the beginning of my active work in the collective. However, Operation Solidarity later split up, and most of the activists reorganized themselves, forming the Solidarity Collectives.

I will now tell you a little more about the Solidarity Collectives group and its activities. Solidarity Collectives consists mainly of anarchists. The activity is divided into three main directions. The direction of military focuses on equipment assistance for the anti-authoritarians currently on the front. We get for these comrades clothes, tactical first aid equipment, technology, such as walkie-talkies and night vision devices, as well as tablets, laptops, cars, and even expensive airplanes and drones – in other words, everything that is now necessary for soldiers, but that the army cannot provide. The army still has major shortcomings in the maintenance of soldiers and a very large part of the necessary basic equipment comes through civilian volunteers. People who support their friends, relatives, acquaintances and colleagues who are at war have formed a wide mutual aid network, which Solidarity Collectives is also a part of, but with the difference that we exclusively support anti-authoritarians. At the moment, we support 80-100 people. Among them are anarchists, anti-fascists, punks, eco-anarchists, feminists, squatters, LGBT+ people and union activists. In this way, quite a lot of comrades to be supported have multiplied.

The second activity direction of Solidarity Collectives is humanitarian aid. We support people who suffer from the direct consequences of war: who have lost their homes or who do not receive help from the government for their basic needs, such as medicine or the technical equipment they need. We participate in house repairing projects, for example, in the Kherson region, where the flood caused enormous damage after Russian forces destroyed the Kahovka dam. We assist schools in war zones by, among other things, supplying laptops for teaching use. We visit the areas close to the front every month to help residents in a way or another.

The third activity direction is media work. The purpose of our media group is to make visible the activities of anti-authoritarians in war. Instead of being marginalized, we want to be a part of society, communicate our activities in the direction of society, be in contact with our comrades in the West and report on our activities.

Solidarity Collectives is not a centralized unit. It has always been important to us that we operate as a network. We work with a wide variety of people. Some have political potential, plans to start an organization or a project, some have ongoing political projects. Others have been active in the past, in e.g. organizing demonstrations and opening social centers, but have decided in this war situation to focus only on their own immediate tasks. So we don't have such a limitation that we only support politically active comrades who are currently building something social. What is important to us is decentralized action, support for political projects and a healthy desire to help, but we do not exclude those who are not currently politically active or planning for the future. We have received criticism for that, but our original priority was to help our comrades survive this war. Their current prospects for social activity are secondary.

Solidarity Collectives strives to have a social impact by cooperating with workers’ unions. We emphasize this because unionism is not very popular these days. With the neoliberal reforms in Ukraine, the whole activity is in danger of being suppressed, but we try to support the remaining projects and their participants. We don't have enough resources for other kinds of actual socio-political activities. However, all our actions can be seen as political. When we support workers’ union activists, they can influence workers' rights and disrupt the neoliberal reforms that are now so popular in Ukraine. But mutual aid to comrades at the front and supporting local communities is also political.

I will now try to answer your question about the organizing of anarchists in the Ukrainian army. Some comrades were in the beginning of full-scale war striving for a centralized organization that would unite all the fighting anti-authoritarians in Ukraine into one squad or platoon, company - however big it would grow. Dreams about this still exist. At least one comrade is still actively working towards the realization of this dream, and some other anarchists also hope for it. However, after talking with several soldier comrades, I have come to the position that it is much more sustainable when we have a hundred comrades spread over a thousand kilometer front line. They have started small projects in different units, and are sowing the seeds of anti-authoritarian cooperation methods in their own locations. First, it's much safer this way. If one anarchist team of nearly 50 people would be sent to the hottest point of battle, it is very possible that the entire team would be destroyed. In any case, the comrades' own unit would be part of the Ukrainian army, as independent units cannot exist in such a war, where we defend ourselves against a full-scale attack. This is not partisan warfare. You cannot be an armed force in this war without being under the control of the Ukrainian army.

Of course, I'm not against an anti-authoritarian unit in principle. It sounds wonderful. But when it was organized in the first months of the full-scale offensive, most of the anti-authoritarians and anarchists had lived only civilian life, and we had no military experience. Almost none of the founders of the anti-authoritarian unit had any background in interacting with the Ukrainian army or in organizing military divisions and military operations. There were no relationships with any structures. All in all, we had bad cards in our hands. When the war started, we were not ready for it. The anti-authoritarian unit could be established thanks to a familiar commander, Yuri Samoilenko. He had connections with the Territorial Defense Forces, a volunteer unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Within these forces, Samoilenko managed to organize a kind of sub-unit. However, due to the attitude of the higher army management, the group got stuck. It could not develop its skills or participate in battles, even if the majority wanted it. That's why people started to disperse into different units.

Now that it's been two and a half years since the full-scale attack began, we have about three promising projects. I won’t now describe in more detail where and how they are formed. Anti-authoritarian comrades are settled in their own units. They 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. Overall, a combination of understanding and experience has been achieved. The projects are developing little by little, and some of them will be joined by more anti-authoritarians, also from abroad. These projects do not have the scale that the founders of the antiauthoritarian unit were aiming at, but they are viable under wartime conditions. This kind of organization is progressing slowly but surely. I think practice is more important than a big and beautiful political plan. Small projects within the army are possible for us and we can develop them with our existing resources.

Regarding the nuances of anarchist military formations in Ukraine, it should be taken into account that in the last century the Soviet Union destroyed the entire political anarchist culture with repression, terror and hunger. Moreover, in today's Ukraine the word "leftist" is demonized. Leftist, red, communist - everything is associated with Soviet communism in people's minds. So our anarchist movement is quite young compared to, say, the Spanish anarchist movement or the Kurdistan liberation movement. Anarchist activity here is related to the libertarian left-wing movement that is only about 20-30 years old. 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. There is distrust towards us."Leftists, that is, communists. Communists, that is, Soviet Union.” And the Soviet Union is a big trauma. It is quite a good achievement that, despite these obstacles, we now have a hundred people in the army. It's not a big amount, but they create and develop projects there. Of course, these projects are still much younger than the movement itself, but I have confidence in their potential, because they have gained strength quickly. In two years, the prospects of a few groups have become promising.

I will tell a little about what we have learned from the time before the war. Perhaps these experiences have similarities to situations in countries that share a border with Russia or Belarus, such as Finland, the Baltic countries and Poland. Before the start of a full-scale war, society had no idea that we could be attacked with such force. No one could imagine anything as big and bloody as the attack that started in 2022. In my view, the leftist movement was then divided into two camps. One foresaw some sort of military escalation, though not full-scale war. It was thought that the war in Luhansk and Donbass could expand. However, I think no one expected missiles, infrastructure sabotage and attack from all directions. Those who expected a certain degree of escalation practiced tactical skills and were of the opinion that society should invest in war preparedness and people should prepare themselves by acquiring military and first aid skills.

The other camp, on the other hand, did not consider escalation likely, and had an extremely negative attitude to demands for militarization. In their view, preparation efforts and calls for militarization supported highly undemocratic values. This more pacifist camp saw authoritarian features in practicing military skills. In their opinion, Ukraine should not be militarized, as it would provoke violence, and the movement should not be oriented towards military action. This camp wanted to focus on solving Ukraine's internal problems – on the fight against neoliberalism and the struggle against the extreme right. The two factions were thus in a state of vague discord until Putin announced his decision to show his military might against Ukraine. That's when the two groups merged. A day before the full-scale attack began, they gathered and decided to discuss how to proceed in the event of an attack. I would say that some deadlines had been missed in preparing the movement for such a war.

Both those who called for preparedness and those who opposed it were unprepared. The group that did the exercises may have had basic military skills, but they were not prepared for airstrikes and artillery fire. The possible know-how was more suitable for guerrilla warfare. It can perhaps be concluded from this that in the European bordering countries of Russia, which are now living in a time of peace, it is necessary to take into account that Russia is an imperialist state, an aggressor that tries to solve everything by force and not by diplomacy. One should not rule out the possibility that the country you live in will fall under the grip of terror similar to what Ukraine has fallen into. There is no point in dreaming about democracy-promoting and diplomatic means of self-defense when it comes to a state like Russia. Narratives of pacifism and peace and avoiding provoking violence do not work when you are targeted by violent attacker. If there is any interest in self-defense among comrades in Finland, the Baltics or Poland, I would say that some kind of practical preparation and acquiring of theoretical knowledge can have positive effects. Practicing first aid skills and attending public defense courses, building drones, as well as many other civilian hobbies can create a good basis for being ready to act in the event of an attack.

Those left-wing activists in Ukraine who practiced tactical skills and took first aid courses were certainly not ready for the massive Russian attack, but they nevertheless had some kind of background and readiness and thus the opportunity to join specialized military units. They were a step ahead of those who joined military defense without any basic knowledge and skills. There were many like the latter. However, some had practiced tactical skills in the terrain, weekly for three years. These exercises included weapons handling, advancement moves, camouflage, and other basic skills that certainly gave an advantage over having no knowledge on armed action. Some kind of mental preparation can also be helpful. If you don’t exclude the possibility that an attack may be directed at you, your communities and your country of residence, you can prepare in advance to take a role that is not that of a victim, a refugee or a passive recipient, but that of a person participating in the resistance.

Some comrades justify participating in the war by arguing that it brings us social "points" that will enable us to act in the future. We can say that we also took part in the war, and we will be appreciated. We assume that the war will end someday and the time will come to push for social change and start social projects. We will be asked: “And what did you do during the war? What was your contribution?” It may be that there will be such unpleasant tones in society after the war that those who took part in military activities rise higher in the hierarchy and will be valued more than civilians and refugees. The view that we participate in the war in order to gain visibility and the right to act in the post-war society, speaks of the assumption that Ukrainian society will go in a more hierarchical and increasingly militarized direction. I'm not saying that it won't happen, and I'm not denying that by going to war, supporting soldiers and helping civilians suffering from war, you can, so to speak, score political points for future actions. However, for me, both personally and as an anarchist, the motivation to do these things is practice: the practice of horizontal relations, the practice of the here and now. I consider even small-scale mutual aid to be a political activity, a realization of the philosophy of anarchism. I would not like to get stuck in theory and pondering on what is good and what is bad to do in this situation. When you feel the need for help from your comrades and people affected by the war, it is very humane to want to participate in support activities and decide to counteract the anti-humane values represented by the attacking regime.

I would say that this small reality - Solidarity Collectives - that we are currently creating and that has had its own experiments, can grow and develop. It can offer new opportunities for groups: drone cooperatives, rehabilitation of the war injured, cultural projects, squats for refugees - this is what I dream of. These dreams can come true, because we have a project like this, in which the people involved are now putting a lot of effort, and which I think is making good results. This is my essential prospect as an anarchist. When it comes to big political slogans, tendencies and projects, I would say that building a movement has never been an absolute value for me. A movement gets built by itself when there is activity. Now it is been built in very decentralized way, but in cooperation. As far as I can see, there are six–seven left-wing projects in Ukraine. Some are small groups of three to four people, others are larger. One of the groups wants to establish a left-wing party in Ukraine. So we have quite different values, but still we cooperate. The projects work autonomously, but help each other in one way or another. The process of building a movement cannot be accelerated by force, new resources do not appear out of nowhere. You can invest in a project and develop it only at the stage it is in at the given time.

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