Their work in supporting anti-authoritarian armed resistance against Russian occupation has spilled over to directing aid to civilians living on the front

~ Josie Ó Súileabháin ~

“If people are tired of this war, tell them to come and join the fight. People are fighting and struggling here, and people need help. This is not a video game”.—Joy (Marcy–Yusef)

In a darkness demanded for survival, an old man speaks to volunteers in Kupyansk, Kharkiv Oblast following the retreat of the Russian army. “They attacked here, first with airstrikes, bombing the area”, he says. “They dropped bombs here—I still have some in my garden”.

“And did the animals survive?” the volunteers ask. “You see you were putting yourself at risk…”

“I let them go when the Russians forced me to evacuate at gun point… a missile hit the yard, and the garage and the barn burnt down. The ducklings burnt to death… but the chickens managed to survive… people left everything behind. Many people lost their legs because of the ‘Lepestok’ mines”.

“Clearing the gardens of mines?” he is asked.

“Sometimes by accident”, he replies. “Most of them lost their legs and a lot of de-miners blown themselves up here”.

The ‘Lepestok’ (PFM) mine is a scatterable munition that is identifiable by its green, petal shape and timed to explode. Ukraine has inherited millions of these small mines from the Soviet Union and destroyed at least half of them under efforts lead by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. During the full-scale invasion, the Russian occupation has been documented using them around hospitals and in residential areas.

“I remember these petals scattered all over the hospital”, a medical worker at Izyum Central Hospital told Human Rights Watch (HRW). During the Russian occupation of Izyum, the Russian army set up a field hospital in the basement within the central hospital to treat their own wounded. At one point, there were only seven members of staff for Ukrainian patients.

“I heard a slam in the sky”, a neighbour to the hospital reported to HRW. “Previously I knew that if a cluster munition explodes above our heads, the submunitions would go over us because of inertia. Because of where they were, I understood they would fall on us. So I told my wife and we went to hide in the basement”.

“But there was no explosion. And our neighbour said: ‘Have a look, a petal on the ground.’”

When the Russians retreated from Izyum, they detonated the PFM mines around the hospital with their rifles to form a path of escape. Outside of the major urban centres, the situation is much worse with almost no access to medical care. Ksenia Kozeniuk, a volunteer with Solidarity Collectives, explains the situation.

“Six or seven villages, I think, we’ve visited and the situation is really upsetting because these people are living extremely difficult conditions”, Ksenia says. “We were in Kupyansk, delivering food for an elderly woman who has about 40 cats under her care”.

“We walked with the cats”, the elderly woman tells volunteers outside of her home in Kupyansk.

“The neighbours have little kids; they went to Poland and abandoned their pets. Just as they left, a missile hit the house. And my house was hit by a missile – the roof was blown off over there, and here the roof was torn off. The gas was cut off, the water was cut off, the sewage was cut off, and then they fixed the gas but not the sewage. No one will fix it”, the woman says.

“In 2022, the frontline passed through the villages of Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, and they were completely destroyed”, Ksenia says. “Now the locals are slowly starting to return despite the fact that conditions are terrible because they have to rebuild their homes almost from scratch”.

A volunteer asks a young child holding a cat; “did you come back here with your mother or did you never leave?”

“I came back here”, the child replies in the darkness.

“And your going to stay here, right?” the volunteer asks.

“Well, yes, we live here now”, the mother replies. “We have repaired the house a little; it was my fathers house. Our house is destroyed. We lived on Kamianska street, there’s just a foundation left, and this house remained. I put a glowing bracelet on his arm”, the mother says, showing her sons arm.

“And only by it when it’s dark I can tell where my child is”.

“Ukraine is a shield now”

Darkness is required to move within a ‘zero’—an active battlefield—with drone flights and other Russian aircraft threatening death from above. Light is needed to see the Unexploded Remnants of War (URW) and other unexploded ordinance that literally is designed to imitate nature in order to kill.

These humanitarian trips are described by Solidarity Collectives volunteer Serhiy Moychan as building long term connections with the community beyond war, “so that in the future we can fight together with them for… social rights and guarantees”.

“Social and economic justice is the basic core, the basic principle by which we fight”, Serhiy asserts. The work of Solidarity Collectives in supporting anti-authoritarian armed resistance against Russian occupation has spilled over to directing aid to civilians living on the front.

“The armies of authoritarian regimes, they’re always stronger than those of some ‘democratic’ countries. They spit on people’s rights and freedoms and invest in specific interests, in this case war. And when there’s this fragmentation of opinions or the set phrase ‘not everything is so clear’—it all fragments and gets complicated”, says Lastivka, an anarchist, feminist, activist and squatter and commander of a UAV drone unit.

“I haven’t heard of European anarchists ever taking a stance on this war”, Lastivka continues, “I hope they don’t have to face the hardships that Ukrainian activists have had to. But that depends on us too”.

“How so?” Solidarity Collectives ask.

“I really do fully support the idea that Ukraine is a shield now”.

It appears that despite many declarations affirming the basic principles of armed resistance to occupation and mutual aid with those struggling to survive, some among the anti-authoritarian fighters in Ukraine still perceive a lack of international solidarity from western anarchists.

Resistance against imperialist occupation has led to the deaths of comrades on the front line, as well as the imprisonment and torture of others. The comrade Joy—quoted at the top of this story—would have been 36-years-old in March this year if he was not killed by the Russian occupation in 2022.

Vladyslav Yurchenko ‘Pirate’, Ruslan Tereschenko ‘Skrypal’ and Roman Legar were all killed in the last year fighting the Russian invasion. Ihor, Kolyah ‘Vagon’ and Atton – all members of the Kharkiv Hardcore Group were also killed. Still missing-in-action are comrades Cooper Andrews, Finbar Cafferkey and Dimitri Petrov who were last seen alive on the “road of life” after fighting in the battles around Bakhmut.

These internationalists brought together perspectives from different struggles as praxis for resistance. Finbar brought the ideas of Rojava, Dimitri brought together movements in Europe, Ukraine, Russia and Syria, and Cooper brought the ideas of black autonomy in the U.S. for the fight against Russian occupation.

There are 17,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war held either in the 20% of Ukrainian territory that Russia occupies, or within the empire itself. The anti-authoritarian journalist Maksym Butkevych was recently released as part of a prisoner exchange from the occupied Luhansk Oblast. Maksym reports that both soldiers and civilians are being held in these prisons and urges those outside to not forget them.

“I witnessed torture, humiliation, beatings, electrocutions, starvation”, Maksym reports, “and other methods to humiliate people, undermine their health, and break their morale”.

Some like Denys Matsola and Vladyslav Zhuravlov are still in prison after three years with no sign of release. Denys and Vlad were fighting together in the 505 Battalion when they were captured in Mariupol. Denys was placed in solitary confinement in the Ivanovo Region of Russia. Vlad is also in Russian captivity and at risk of torture, but his whereabouts are unknown.

“The start of the war was worse”, says Lastivka, “but at the start of the war we knew absolutely nothing and it was only fear… if you’re talking about how we saw missions then we were like helpless kittens… the scariest missions are when you are in unknown territory, when you feel how weak and vulnerable you are, with no control over your own life, with destruction all around you…”

“… we didn’t know where the enemy was”, Lastivka says.

“I’m so happy that I’m not alone. There are people with whom I can share this experience. I can’t imagine how hard it is when a person finds themselves somewhere alone, isolated. That’s scary too. Although I like to criticise everyone and everything and say that the worst is yet to come, in reality my imagination carries me forward”.

“Doing our job wasn’t the hardest thing”, said Dr Yuri Kuznetsov, one of the last surgeons working at Izyum hospital during the occupation, “the hardest thing was just staying alive”.

“Several weeks ago, my office door opened, and the man came in and said ‘doctor, do you remember me? I’m alive!’ We have all had moments when we thought of fleeing. We’ve all had meltdowns and periods of depression, but its moments like that and the solidarity of my colleagues that have kept me here”, says Yuri.

“People helped us lot. You know, to put it mildly”, Yuri reflected, “there was nothing to eat, people looted shops and pharmacies. What they didn’t need, they brought to us. Every day bags were brought and left under the door”. Yuri’s shift at the occupied hospital lasted four months and a half.

The slashing of USAID funding under the Trump Administration has consequences for both military and healthcare operations in Ukraine, including the funding of clinics for recovery from trauma and amputations associated with war. Two projects have suspended funding to a healthcare system that has endured over a thousand separate and direct Russian military attacks to health infrastructure and workers in Ukraine.

“You do not win a race by running alone”

Black Flag Medical have been supplying both frontline fighters and civilians with medical mutual aid. Solidarity Collectives supports those fighters who are injured and need recovery. 100,000 amputations have been performed in Ukraine since 2022 and Izyum hospital has treated over 400 patients with injuries directly from mines like PFM. It is predicted to take decades to clear the area of this ordinance. How long does it take to recover from trauma?

Against the Janus face of nationalist humanitarianism from the U.S. and imperialist occupation from Russia, our power is solidarity. Instead of debating conspiratorial geopolitical madness to hide defeatist political inaction—we must learn from our comrades east. Solidarity begins by listening.

From collectives in Czech Republic that teach anti-authoritarian fighters how to contruct, program and deploy drones as a means of community defence—to events across Europe that have raised money for equipment in the fight against Russian imperialism, “you do not win a race by running alone”, Solidarity Collectives write to European anarchists, “you only run alone like an idiot”.

“Strength comes from connection, from solidarity, from collective struggles. Solidarity with the people’s who resist is a political gesture which we can’t let be manipulated into a threat to gain benefits”, Solidarity Collectives write. “Anti-fascism is not contemplation but action”.

“Some people turn their eyes from the war”, said Lastivka, “how much more of that can I stand? Some people are just tired and want to live normal lives but in order to live normal lives, and for you not to be bothered by news of war…you have to do something about it”.