A non-exhaustive cartography of European and Italian support for anarchists in the Kiev army
The slope towards World War III looks increasingly slippery and unpredictable. After the failed counteroffensive of the Ukrainian army, and in anticipation of a probable Russian offensive in the summer, the European Union and the individual states of Western Europe are rushing to accelerated rearmament by increasing the production of ammunition1 in view of an increasingly less unlikely direct involvement. As Romania prepares to host Europe’s largest NATO base, tailor-made for the war on Russia2, several European states (including Germany, Denmark and France) have announced their willingness to strengthen military service or reintroduce conscription3, and some are even calling for a new Pearl Harbor to unite the European home front4. Meanwhile, the attack on Crocus City Hall seems all too apt to provide Putin with an opportunity for escalation5, and the carnage in Gaza is perhaps irreparably shaking the role of the Western bloc as guarantor of democratic values.
In the scenario of the global inter-capitalist war that seems more and more like no return, the urgency of building an international mobilization that knows how to oppose a concrete resistance to the continuation of hostilities and tries to overturn the war of the bosses against the bosses is increasing every day. Yet, in Europe and Italy there are comrades busy supporting Zelensky’s army economically and politically, with solidarity projects that focus on providing military equipment to anarchists and left-wing militants who have chosen to enlist in the ranks of Kiev. It seems useful to us to document some of these bellicose tendencies of the anarchist and antagonistic movement in order to invite all comrades who maintain defeatist and internationalist positions to speak out and to intensify their efforts so that the next breakthroughs of the capitalist conflict do not find us completely unprepared.
The positions taken by various groups of comrades in Eastern and Northern Europe are quite disarming… The so-called “various anarchist groups in Germany” (which, as far as we know, while speaking for everyone, mainly represent the community of anarchists exiled from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus) have recently spoken out against the idea of a ceasefire, since “A ceasefire at this stage will only give Russia some rest and a foothold in the occupied territories”6 (a position reminiscent of the sad militarist turn of the Sixteen: “To speak of peace at this time is to play into the hands of the pro-government German party […]”). In Germany, Holland and Belgium, in squats, the benefits continue (also relaunched in Holland and Belgium by the anarchist federation Vrije Bond7), for Solidarity Collectives (formerly “Operation Solidarity”), a network of volunteers who support “anti-authoritarian fighters” who have enlisted in the Ukrainian army. These fighters are mostly, but not exclusively, part of a detachment known as the “Resistance Committee”8 which is part of the Territorial Defense Forces (i.e. reservists) of the Ukrainian army (and therefore subject to military command structures as much as anarchists who have instead enlisted in the regular army).
On the channels of Solidarity Collectives9 new fundraisers appear at a rapid pace for the purchase of drones, night vision goggles, electronic systems, cars, and other military equipment. To give an example, the campaign to buy a drone was presented with these words: “FPV attack drones are relatively cheap and very effective. Such kamikaze drones have already proven their effectiveness in destroying enemy equipment and infantry and reducing the enemy’s close logistics. They can also partially compensate for the lack of artillery weapons. […] Therefore, we are opening a new section of our team’s work: the assembly of attack UAVs»10. The production of these drones would also be a way to “reinforce anti-authoritarian structures, and an opportunity to demonstrate the possibility of production based on self-management and collective responsibility of workers”11. In short, a hacker response to the shortages in supplies from NATO, while waiting for the European arms industry to start churning out artillery at an adequate pace. The fact that communication at the front is based on the Starlink system, a technology owned by one of the richest single men on the planet, does not seem to be an obstacle: a collection is enough to raise the money needed for a Starlink disk12.
With regard to the causes of the conflict, in its manifesto, Solidarity Collectives firmly denies that NATO activity played a role in the outbreak of the war, which would be entirely attributable to a unilateral desire for imperial expansion of the Russian Federation13. And while the Kiev government’s attempts to procure cannon fodder while avoiding widespread protests among the population are increasingly leaving room for a real manhunt14 (recently we have begun to see videos circulating of forced recruitment in which suspects of reluctance are hunted down the street and thrown into vans to be taken to the front in 48 hours15), we do not find any comment on the channels of Solidarity Collectives and the Resistance Committee. No words to say for those who have no intention of dying for their country, no word on the protests of those who demand that their loved ones be demobilized after almost two years of service at the front practically without interruption16. On the contrary, Solidarity Collectives points out that “many Ukrainian men and women, including our comrades, have joined the armed units voluntarily and knowingly.” This fact (which we do not doubt), if given without mentioning the estimate of more than 650,000 men of conscription age who would have left the country since the beginning of the conflict17, becomes war propaganda18. As the initial inspiration that convinced many to take up arms (and the signs are many) wears off, it will become clear to most that the state and its army could not defend them in the war except at the price of enslaving them and sending them to slaughter. The silence that these comrades are maintaining about forced conscription will no longer hold. What will they say then? How will they be able to distance themselves from the executioners they have supported?
And if Solidarity Collectives claims that support for the Ukrainian “resistance” does not imply support for government policies, it is also clear what the chain of command is: if the individual unit of ex-militant fighters can afford to make decisions by consensus, the enlisted vegan anarchist has no problem admitting that, at the level of the relationship with other units, there is a military hierarchy, since “we are in the army”19. And if for now relations with the Nazis do not create problems (there is only one in the battalion, and he has understood that “we are all in the same boat”, so he shares his practical knowledge with the anarchists), Solidarity Collectives says it is ready to oppose the “authoritarian tendencies” in post-war Ukraine. It is a pity that these “tendencies” are already largely unfolding, favored by the war itself20, as they themselves record: “Social and economic conditions are worsening because of the war. Unfortunately, the state responds with neoliberal reforms, deregulating labor relations and removing social protections. […] Ukrainian trade unions could resist all this. Yet, many members of the trade unions are currently serving in the Ukrainian army, and the unions are directing their efforts primarily to supporting their members at the front and their families. Aware of the disastrous consequences for the Ukrainian proletarians of the fact that the unions have put the struggle against their bosses on the back burner in order to wage war on the side of the bosses, the not a little surreal conclusion is to support the militarist turn of the unions: “That’s why we try to do what we can to support trade unionists serving in the military and their military units.” On the fantasy of being able to reconcile membership of the army with the feminist and ecological struggle, it seems appropriate to overlook.
In the face of these tendencies, Malatesta’s response to the interventionist manifesto of the Sixteen remains incredibly topical for us. In two pages of his typical crystalline prose, Malatesta argued that the only course of action of anarchists “traced by the very logic of their aspirations” is to oppose the war of the capitalists with the social revolution, and that it can only be a failure to ally oneself with one’s own bourgeoisie, thinking in this way to protect oneself from a greater danger. And it is particularly sad that the very historic magazine Freedom in which Malatesta published these theses in 1916 has given space in recent times to materials that we would not be able to define except as sinister warmongering propaganda, such as the letter (later removed from the site) from the sniper asking for military equipment and recounting: “I enlisted in the Ukrainian infantry as an assault pioneer the day after the full-scale invasion began. Why? I didn’t spend any particular time thinking about why. Maybe it was a sense of freedom. Freedom drove me to fight.”22 The magazine in which Malatesta’s unequivocal conclusion appeared: “Today, as always, our cry is: Down with the capitalists and the governments, all the capitalists and all the governments” now publishes Darya Rustava’s slippery arguments on bad and less bad nationalisms23, and Zosia Brom’s positions of indulgence towards Western imperialism as a bulwark against Russian imperialism24 (“When you say ‘Fuck NATO’ or ‘Stop NATO expansion’, what I feel is that you don’t care about the safety and well-being of my friends in Eastern Europe.”) It is interesting to note that on both the pages of Freedom and Organise (organ of the English Anarchist Federation) the question is often posed in terms of westsplaining. Western anarchists would be incapable of listening to local anarchists and would have the arrogance to want to explain reality from their pulpit, wielding the principles of anarchism with rigid orthodoxy: a tried and tested rhetorical stratagem to force the anti-militarists to give in to the shame of their “privilege” and adopt warmongering positions that, by the way, are not at all representative of either Eastern Europe, nor Ukraine26.
Before arriving in Italy, let’s briefly mention “Gnip”, an acronym for “Good night imperial pride”. Gnip defines itself as an anarchist collective that supports anarchist and anti-authoritarian fighters in the Ukrainian army, with fundraising mainly for military supplies, and remembers Maidan as the “revolution of dignity”27. GNIP has relaunched, as well as Solidarity Collectives, the demonstrations that were held in Berlin, Warsaw and Zurich, Vilnius, Tbilisi, Barcelona and Vienna on 24 February on the occasion of the second anniversary of the Russian invasion28. These demonstrations featured anarchist excerpts with the slogans “fragile peace breeds more war”. The anarchists aligned with the state, in addition to asking NATO to supply more weapons to the Kiev army, have no choice but to correct the language: if you are no longer against the state – a fact, since you support those who fight in the ranks of the state army – you can still be against empires. Hence the “anarchists against empires” appear, declaring no longer “death to the state” but “death to the empire.” The goal is to “destroy empires and dictatorships”, states, it seems, can be saved.
In Italy, the work and militarist positions of Solidarity Collectives have been disseminated in particular by the magazine Malamente and by the book published by the publishing house of the same name, Qui siamo in guerra. Already in 2022, an interview that appeared in Malamente reported the position of a member of Solidarity Collectives that Ukraine’s victory on the ground would be the only tactic to ensure the survival of a leftist movement in the country. Zelensky’s victory would be indispensable in an anti-fascist strategy to counter the Ukrainian ultra-right (since Zelensky “is not a Nazi”), to avoid the risk of a Ukrainian revanchism in the event of defeat and to prevent the credit for a possible victory from going all to the far right… 29 One wonders what is useful in an anti-fascism that renounces the revolutionary effort in favor of an inter-class defense of the democratic state in order to preserve the minimum room for maneuver granted by the neoliberal regime. And in the event of an unlikely positive outcome to the conflict, how can we not imagine that the nationalist components and the state as a whole will instead be strengthened? And how can we not imagine the possible disastrous consequences of a revanchism on the other side of the front? This anti-fascism, as Simone Weil wrote, succumbs to the absurdity of wanting to “fight a barbaric tyranny by crushing the peoples under the weight of an even more barbaric massacre.”
Other ideas in reference to Solidarity Collectives, but not only, come from two articles that appeared in the latest issue of Malamente (March 202430). In the first article, Vittorio Sergi interviews Ludovico, founder of the Giuditta Rescue Car project, which has brought humanitarian aid to Ukraine in connection with the Solidarity Collectives network. “Many comrades in Western Europe view with suspicion this practice of financially supporting fighters who are nevertheless part of a state army supported with considerable funding by NATO states. Why do you think it makes sense to contribute financially to the equipment of volunteer fighters, anarchists and the Ukrainian left?” asks Vittorio. “Then there are so many reasons. The first is that war costs […]. The front is very large and therefore being able to cover every need on the part of the State is in any case complicated […]” (emphasis ours). The role of “solidarity” is therefore, declaredly, to cover the holes in state supplies, to reach where NATO supplies do not arrive, by procuring drones, tablets, protections, and other equipment that the army does not provide, in perfect agreement with the banner that appeared in Barcelona on the anniversary of the Russian invasion in which the circled A is that of “Arm Ukraine”. And there is good news for the bearers of that banner: while shipments of uranium secretly crossed the Po Valley on Trenitalia trains heading to the front31, the EU allocated another 5 billion euros for military aid to Ukraine in 202432, billions that will further contribute to galvanizing the war industry of the member states. In passing, in Ludovico’s story, the episode of a forced recruitment of one of the volunteers linked to Solidarity Collectives is mentioned. But apparently, criticism of forced conscription does not shake confidence in the army and in the fact that “Ukrainians are defending Ukraine.” And while a massive wave of recruitment is expected to obtain half a million new soldiers, a petition calling for a “more equitable” mobilization in which deputies and administrative staff are also sent to the front would give hope.
Also financing the Giuditta Rescue Car project, and supporting an elusive “anarchist and transfeminist resistance” is the Camillo Berneri Anarchist Club of Bologna, which also attached the name of its patron, an ardent anti-militarist, to an off-road vehicle handed over to the snipers of the Foreign Legion, and baptized “Camillo, in honor and in the historical commitment of Camillo Berneri, an Italian anarchist”33 before being sent to the front. If history now offers no lessons but only symbolism and lineages that can be assembled at will, then the anarchists in Zelensky’s ranks can disturb the faces of Bakunin and Makhno to obscure their faces, or they can be safely compared to the Arditi del Popolo and the partisan armed struggle34 (on the arbitrariness of these juxtapositions, We refer to other texts35,36).
In the second interview, Vittorio Sergi asks Xsenia, a volunteer in the solidarity initiatives of an artistic collective active in Ukraine, for a comment on the attack by fascists on David Chichkan, known for his anarchist positions. “This situation drives me crazy because I didn’t expect it. […] Before the war, it was very popular to go to Odessa and get in touch with the artist community. Because there is the sea and near the sea the art world is quieter and you can concentrate better on practicing. So yes, for me, as for the artists in the Odessa community, it was a real shock […]”. But this is reduced as tiredness: “The war was very long and not everyone can manage their emotions well” and fascist tendencies are explained in terms of “mental conflicts”. In short, the city where Ukrainian neo-Nazis massacred dozens and dozens of ethnic Russians who had taken refuge in the House of Trade Unions (several of whom died in a fire set to the building or by jumping from the windows to save themselves from the fire) is a quiet seaside place to relax and make art. Now, we are not interested in lashing out against what we think is Xsenia’s naivety, but rather in pointing out the removal (which seems significant to us) from the memory of such a tragic and recent event (it was just 2014) and the ease with which this account is published without any critical or contextual note on the part of the editors.
This brief report ends here. The future seems intent on making it necessary for us to give more and more material concreteness to our positions, even here in Europe. It is therefore essential to clear the field of the anarcho-militarist fever that has infected various groups of comrades even in our latitudes, and to reaffirm that the only possible position for anarchists remains the defeatist and internationalist one, against the enemy in our own country, against every state but starting from “ours”, and therefore for us against the Italian state. against the EU, against NATO. The only war we have is the social war, against capitalism, against its wars, against its peace.
Note
1. https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/mondo/europa/2024/03/15/dallue-500-milioni-per-piu-munizioni-ce-anche-litalia_84b6f0b1-7c65-4c02-b365-ee5dd6abe9a6.html
2. https://www.lindipendente.online/2024/03/20/sorgera-in-romania-la-nuova-base-nato-costruita-su-misura-per-la-guerra-alla-russia/
3 https://www.lindipendente.online/2024/03/29/il-ritorno-della-leva-militare-obbligatoria-in-europa/
4. https://24plus.ilsole24ore.com/art/il-vertice-europeo-modalita-guerra-cosi-ue-e-costretta-cambiare-pelle-AFNR696C
5. https://pungolorosso.com/2024/03/24/sullattentato-di-mosca-e-dintorni-la-via-obbligatadi-nato-e-ue-e-port are-la-guerra-in-russia-italiano-english/
6. https://ilrovescio.info/2024/03/26/toccato-il-fondo-si-puo-sempre-scavare-sulle-derive-stataliste-e-militaris te/
7. https://www.vrijebond.org/documentary-screening-benefit-for-solidarity-collectives/
8. https://t.me/theblackheadquarter
9. https://t.me/SolidarityCollectives
10. https://t.me/SolidarityCollectives/1006 11 https://t.me/theblackheadquarter/612 12 https://t.me/SolidarityCollectives/1010
13. https://www.solidaritycollectives.org/en/manifesto-en/
14. https://www.lindipendente.online/2024/03/26/sempre-meno-uomini-ucraini-vogliono-combattere-le-autorita-li-reclutano-con-la-forza/
15. https://www.repubblica.it/solidarieta/emergenza/2024/03/01/news/ucraina_nella_guerra_rischiano_di_finire_a_combattere_anche_gli_operatori_umanitari_i_reclutatori_salgono_sui_tram_a_cacci-422239114/
16. https://www.lindipendente.online/2023/12/06/le-proteste-dei-familiari-dei-soldati-si-stanno-diffondendo-in- ucraina/
17. https://www.bbc.com/ukrainian/articles/cd1px4z922wo
18. On the contrary, the Solidarity Collectives express participation in the Ukrainian Day of the Volunteer, a patriotic celebration of the defense of the homeland that remembers the volunteers of 2014, being that “there is not a single soldier in our ranks who would not have come to the front voluntarily.” https://t.me/SolidarityCollectives/1097
19. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTr0kqPJRGY&ab_channel=SolidarityCollectives
20. On the disastrous consequences of the war for Ukrainian society, and in particular for its working class: https://pungolorosso.com/2024/04/04/lo-sfacelo-sociale-e-militare-dellucraina/
21. https://t.me/SolidarityCollectives/1094
22. https://web.archive.org/web/20230419073028/https://freedomnews.org.uk/2023/04/19/notes-from-a-ukrai nian-sniper/
23. https://freedomnews.org.uk/2022/03/07/a-thousand-red-flags/
24. https://freedomnews.org.uk/2022/03/04/fuck-leftist-westplaining/
25. https://organisemagazine.org.uk/3d-flip-book/organise-96-plus/
26. https://assembly.org.ua/
27. https://t.me/gnimperialpride/774
28. https://pramen.io/en/2024/02/anarchist-solidarity-with-the-people-of-ukraine/
29. https://rivista.edizionimalamente.it/malamente-n-26-settembre-2022/
30. https://rivista.edizionimalamente.it/malamente-n-32-marzo-2024/
31. https://ilrovescio.info/2024/03/30/la-guerra-tocca-chiunque-non-solo-i-soldati-al-fronte-sui-trasporti-di-uran io-nelle-ferrovie-italiane/
32. https://www.eunews.it/2024/03/14/ue-5-miliardi-ucraina-aiuti-militari/
33. https://t.me/quisiamoinguerra/950
34. https://rivista.edizionimalamente.it/malamente-n-29-giugno-2023/
35. https://ilrovescio.info/2022/10/28/quando-machno-spazzo-via-grigoriev-su-movimento-anarchico-guerra-in-ucraina-e-non-solo/
36. https://ilrovescio.info/2023/09/12/sabotiamo-la-guerra-appello-per-una-mobilitazione-contro-la-guerra-in-ucraina/