We publish below a report on increasing anti-war feeling in Ukraine.This
was written from the anarchist group Assembly in Ukraine, who have
adopted a consistent antimilitarist position. ---- "A premonition of
civil war" is in the air of Ukraine. According to official information,
4.6 million people updated their military registration data in the
two-month period up to July 17, and at least 6 million others "are
subject to automatic administrative liability." That is, about half of
the country's male population finds itself in a practically illegal
position.
Just had been published on July 14 the Assembly's analysis on dozens of
street direct actions against mobilization since the beginning of this
year, the country was shaken by another clash: the evening of the same
day, in the Odessa region, border guards stopped a car with four
recruits who had escaped from a training battalion, one of whom,
mobilised a month ago, allegedly began to strangle a border guard and
was shot dead. Already next night, in the first hours of the 15th, a
grenade flew into an enlistment office in the Zolochiv district of the
Lviv region (only the windows and the facade were damaged). Finally, on
the evening of July 19, FariOFF happened in Lviv.
The shooting of one of the most scandalous far-right opinion leaders in
Ukraine, odious even to the commanders and militants of Azov for her
hatred of Russian-speaking Ukrainians, was the first street murder of a
politician during the full-scale Russian invasion. Even her opponents
began to speak anxiously about the threat of turning the imperialist war
into a civil war. 18-year-old suspect Vyacheslav Zinchenko, an adherent
of NS/WP, was detained on July 25 in the city of Dniepr; he allegedly
planned to join the army later. In the manifesto of the "autonomous
revolutionary racist" appeared in neo-Nazi channels, Farion is accused
of inciting hatred between white people and is called an internal enemy,
while the Ukrainian military is fighting an external enemy. A day
before, 32-year-old Mikhail Tonkonogov, a well-known volunteer and
chairman of the city's auto carriers union, was found dead in a forest
belt near the same Dniepr. The police claim that on July 22nd he met
with two residents aged 23 and 39, as a result of the conflict they
killed him with six shots and buried the body. They were detained and
were suspected of premeditated murder by prior agreement. There is also
a version that Tonkonogov was killed for some debt: auto transportation
in Ukraine is a very corrupt business, and it is well known that
refusing to pay someone at the top for the opportunity to do this can
cost one's life. Perhaps this is why the activist's murder did not
receive much resonance in society.
In such an atmosphere, it is not surprising that on June 19th, the bill
No. 6569-d on the establishment of the military police in Ukraine to
combat desertion and disciplinary violations was adopted in the first
reading. In order to at least partially ease tensions in society, on
July 17th, the Ukrainian parliament also voted in the first reading and
took as a basis the bill No. 11322, under which a serviceman who has
committed unauthorised leaving of the unit (Ukrainian abbreviation:
SZCh) or desertion committed the first time will be able to return to
service with all payments and support, without being brought to criminal
liability. His intention must be approved by the commander. A lawyer
from Kharkov who communicates a lot with the military and security
forces told the Assembly about this:
"There are more than 100 thousand trained people there, they want to
bring them back. It is more profitable to agitate for their return. But
in what form will it be... If there are good conditions, at least 40%
will return. Because they fled due to the stupidity of their commanders.
If they are treated humanely, many will return. The issue is in
provision. Many will want to avoid being brought in by force and being
enrolled in assault battalions of prisoners. Not only is there a
shortage of people there, even just holding positions is a big plus. Now
there are 120 thousand SZChs. 60 thousand will return and that will be wow."
From other Kharkov interlocutors of our media this summer. Like most of
the follow-up evidence, it was presented in the articles "SZCh as a new
trend," "The time for fragging?" and "Totalitarianism, heat, July":
"Until the mechanism is clear, statements mean nothing. I think there
will be a conversation with the staff, that the cops will find everyone
based on the data and then they will still drive them from the zone to
the field. In general, preventive conversations are constantly held, but
the soldiers do not care when the command does not know how to command.
Many go to SZCh through the indifference at the top, despite all the
warnings and intimidation.
I have two friends in SZCh from Saltovka, they tried to resolve the
dismissal through lawyers and it did not work. They were tired of
getting it, they saw everything with their own eyes. Often the command
ignores the treatment of the soldiers, they do not return to duty
already from the hospital. They give a period of return, for example, a
week, and the soldier only gets tests done in a week. Naturally, people
choose their health."
"My godfather has already finished fighting. He went on vacation and did
not come back. Everyone is fed up with everything. I called the
commander and told him, he was not surprised. He lives in his apartment
according to his registration, so far no one has even come. I fought for
a year and a half, that's enough. Half a battalion of them. For how long
- I didn't ask, he doesn't really care. They don't put in jail, they
send back to the unit, and then we'll see."
"My brother came back from Toretsk without a leg, and those who were
with him didn't come back, they shoved him into a minibus in the
evening, in the morning he was already in Dniepr... They packed him up a
little over a month ago, brought him to the hospital in Vinnitsa a week
ago. He didn't stay in training for long, two weeks. He didn't try to
get out of there. I think if it were real, then everyone who was forced
into it would have escaped. There are no more patriots, those of mine
who went on their own at 22, three are already in the ground, one is
missing, but when they came on leave, they all said that you have
nothing to do there!!!"
Will the phrase "to go to a lecture of Farion" become a modern synonym
for "to go to the headquarters of Dukhonin", that is, the
commander-in-chief of the Russian Provisional Government, lynched by
sailors and soldiers at the end of 1917? Our portal wrote about a light
case of soldier's lynching from the words of a Kharkov metro driver at
the beginning of this summer: "Many acquaintances and acquaintances of
acquaintances are on the run, they do not return after vacation. A
simple example. The guys fought since 2014. At night, of course, they
drink. In the morning there was a battle, one was killed. The puppy
commander of 22 took the remains for examination, that there was alcohol
in the blood, so that his relatives would not receive payments. They
beat him up and left the unit for their native Lviv. I was driving in a
car, I saw three soldiers standing. One was in slippers, that's why I
noticed. I stopped and asked where I could get a free ride (I'm not
afraid of them, I have a reservation). I took them to the bus station,
and they opened up to me," he told anonymously on June 2.
Politician and propagandist Alexei Arestovich, close to the Presidential
Office, stated in his interview on June 22: "If we throw more and more
people into the fire, well, I can give you an example - we had a
breakthrough near Toretsk. Do you think it was because life was good?
There will be several more in the near future. I can give you an
example: on one of the key sections of the front, the day before
yesterday, 6 battalions refused to carry out a combat mission. Six. Do
you think this is the only case? Do you think this will not happen
again, do you think it will not escalate? This is not so. Despite all
the Western aid, because at the root lies the wrong attitude towards
people, and people pay - what? - with disloyalty. The same as 100 years
ago. When 5 thousand Bolsheviks[in fact, there were also a lot of
anarchists or left socialists revolutionaries, - Ed.]were marching on
Kiev, there were one and a half million soldiers in Ukraine with
experience of the First World War. They would have crushed and not
noticed these Bolsheviks. Why didn't they come out, why did 300 students
come out? One and a half million veterans! Heroes, as we say today. No
one lifted a finger, the students went. Because the government pursued
such a policy, the government of that time, that no one cared about it,
there was no loyalty, no one wanted to protect it. We are going down
exactly the same path - look at the number of people entering military
schools, look at the number of those who refuse." From his words, the
recruitment of future officers is completed at less than 50% and this
figure is "very small for the largest European state."
On April 6, in the Kherson region, an AFU sergeant fired at his
commander (with the rank of major) after he refused to give him leave.
The bullet hit the ceiling, no one was hurt. The shooter had his
automatic rifle taken away and was sent to a psychiatric center. He
managed to escape on the way, the search results are unknown.
Some AFU instructor told one of the main political Telegram channels of
Ukraine about a mass desertion from the training unit. "A couple of
months ago, reinforcements arrived - seafarers were taken off the ships
and sent to serve in the marines. These are contractors, whom at the
beginning of the war, when signing a contract, the Ukrainian Navy
command promised that they would serve only on ships. But recently, the
command removed personnel from several ships at once. They were
transferred to marine brigades. On the way from the ships to training,
some of these guys escaped. Almost none of the escapees were found. I
think that many have already fled from Ukraine," the post from July 17
says. The location of the events is not specified. However, if we are
talking about mid-May, it is notoriously that Ukrainian troops were then
hastily pulling together reserves to stop the Russian offensive north of
Kharkov. Marines of the 36th brigade are fighting there now.
The Telegram channel of the Atesh movement, which works for Ukrainian
military intelligence in Crimea, wrote on July 15 about the 810th marine
brigade from Sevastopol: "After numerous failures in Krynki, part of the
brigade has already advanced to the Kharkov section of the front. Due to
heavy losses in the Kherson direction, more than 100 people refused to
take part in further combat operations. The wounded are left in
hospitals in Henichesk and Skadovsk. They do not have time to fill the
staff with new people, and the command reports 75% of the brigade's
combat readiness." If seafarers from both sides refused to shoot at each
other, can this be considered a kind of remote fraternisation?
Yesterday it became known that Yevgeny Zarubin, a resident of Kursk and
a former Wagnerist, fled from the 138th guards motorised rifle brigade
of the Russian Armed Forces. He recorded a viral video in the middle of
this month about heavy losses in an assault of Volchansk. After this, he
had to retract his words. He led former criminal prisoners and guilty
mobilised soldiers, as well as those who had recently signed a contract,
into the storming. Since July 28, he himself is wanted for unauthorised
leaving of the unit; his weapon has also disappeared.
On July 26, nine convicts escaped from a training ground in the Belgorod
region (bordering the Kharkov region on the Russian side), and three
more escaped the next day. According to the photo description, one of
them was imprisoned for murder, the second for causing grievous bodily
harm, and the third for illegal deprivation of liberty. The rest were
serving time under more lenient articles.
On July 11, in the border village of Kozinka (the Graivoron district of
the same Belgorod region), a contract military from Chuvashia shot two
of his colleagues and wounded another one, fleeing with a weapon and
ammunition. In 2011, 28-year-old Aleksei Zhuravlyov committed a robbery
in a group of people, for which he was later convicted. Before his
service, he worked as a window installer and pipe fitter. On July 15, it
became known that the deserter was detained in the same district. The
reasons for the shooting are given in social networks in different ways.
According to one version, Zhuravlyov did not want to fight and allegedly
did not see any other way out for himself, according to another, the
motive could have been revenge for humiliation.
The most epic example of such a shooting remains the act of Russian
contract junior sergeant Yury Galushko, who killed six persons at a
command post in Donetsk on the night of May 4 because his mother was
injured during the shelling of Kharkov. He fled with his weapons; there
is no information about his arrest or death to this day. Also, in late
spring, the Assembly mentioned Russian mobilised fighters Pavel Fursenko
and Maxim Potekhin, arrested in the Lugansk region on suspicion of
murdering a commander, but the details of what happened are unknown.
Concerning the so-called "Donetsk People's Republic", the Telegram
channel Mobilisation DPR Live made a compilation on June 6 about three
shot combats (battalion commanders). It claims that among those killed
by Galushko was his combat. On the penultimate day of spring this year,
this channel reported on the death of a motorised riflemen commander
from the Gorlovka military unit at the hands of his subordinates: "At
the training ground of the Karl Marx mine village near Yenakiyevo,
fighters of military unit 52892 (one of the subunits of the former
08803), driven to madness and despair, shot dead the commander of the
1st motorised rifle battalion of the 132 brigade, call sign "Small",
name Andrey. This combat killed thousands of people, those who were kept
on leave in a cell in Nikitovka. The day before, a shell landed there,
those who should not have been there died. The situation in this unit is
tense, it is unbearably hard for the guys to serve with such incompetent
commanders," said a source of Mobilisation DPR.
The third episode in their list is from a year ago: in the so-called
"Lugansk People's Republic" on May 24, 2023, a company commander
allegedly shot a battalion commander in the head because they wanted to
send them to be butchered. A male voice with a Donbass accent says this
in the referred video. The frame shows the dead body in a large pool of
blood, with a screaming nurse rushing around. They also provide a
description from the FSB for the neighboring Rostov region: "On May 24,
2023, in the town of Lisichansk, LPR, servicemen of the "Storm Z"
detachment committed the murder of a serviceman of the LPR Ministry of
Defense and the subsequent escape from the special military operation
zone. A total of 39 people are wanted, they may be armed with automatic
weapons" (we also wrote about this story when it happened). However,
there is a discrepancy: the channel concluded that the video with the
killed officer relates to the escape in the Luhansk region based on the
date of its appearance. But there are men in Ukrainian pixel uniforms,
and in the comments under the post, a reader noted that this probably
happened in the Dnepropetrovsk region. More likely, these were two
different stories on different sides of the front. The rank and position
of the one killed while trying to stop deserters in Lisichansk is still
unclear.
The mentioned Assembly's study on violent confrontation between
civilians and mobilisers has not yet been translated into English. In
total, we have recorded about 40 cases from the beginning of this year
until mid-summer: from night grenade attacks on enlistment torturers to
mass riots or individual armed resistance the kidnappers. People use
knifes, spray cans, heavy blunt objects, on June 4 even threw tomatoes
at visitors during a raid on a market in Kherson. At the same time, the
survey did not include the equally regular arsons of relay cabinets,
electrical substations, and military vehicles - not only Ukrainian
security forces, but also a number of independent sources link them to
Russian recruiters of easy money seekers on Telegram and the Darknet.
The arming in the working class is a separate matter. "Buying a gun is
not difficult at all. An automatic rifle is three thousand, a pistol is
1500, last year went to Staryi Saltov to buy from the soldiers, but if
the cops find it, it's a criminal offense for 5 years, no less. This is
in hryvnia. The dude took two AKs, I'm scared, I already had a similar
conviction. There's a very fine line between[criminal articles]156 and
157, I jumped from 157 to 156, I don't remember the points, but they
were easy. They sold everything from boots to thermal imagers, or asked
one of the locals to go to a pawnshop in Kharkov for a share. These are
trophies, there was there like shit. There was a whole sale there -
generators, cartridges[for firearms], uniforms. Many people got hold of
gens, boots, cartridges. I wouldn't mess with the military or rifles
now, even if they accidentally find it, they can knock you off, or an
article, put you in jail anyway, plus they will torture you, asking you
what you need all this for. By the way, I heard about a case where a man
in Kupyansk in 22 collected weapons abandoned by the AFU in a barn, then
when the Russians found them, they beat him up and sent him to the FSB.
The FSB kept him in suspense for a month, then let him go. The arsenal,
of course, was taken away," tells a mechanic from one of Kharkov's
municipal enterprises.
Of course, the chronicle of the Ukrainian social war in the rear need to
be updated since then. Odessa, known for its traditions of combative
anarchism, is especially rich in news. On July 19th, a crowd of
passers-by blocked the road at Privoz, preventing the police from
detaining a driver who allegedly did not stop at a checkpoint. In the
scrimmage, the cop's uniform was torn off, naked to the waist, he fired
a pistol into the air and doused an elderly woman with pepper spray.
Last week, in the suburban village of Tairovo, a local deputy got
allegedly beaten for helping to distribute military draft notices, and
in Odessa, someone burned a neighbour's Suzuki for his swastika tattoo
(if we believe the social networks).
If we take seriously the statements of the Ukrainian authorities about
their readiness for negotiations with Russia, so long-awaited for a
significant part of Ukrainian society, all sense is lost in the widely
announced autumn counteroffensive and the total mobilisation. Even
without further practical steps, these speeches threaten to further
undermine the motivation of the troops, where the personnel will
logically decide: what is the point of mass deaths on the threshold of
negotiations? Moreover, the force mobilisation on the streets for the
planned breakthrough of the front by means of superiority in manpower
becomes meaningless and gives the draft dodgers even more confidence
that it is necessary to hide, as there is not much time left to wait.
Therefore, no matter what tricks are standing behind such statements,
they threaten an even more serious growth of anti-war insistence at the
front and in the rear. The process is going in accordance with our
winter forecast that 2024 will be a key year for the formation of a
revolutionary situation similar to the WWI scenario.
Glory to evaders, trenches to serfs! Everything will be Evadia!
Picture: Memetic frame depicting, on the right, a man who is forcibly
drafted off a Kharkov street in the winter of 2024 and, on the left, the
classic cartoon "On the offensive" from the First World War
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2024/08/02/judge-lynch-you-have-the-floor-the-murder-of-farion/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
was written from the anarchist group Assembly in Ukraine, who have
adopted a consistent antimilitarist position. ---- "A premonition of
civil war" is in the air of Ukraine. According to official information,
4.6 million people updated their military registration data in the
two-month period up to July 17, and at least 6 million others "are
subject to automatic administrative liability." That is, about half of
the country's male population finds itself in a practically illegal
position.
Just had been published on July 14 the Assembly's analysis on dozens of
street direct actions against mobilization since the beginning of this
year, the country was shaken by another clash: the evening of the same
day, in the Odessa region, border guards stopped a car with four
recruits who had escaped from a training battalion, one of whom,
mobilised a month ago, allegedly began to strangle a border guard and
was shot dead. Already next night, in the first hours of the 15th, a
grenade flew into an enlistment office in the Zolochiv district of the
Lviv region (only the windows and the facade were damaged). Finally, on
the evening of July 19, FariOFF happened in Lviv.
The shooting of one of the most scandalous far-right opinion leaders in
Ukraine, odious even to the commanders and militants of Azov for her
hatred of Russian-speaking Ukrainians, was the first street murder of a
politician during the full-scale Russian invasion. Even her opponents
began to speak anxiously about the threat of turning the imperialist war
into a civil war. 18-year-old suspect Vyacheslav Zinchenko, an adherent
of NS/WP, was detained on July 25 in the city of Dniepr; he allegedly
planned to join the army later. In the manifesto of the "autonomous
revolutionary racist" appeared in neo-Nazi channels, Farion is accused
of inciting hatred between white people and is called an internal enemy,
while the Ukrainian military is fighting an external enemy. A day
before, 32-year-old Mikhail Tonkonogov, a well-known volunteer and
chairman of the city's auto carriers union, was found dead in a forest
belt near the same Dniepr. The police claim that on July 22nd he met
with two residents aged 23 and 39, as a result of the conflict they
killed him with six shots and buried the body. They were detained and
were suspected of premeditated murder by prior agreement. There is also
a version that Tonkonogov was killed for some debt: auto transportation
in Ukraine is a very corrupt business, and it is well known that
refusing to pay someone at the top for the opportunity to do this can
cost one's life. Perhaps this is why the activist's murder did not
receive much resonance in society.
In such an atmosphere, it is not surprising that on June 19th, the bill
No. 6569-d on the establishment of the military police in Ukraine to
combat desertion and disciplinary violations was adopted in the first
reading. In order to at least partially ease tensions in society, on
July 17th, the Ukrainian parliament also voted in the first reading and
took as a basis the bill No. 11322, under which a serviceman who has
committed unauthorised leaving of the unit (Ukrainian abbreviation:
SZCh) or desertion committed the first time will be able to return to
service with all payments and support, without being brought to criminal
liability. His intention must be approved by the commander. A lawyer
from Kharkov who communicates a lot with the military and security
forces told the Assembly about this:
"There are more than 100 thousand trained people there, they want to
bring them back. It is more profitable to agitate for their return. But
in what form will it be... If there are good conditions, at least 40%
will return. Because they fled due to the stupidity of their commanders.
If they are treated humanely, many will return. The issue is in
provision. Many will want to avoid being brought in by force and being
enrolled in assault battalions of prisoners. Not only is there a
shortage of people there, even just holding positions is a big plus. Now
there are 120 thousand SZChs. 60 thousand will return and that will be wow."
From other Kharkov interlocutors of our media this summer. Like most of
the follow-up evidence, it was presented in the articles "SZCh as a new
trend," "The time for fragging?" and "Totalitarianism, heat, July":
"Until the mechanism is clear, statements mean nothing. I think there
will be a conversation with the staff, that the cops will find everyone
based on the data and then they will still drive them from the zone to
the field. In general, preventive conversations are constantly held, but
the soldiers do not care when the command does not know how to command.
Many go to SZCh through the indifference at the top, despite all the
warnings and intimidation.
I have two friends in SZCh from Saltovka, they tried to resolve the
dismissal through lawyers and it did not work. They were tired of
getting it, they saw everything with their own eyes. Often the command
ignores the treatment of the soldiers, they do not return to duty
already from the hospital. They give a period of return, for example, a
week, and the soldier only gets tests done in a week. Naturally, people
choose their health."
"My godfather has already finished fighting. He went on vacation and did
not come back. Everyone is fed up with everything. I called the
commander and told him, he was not surprised. He lives in his apartment
according to his registration, so far no one has even come. I fought for
a year and a half, that's enough. Half a battalion of them. For how long
- I didn't ask, he doesn't really care. They don't put in jail, they
send back to the unit, and then we'll see."
"My brother came back from Toretsk without a leg, and those who were
with him didn't come back, they shoved him into a minibus in the
evening, in the morning he was already in Dniepr... They packed him up a
little over a month ago, brought him to the hospital in Vinnitsa a week
ago. He didn't stay in training for long, two weeks. He didn't try to
get out of there. I think if it were real, then everyone who was forced
into it would have escaped. There are no more patriots, those of mine
who went on their own at 22, three are already in the ground, one is
missing, but when they came on leave, they all said that you have
nothing to do there!!!"
Will the phrase "to go to a lecture of Farion" become a modern synonym
for "to go to the headquarters of Dukhonin", that is, the
commander-in-chief of the Russian Provisional Government, lynched by
sailors and soldiers at the end of 1917? Our portal wrote about a light
case of soldier's lynching from the words of a Kharkov metro driver at
the beginning of this summer: "Many acquaintances and acquaintances of
acquaintances are on the run, they do not return after vacation. A
simple example. The guys fought since 2014. At night, of course, they
drink. In the morning there was a battle, one was killed. The puppy
commander of 22 took the remains for examination, that there was alcohol
in the blood, so that his relatives would not receive payments. They
beat him up and left the unit for their native Lviv. I was driving in a
car, I saw three soldiers standing. One was in slippers, that's why I
noticed. I stopped and asked where I could get a free ride (I'm not
afraid of them, I have a reservation). I took them to the bus station,
and they opened up to me," he told anonymously on June 2.
Politician and propagandist Alexei Arestovich, close to the Presidential
Office, stated in his interview on June 22: "If we throw more and more
people into the fire, well, I can give you an example - we had a
breakthrough near Toretsk. Do you think it was because life was good?
There will be several more in the near future. I can give you an
example: on one of the key sections of the front, the day before
yesterday, 6 battalions refused to carry out a combat mission. Six. Do
you think this is the only case? Do you think this will not happen
again, do you think it will not escalate? This is not so. Despite all
the Western aid, because at the root lies the wrong attitude towards
people, and people pay - what? - with disloyalty. The same as 100 years
ago. When 5 thousand Bolsheviks[in fact, there were also a lot of
anarchists or left socialists revolutionaries, - Ed.]were marching on
Kiev, there were one and a half million soldiers in Ukraine with
experience of the First World War. They would have crushed and not
noticed these Bolsheviks. Why didn't they come out, why did 300 students
come out? One and a half million veterans! Heroes, as we say today. No
one lifted a finger, the students went. Because the government pursued
such a policy, the government of that time, that no one cared about it,
there was no loyalty, no one wanted to protect it. We are going down
exactly the same path - look at the number of people entering military
schools, look at the number of those who refuse." From his words, the
recruitment of future officers is completed at less than 50% and this
figure is "very small for the largest European state."
On April 6, in the Kherson region, an AFU sergeant fired at his
commander (with the rank of major) after he refused to give him leave.
The bullet hit the ceiling, no one was hurt. The shooter had his
automatic rifle taken away and was sent to a psychiatric center. He
managed to escape on the way, the search results are unknown.
Some AFU instructor told one of the main political Telegram channels of
Ukraine about a mass desertion from the training unit. "A couple of
months ago, reinforcements arrived - seafarers were taken off the ships
and sent to serve in the marines. These are contractors, whom at the
beginning of the war, when signing a contract, the Ukrainian Navy
command promised that they would serve only on ships. But recently, the
command removed personnel from several ships at once. They were
transferred to marine brigades. On the way from the ships to training,
some of these guys escaped. Almost none of the escapees were found. I
think that many have already fled from Ukraine," the post from July 17
says. The location of the events is not specified. However, if we are
talking about mid-May, it is notoriously that Ukrainian troops were then
hastily pulling together reserves to stop the Russian offensive north of
Kharkov. Marines of the 36th brigade are fighting there now.
The Telegram channel of the Atesh movement, which works for Ukrainian
military intelligence in Crimea, wrote on July 15 about the 810th marine
brigade from Sevastopol: "After numerous failures in Krynki, part of the
brigade has already advanced to the Kharkov section of the front. Due to
heavy losses in the Kherson direction, more than 100 people refused to
take part in further combat operations. The wounded are left in
hospitals in Henichesk and Skadovsk. They do not have time to fill the
staff with new people, and the command reports 75% of the brigade's
combat readiness." If seafarers from both sides refused to shoot at each
other, can this be considered a kind of remote fraternisation?
Yesterday it became known that Yevgeny Zarubin, a resident of Kursk and
a former Wagnerist, fled from the 138th guards motorised rifle brigade
of the Russian Armed Forces. He recorded a viral video in the middle of
this month about heavy losses in an assault of Volchansk. After this, he
had to retract his words. He led former criminal prisoners and guilty
mobilised soldiers, as well as those who had recently signed a contract,
into the storming. Since July 28, he himself is wanted for unauthorised
leaving of the unit; his weapon has also disappeared.
On July 26, nine convicts escaped from a training ground in the Belgorod
region (bordering the Kharkov region on the Russian side), and three
more escaped the next day. According to the photo description, one of
them was imprisoned for murder, the second for causing grievous bodily
harm, and the third for illegal deprivation of liberty. The rest were
serving time under more lenient articles.
On July 11, in the border village of Kozinka (the Graivoron district of
the same Belgorod region), a contract military from Chuvashia shot two
of his colleagues and wounded another one, fleeing with a weapon and
ammunition. In 2011, 28-year-old Aleksei Zhuravlyov committed a robbery
in a group of people, for which he was later convicted. Before his
service, he worked as a window installer and pipe fitter. On July 15, it
became known that the deserter was detained in the same district. The
reasons for the shooting are given in social networks in different ways.
According to one version, Zhuravlyov did not want to fight and allegedly
did not see any other way out for himself, according to another, the
motive could have been revenge for humiliation.
The most epic example of such a shooting remains the act of Russian
contract junior sergeant Yury Galushko, who killed six persons at a
command post in Donetsk on the night of May 4 because his mother was
injured during the shelling of Kharkov. He fled with his weapons; there
is no information about his arrest or death to this day. Also, in late
spring, the Assembly mentioned Russian mobilised fighters Pavel Fursenko
and Maxim Potekhin, arrested in the Lugansk region on suspicion of
murdering a commander, but the details of what happened are unknown.
Concerning the so-called "Donetsk People's Republic", the Telegram
channel Mobilisation DPR Live made a compilation on June 6 about three
shot combats (battalion commanders). It claims that among those killed
by Galushko was his combat. On the penultimate day of spring this year,
this channel reported on the death of a motorised riflemen commander
from the Gorlovka military unit at the hands of his subordinates: "At
the training ground of the Karl Marx mine village near Yenakiyevo,
fighters of military unit 52892 (one of the subunits of the former
08803), driven to madness and despair, shot dead the commander of the
1st motorised rifle battalion of the 132 brigade, call sign "Small",
name Andrey. This combat killed thousands of people, those who were kept
on leave in a cell in Nikitovka. The day before, a shell landed there,
those who should not have been there died. The situation in this unit is
tense, it is unbearably hard for the guys to serve with such incompetent
commanders," said a source of Mobilisation DPR.
The third episode in their list is from a year ago: in the so-called
"Lugansk People's Republic" on May 24, 2023, a company commander
allegedly shot a battalion commander in the head because they wanted to
send them to be butchered. A male voice with a Donbass accent says this
in the referred video. The frame shows the dead body in a large pool of
blood, with a screaming nurse rushing around. They also provide a
description from the FSB for the neighboring Rostov region: "On May 24,
2023, in the town of Lisichansk, LPR, servicemen of the "Storm Z"
detachment committed the murder of a serviceman of the LPR Ministry of
Defense and the subsequent escape from the special military operation
zone. A total of 39 people are wanted, they may be armed with automatic
weapons" (we also wrote about this story when it happened). However,
there is a discrepancy: the channel concluded that the video with the
killed officer relates to the escape in the Luhansk region based on the
date of its appearance. But there are men in Ukrainian pixel uniforms,
and in the comments under the post, a reader noted that this probably
happened in the Dnepropetrovsk region. More likely, these were two
different stories on different sides of the front. The rank and position
of the one killed while trying to stop deserters in Lisichansk is still
unclear.
The mentioned Assembly's study on violent confrontation between
civilians and mobilisers has not yet been translated into English. In
total, we have recorded about 40 cases from the beginning of this year
until mid-summer: from night grenade attacks on enlistment torturers to
mass riots or individual armed resistance the kidnappers. People use
knifes, spray cans, heavy blunt objects, on June 4 even threw tomatoes
at visitors during a raid on a market in Kherson. At the same time, the
survey did not include the equally regular arsons of relay cabinets,
electrical substations, and military vehicles - not only Ukrainian
security forces, but also a number of independent sources link them to
Russian recruiters of easy money seekers on Telegram and the Darknet.
The arming in the working class is a separate matter. "Buying a gun is
not difficult at all. An automatic rifle is three thousand, a pistol is
1500, last year went to Staryi Saltov to buy from the soldiers, but if
the cops find it, it's a criminal offense for 5 years, no less. This is
in hryvnia. The dude took two AKs, I'm scared, I already had a similar
conviction. There's a very fine line between[criminal articles]156 and
157, I jumped from 157 to 156, I don't remember the points, but they
were easy. They sold everything from boots to thermal imagers, or asked
one of the locals to go to a pawnshop in Kharkov for a share. These are
trophies, there was there like shit. There was a whole sale there -
generators, cartridges[for firearms], uniforms. Many people got hold of
gens, boots, cartridges. I wouldn't mess with the military or rifles
now, even if they accidentally find it, they can knock you off, or an
article, put you in jail anyway, plus they will torture you, asking you
what you need all this for. By the way, I heard about a case where a man
in Kupyansk in 22 collected weapons abandoned by the AFU in a barn, then
when the Russians found them, they beat him up and sent him to the FSB.
The FSB kept him in suspense for a month, then let him go. The arsenal,
of course, was taken away," tells a mechanic from one of Kharkov's
municipal enterprises.
Of course, the chronicle of the Ukrainian social war in the rear need to
be updated since then. Odessa, known for its traditions of combative
anarchism, is especially rich in news. On July 19th, a crowd of
passers-by blocked the road at Privoz, preventing the police from
detaining a driver who allegedly did not stop at a checkpoint. In the
scrimmage, the cop's uniform was torn off, naked to the waist, he fired
a pistol into the air and doused an elderly woman with pepper spray.
Last week, in the suburban village of Tairovo, a local deputy got
allegedly beaten for helping to distribute military draft notices, and
in Odessa, someone burned a neighbour's Suzuki for his swastika tattoo
(if we believe the social networks).
If we take seriously the statements of the Ukrainian authorities about
their readiness for negotiations with Russia, so long-awaited for a
significant part of Ukrainian society, all sense is lost in the widely
announced autumn counteroffensive and the total mobilisation. Even
without further practical steps, these speeches threaten to further
undermine the motivation of the troops, where the personnel will
logically decide: what is the point of mass deaths on the threshold of
negotiations? Moreover, the force mobilisation on the streets for the
planned breakthrough of the front by means of superiority in manpower
becomes meaningless and gives the draft dodgers even more confidence
that it is necessary to hide, as there is not much time left to wait.
Therefore, no matter what tricks are standing behind such statements,
they threaten an even more serious growth of anti-war insistence at the
front and in the rear. The process is going in accordance with our
winter forecast that 2024 will be a key year for the formation of a
revolutionary situation similar to the WWI scenario.
Glory to evaders, trenches to serfs! Everything will be Evadia!
Picture: Memetic frame depicting, on the right, a man who is forcibly
drafted off a Kharkov street in the winter of 2024 and, on the left, the
classic cartoon "On the offensive" from the First World War
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2024/08/02/judge-lynch-you-have-the-floor-the-murder-of-farion/
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