Category: international

Simon Pirani: No Path to Peace in Ukraine Through This Fantasy World

The Russian army’s meagre successes in Ukraine – such as taking the ruined town of Avdiivka, at horrendous human cost – have produced a new round of western politicians’ statements and commentators’ articles about possible peace negotiations.

Hopes are not high, because the Kremlin shows no appetite for such talks. Its actions, such as nightly bombing of civilians and civilian infrastructure, speak louder than political and diplomatic words on all sides.

The desire and hope for peace is widely shared, and I share it too. How can it be achieved?

Among “left” writers, the “campists” and one-sided “anti-imperialists”, who deny Ukraine’s right to resist Russian aggression, say that peace talks could start now … if only the western powers did not stand in the way. (By “campism”, I mean the view that the world is divided simplistically between a western imperialist camp dominated by the US, and another camp comprising China, Russia and other countries, in which some progressive potential resides.)

Mariupol, after the siege. Photo: ADifferentMan / Creative Commons

The “campist” case is made by literally ignoring what is actually going on in Ukraine, and Russia, and focusing – often exclusively – on the political and diplomatic shenanigans in western countries.

In this blog post I will look at seven recent articles by “campist” writers. All of them call for peace talks; and all claim that the main obstacle is the western powers.  

I will cover (1) the selection of subject matter by these authors; (2) what little they actually say about peace negotiations; and (3) why the claim that the western powers sabotaged peace talks in April 2022 is less convincing than they believe it to be.

The seven articles are: “Europe sleepwalks through its own dilemmas” by Vijay Prashad (Counterpunch, Brave New Europe, Countercurrents and elsewhere); “Exit of Victoria Nuland creates opportunity for peace in Ukraine” by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies (Common Dreams, Morning Star, Consortium News and elsewhere); “Ukraine: Pope pipes up for peace” by Andrew Murray (Stop the War coalition); “Where are the righteous Ukraine partisans now?” by Branko Marcetic (Brave New Europe); “Diplomacy is the art of compromise: that’s what’s needed for peace in Ukraine” by Alexander Hill (Stop the War coalition); “US repeatedly blocked Ukraine peace deals; is it rethinking its strategy yet?” by John Wojcik and C.J. Atkins (People’s World); and “The Grinding War in Ukraine Could have ended a long time ago” by Branko Marcetic (Jacobin).

Selection of subject matter 

None of the seven articles says one word about Russia’s political system, its politicians’ nationalist rhetoric or its war economy, which are among the central causes of the war. Not a word. Only one of the articles (Alexander Hill’s) attempts to assess Russian war aims; one more (Andrew Murray’s) makes glancing reference to these.  

Only one of the articles (Hill’s, again) touches on what Ukrainian people are thinking or doing. None of the other six articles says a word about this, despite Ukrainian popular resistance being, by any measure, a key factor in the war.

Only one of the articles (Hill’s, again) says much about what has happened on the battlefield. One more (Branko Marcetic in Jacobin) has one paragraph on Ukrainian battlefield losses, but no mention of Russian losses. Two more (Murray’s, and Wojcik and Atkins’s) have very brief references to this.

While saying almost nothing about what is going on in Ukraine, or Russia, all seven articles discuss statements by western politicians, diplomats and/or military leaders. At length.

Five of the articles (by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies, by Hill, by Wojcik and Atkins, and two by Marcetic) focus on a peace deal that was supposedly on the table in April 2022, and claim that western politicians, who twisted president Zelensky’s arm, wrecked it (see last section). On the other hand, only two of the articles (Hill and Murray) make any suggestion about what peace talks might look like (see next section).

Dear readers, I can hear you say: but you have just picked seven articles at random. No. It’s a fair sample. I searched the largest-circulation English language “left” web sites; these were the most visible articles by don’t-support-Ukrainian-resistance writers.  

The key point is that none of these writers mention how the Kremlin works. No reference to Vladimir Putin’s attitude to the world, or whether it has changed. No assessment of the deranged nationalist, even genocidal, rants about Ukraine by him, his close colleagues and high-profile Russian TV personalities. No mention of whether Russia can be considered an imperialist power or not. Not a word about the way that its invasion of Ukraine not only breached international agreements and laws, but also offends the principle of nations’ right to self-determination that socialists have held dear since the 19th century.

It is telling, too, that these “campist” writers have no interest in what Ukrainian people say or do. Nor Russian people. They don’t pretend to look at the interaction of social, political and economic forces. They are concerned largely – some of them, exclusively – with the western elite. They see themselves as its opposite and its nemesis. Russian or Ukrainian soldiers, Russian anti-war protesters, Ukrainian trade unionists on the front line, Ukrainian refugees – these are bit part players in a drama played out in Washington, London and Berlin.

The result is a fantasy world that bears only indirect relation to reality.

When I say “campists”, I mean a very narrow group among “left” writers, who embrace a fake “anti-imperialism”, historically descended from 20th century Stalinism.

They do not speak for the labour movement more broadly, or for the millions of people in western countries who think of themselves as “left wing”, or who vote for Social Democratic parties. These are powerful forces for change. But the “campist” influence is dangerous and divisive.

Of course many journalists in the mainstream press also focus exclusively on this elite world of diplomats and politicians. But they usually see themselves as part of it. The “campists” sees themselves in opposition – but only to the western powers, the US above all. For them, the American empire is the only empire worth fighting.

Whether Russia might have traits of empire, whether China might seek to construct some sort of empire, whether bloodthirsty dictators like Bashar al-Assad are tied to imperial interests – all this is excluded from the conversation. Real struggles that confront the American empire, such as the Palestinians’, are welcomed; those that face other enemies, such as Ukrainians resisting Putin, or Syrians and Palestinians resisting Assad, are shunned.

What could peace negotiations look like

Andrew Murray writes:

Moving from ceasefire to a permanent peace will of course be challenging. Russia will need to accept a sovereign and independent Ukrainian state, and Ukraine will have to accept remaining outside NATO and self-determination for minorities within its borders.

The Stop the War coalition, in which Murray is a leading voice, sets out its policies in the form of calls for UK government action. So it’s fair to assume that this, too, is a call for the UK government to take a particular stance – in this case, the most pro-Russian stance possible. Going through the points in turn:

1. “Russia will need to accept a sovereign and independent Ukrainian state” is meaningless. It did so, in the Belovezha accords that dissolved the Soviet Union (1991), and the Budapest memorandum under which Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons (1994). Since 2014 Russia has been pounding Ukraine militarily, in breach of those agreements. Any attempts to stop the fighting in Ukraine diplomatically would have to start by recognising that reality – which is why a peace treaty, as opposed to a ceasefire or simply “freezing” the conflict, is extremely unlikely.

2. “Ukraine will have to accept remaining outside NATO” is essentially a demand for NATO to allow Russia to decide which states join (why no objection to Finland and Sweden?!). The UK government may indeed be cynical enough to take such a position, but why should the labour movement encourage it to do so? What sort of solidarity is that with the Ukrainian population – which before 2014 was in its vast majority opposed to NATO membership, but has largely come to see it as the only security arrangement that can prevent their country being invaded again and again?  

President Zelensky in Bucha, April 2022

3. “Self-determination for minorities within its [Ukraine’s] borders.” This is a distortion of the principle of the right of nations to self-determination, historically embraced by socialists. Self-determination includes the right to secession. (It is relevant that Russia killed tens of thousands of people in Chechnya in the early 2000s, to help ensure that this right would not be exercised.)

From 2014, the extreme right in Russia called for the establishment of a new state, “Novorossiya”, in south-eastern Ukraine, effectively a demand for “self-determination” of Russian people there – but the Kremlin refused to support this. Moscow was aware that the vast majority of Russian-speaking Ukrainians neither wanted “self-determination” nor regarded themselves as Russian. The exception was Crimea, where a referendum on annexation by Russia (a strange type of “self-determination”) was held under military occupation.

Long before 2014, there had been support in eastern Ukraine for greater autonomy within the Ukrainian state, and distrust of Ukrainian nationalist politicians in Kyiv. The Kremlin did its best to whip up divisions among Ukrainians on this basis. It engaged in a long campaign of disinformation, claiming to support the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine. (I wrote about this e.g. here.) But on a diplomatic level, until 2022, the Kremlin pretended that the Russian army was not present in Ukraine, although it was, and left the status of the Luhansk and Donetsk “republics” vague. All this changed in 2022, when the Kremlin recognised the “republics” and invaded Ukraine.

In 2022, people in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhyia voted – sometimes literally looking down the barrel of a soldier’s gun, and always under the shadow of the biggest military operation in mainland Europe since world war two – on accession to the Russian federation. This is the Kremlin’s version of “self-determination for minorities within Ukraine’s borders”. The Stop the War coalition has been conspicuous in its failure to denounce this violent abomination.

Why, then, demand that the UK government raise the issue of “self-determination for minorities” in peace talks? Andrew Murray can not believe there is the least chance of them doing so. The point is to preserve the fantasy world in which “campism” lives, in which Russian imperialism, Russian assaults on democratic rights and the Kremlin’s distortion of democratic principles for its political ends do not exist.

Alexander Hill writes:

The key outcome [of peace talks] will be the separation of the Russian-dominated Donbass and Crimea from the remainder of Ukraine – something that will hopefully be the cornerstone of a lasting peace in the region.

Although Hill clearly favours a ceasefire, and the Stop the War coalition opposed the Russian invasion in 2022, that is not what is under discussion here. Hill is envisaging the outcome of peace negotiations. Why endorse the imperial power’s demands in this way? Where is the evidence that, if these demands are met, “lasting peace” will ensue? How is this in the labour movement’s interests or the interests of international solidarity?

What happened in April 2022

The idea that peace talks have been blocked solely by the western powers – rather than by Russia’s war strategy – has been repeated over and over again by the “campists” over the past two years. They claim, in particular, that a deal was on the table in Istanbul in April 2022, that Ukraine was ready to sign, but that Boris Johnson, then UK premier, visited Kyiv and persuaded president Zelensky not to do so.

This version of events was demolished by Volodymyr Artiukh and Taras Fedirko in October 2022. They showed that the single source for the claim, a report in Ukrainska Pravda, had been misinterpreted, and that a mass of evidence suggested that the talks failed due to Ukrainian and Russian political factors, and the dynamics of military operations. Commentators who focus on “a magic turning point when everything could have gone otherwise” ignore that “in Russia’s repertoire, diplomacy has consistently been subordinated to the use of force”, they wrote. I urge readers to read this thoughtful, rounded argument.

Recently, accounts of the Istanbul talks have surfaced from people who were involved: the former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, and the Ukrainian politicians Davyd Arakhamia and Oleksiy Arestovich. The “campists” have cherry-picked lines from these sources to revive their narrative.

Branko Marcetic of Jacobin claimed that an interview given in July last year by Bennett, who had been in touch with the Russian and Ukrainian governments, was a “bombshell”. Bennett said that in April 2022 there had been “a good chance of reaching a ceasefire”, and when asked “had they [who?] not curbed it”, “he replied with a nod”.

While it is unclear what that nod meant, and who “they” referred to, Bennett’s statement that the April deal was killed off by the revelation of the Russian army’s massacre of civilians at Bucha, outside Kyiv, is unequivocal. In Marcetic’s own words:

“Once that [Bucha] happened, I [Bennett] said, ‘It’s over,’” he recounts. Bennett pointed to the potential for such an atrocity to emerge and derail the political prospects for peace in Ukraine as proof of the importance of making haste on negotiations at the time. The Pravda report likewise pointed to Johnson’s visit as only one “obstacle” to peace, with the discovery of the Bucha killings the other.

Marcetic, writing in early August last year, chose not to look more widely at the circumstances in which Bennett gave his interview. Shortly beforehand, in June, the leaders of Comoros, Senegal, South Africa and other African nations had met with both Zelensky and Putin to propose peace talks. Putin had told them that one of their proposed starting-points for talks – accepting Ukraine’s internationally recognised borders – was unacceptable. (During this meeting, Putin held up what he claimed was the draft of the April agreement, although this has not been published before or since.)

A proper account of the failure of peace initiatives would mention not only the western powers, who of course influence decision-making in Kyiv (in recent months increasingly to constrain the war effort), but also Russia’s real intentions. Marcetic ignores that.

In November last year, Wojcik and Atkins sculpted another piece of evidence that Boris Johnson, and the western powers, were the obstacle to peace, from an interview with Davyd Arakhamia, one of the leaders of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party. They quoted Arakhamia reflecting on the Istanbul talks as follows:

“[The Russians] were ready to end the war if we accepted neutrality like Finland once did. And we were ready to make a commitment that we would not join NATO. When we returned from Istanbul, [then-British Prime Minister] Boris Johnson came to Kiev and said: ‘Do not sign anything with them at all; just go to war,’” Arakhamia said.

Now let’s look at what Arakhamia actually said, as reported by the Russian opposition web site, Meduza. Wojcik and Atkins have cut out a key passage, after the words “would not join NATO”. I have put it back, in bold type.

“They actually hoped until nearly the last moment that they could press us into signing this agreement, adopting neutrality. That was their biggest priority. They were willing to end the war if we took on neutrality, like Finland once did, and gave assurances that we wouldn’t join NATO. That was essentially the main point. Everything else was cosmetic and political embellishments about ‘denazification’, the Russian-speaking population, blah blah blah,” Arakhamia said.

When asked why Ukraine didn’t agree to Russia’s terms, Arakhamia was resolute:

First of all, to agree to this point, we would have to change the [Ukrainian] Constitution. Our path to NATO is written into the Constitution. Second of all, we did not and still do not trust the Russians to keep their word. This would only have been possible if we had security guarantees. We couldn’t sign something, walk away, everyone would breathe a sigh of relief, and then [Russia] would invade, only more prepared this time — because the first time they invaded, they were actually unprepared for us to resist so much. So we could only work [with them] if we were 100 percent confident that this wouldn’t happen a second time. And we don’t have that confidence.

Moreover, when we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we wouldn’t sign anything with them at all, and that we should just fight.

Oh dear! The really important part – that Ukraine needed guarantees that Russia would not once again break its word and invade – went missing!!

This reminds me of Soviet censors who, when a Communist party leader fell out of favour, would cut the unhappy has-been out of official photos. Snip snip snip.

Arakhamia’s statement, in full, suggests that, with Russia’s brutal invasion at its height, the Ukrainian side needed a more substantial security guarantee than Putin’s piece of paper.  

Of course, what Arakhamia said should be treated with scepticism, as should all statements from all politicians. But it shouldn’t have vital parts surgically removed, to make it say the opposite. All the more care is needed, given the efforts by Russian state propagandists to distort Arakhamia’s meaning.

In March this year, Benjamin and Davies cited a third source – Oleksiy Arestovich, Zelensky’s former spokesman – in support of the claim that Putin’s Istanbul deal had been negotiated and “already had the champagne corks popping in Kyiv”. Again a politician, and one whose words need to be treated with special care. Readers should read his interview themselves.

But to pretend that Arestovich’s account shows that the western powers wrecked the peace talks is deceitful. Asked if Johnson twisted Zelensky’s arm, Arestovich says:

I don’t know exactly if that is true or false. He came to Kiev but nobody knows what they spoke about except, I think, Zelensky and Boris Johnson himself. I think it was the second of April, and I was in Bucha the next day. The president got in [to Bucha] one day later. […]

Arestovich here underlined his point that: “The president was shocked about Bucha. All of us were shocked about Bucha. […] Zelensky completely changed face when he came into Bucha and saw what happened.”

My conclusion is not that news of the Bucha massacre alone changed Zelensky’s mind. My best guess is that Bucha, combined with the other brutal Russian offensive operations in progress – especially the attack on Mariupol – focused the minds of Zelensky and others on the issue of security guarantees outside of NATO. And they could not see clearly what these were.

Despite the importance attached to Bucha by Bennett, Arakhamia and Arestovich, none of the “campists” mention it – except for that one dismissive reference by Marcetic (see above). They live in a fantasy world where Russian imperialism is absent, and its crimes of no consequence.

And that is not really a problem about Ukraine, but about the deep political malaise of a section of the western “left”. There is no path to real international solidarity and effective anti-imperialism through this fantasy world. And no path to peace either. SP, 8 April 2024.

Download this article, and a linked one, as a PDF

□ A linked article: Palestine, Ukraine and the crisis of empires 

Source: Simon Pirani, “No path to peace in Ukraine through this fantasy world,” People and Nature, 8 April 2024. Reprinted here with the author’s kind permission.

Adios, America!

“Adios, America! Now it’s only this way (tacos). End of story.”

This ultra-patriotic gem was just beamed to me by my fellow Petersburg psychogeographer V., who found it forlornly pasted up in the former “party zone” on Dumskaya and Lomonosov streets in downtown Petersburg, a quarter which was thoroughly purged last year by the local powers that be for no good reason.

A quick scan of the QR code leads to the now-equally shuttered website El-Chapo.rf. According to the restaurant review site Restoclub, El Chapo is “closed indefinitely.” But what it must have been back in its heyday, during the first year of Russia’s glorious war against fascist Ukraine and its Western puppet masters!

Dance bar with Mexican cuisine on Lomonosov Street. El Chapo serves Mexican cuisine: quesadillas with oyster mushrooms, burritos with shredded beef and shrimp in coconut. To try the spicy chimichanga tortillas with meat, you have to sign a special contract. Here they mix cocktails based on tequila, rum and house-made tinctures. At the bar you can have your photo taken with local star Frida the Pig. El Chapo hosts DJ sets and parties, and plays Mexican rap, funk, and sometimes disco.

The once lively (and, in the early 2000s, avowedly ethnically and internationally tolerant) Dumskaya bar district is indeed now a ghost town, as witnessed by another snapshot which V. sent to me. ||| TRR

After breathing a sigh of relief, this was the first question that popped in my head:

Who are the 112 U.S. representatives who thought it was a great idea to unilaterally disarm Ukraine, an ally that is fighting for its survival against a U.S. adversary?

The list was published almost immediately.

Image

My reflection is not about these particular people in particular, but the fact that in Washington, and in capitals across Europe, a hefty number of our democratically elected representatives are brazenly siding with Russia, a totalitarian state which has the aim of not only weakening our democracies but bringing defeat to our entire system and the international rules based system. They are siding with the destruction of a sovereign state, Ukraine, and the occupation of its territory and citizens.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is in the company of Matteo Salvini (head of the League), Giuseppe Conte (former Italian PM), and so many other European politicians who may be motivated to side with Russia for a variety of reasons. It speaks to the penetration of Russian capture in some cases, or industrial and commercial interests influencing our political base. Since Russia has no ideology at the present time, I’m assuming they agree with the neo-realist worldview which would see large states eat up smaller ones by force simply because they can, throwing out the entire concept of state sovereignty.

If they have been captured and are working for a foreign adversary, there is no indication that any of them (at least in Italy) are under investigation. The only way we can rid our system of elected representatives working openly in the interests of an adversary to the detriment of our national interests is to vote them out. In Italy, that isn’t possible because even if a head of a party loses an election, he/she can still remain in their place and continue working in the interests of Russia: see Salvini and Conte.

This is why I am overjoyed that the House has belatedly passed the aid to Ukraine bill, but unspeakably frustrated with our inability to rid ourselves of people who are ready to throw our security, and Ukraine, under the bus.

Dmitri Medvedev meltdown: He’s hoping for a civil war in the U.S.

No one doubted that American lawmakers would approve “aid” to a gang of neo-Nazis. It was a vote by the joyous bastards of the state:

a) in favour of continuing the civil war of the divided people of our formerly united country;

b) for maximising the number of victims of this war.

We will win, of course, despite the 61 billion bloody dollars that will mostly go down the throats of their insatiable military-industrial complex. Strength and Truth are behind us.

But in view of this Russophobic decision, I cannot but wish with all sincerity that the United States would plunge into a new civil war as soon as possible. Which, I hope, will be cardinally different from war of the North and the South in XIX century and will be conducted with application of planes, tanks, artillery, MLRS, all kinds of missiles and other weapons. And which will finally lead to the ignominious collapse of the vile evil empire of the XXI century – the United States of America

Source: Monique Camarra, Eurofile, 21 April 2024

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev became the first Russian to get the brand new iPhone 4, which are to go on sale on Thursday.

The Russian leader received the smarthphone [sic] as a present from Apple CEO Steve Jobs during his visit to the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California.

At 9.3 mm the iPhone 4 is 25 percent thinner than its predecessors and the thinnest smartphone on the market. The gizmo also boasts a state of the art battery, with seven hours of talk time and 300 hours of standby.

According to the Russian mobile operator Beeline, the brand new device may appear on the Russian market no earlier than September.

During his visit to the Silicon Valley the Russian leader also visited the U.S. office of the Russian search engine Yandex.

The Yandex Labs center, based in Paolo Alto, California, is involved in scientific projects concerning mainly the optimization of online search technologies and other advanced research activities.

The president was accompanied by Yandex CEO Arkady Volozh and the chief technology officer of the Silicon Valley-based Yandex Labs, Arkady Borkovsky.

Source: “Medvedev becomes first iPhone 4 owner in Russia,” Sputnik, 23 June 2010

The Putin Party

Randy Newman, “Putin” (2016)

[…]

Dark Matter contained a re-recorded version of his Emmy award-winning song ‘It’s a Jungle Out There’, which was used as the theme song for the television series Monk. The album tells countless humorous tales. However, one of its most memorable cuts is the track ‘Putin’, which sees Newman sarcastically attack the Russian president. 

The song pokes fun at Putin’s efforts to appear macho, with Newman singing, “And when he takes his shirt off/ He drives the ladies crazy/ When he takes his shirt off/ Makes me wanna be a lady.” A chorus of ‘Putin Girls’ chime in to sing, “Putin if you put it/ Will you put it next to me?”

To accompany the scathing lyrics, Newman uses chaotic instrumentation that sounds like the perfect theme for a cartoon villain. The musician explained that he wrote the song when “all those pictures were appearing of him with his shirt off, and I couldn’t understand why. What did he want?”

He continued: “I think it was just personal vanity of some kind, like he wanted to be Tom Cruise. It wasn’t enough to be the richest and most powerful. He wanted to be the most handsome and a superhero, throwing young people around and wrestling.” 

Newman claims that he originally wrote a much harsher version but had to tone down the insults. In 2018, the song won the singer his seventh Grammy, this time for the relatively obscure category of Best Arrangement, Instrumentals and Vocals.

Source: Aimee Ferrier, “Remembering Randy Newman’s satirical warning about Vladimir Putin,” Far Out, 14 October 2022

“RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA HAS MADE ITS WAY into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” That acknowledgement from Michael McCaul, Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was echoed a few days later by Michael Turner, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. “It is absolutely true, we see, directly coming from Russia, attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor.” Among the falsehoods that GOP members of Congress are repeating is the notion that the Ukraine war is actually a battle between NATO and Russia. “Of course it is not,” Turner told CNN. “To the extent that this propaganda takes hold, it makes it more difficult for us to really see this as an authoritarian versus democracy battle.”

What makes it even more difficult to see reality plainly is the presence in the GOP of dunderheads like Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who gushed to an Alabama radio show that “Putin is on top of his game,” while scorning U.S. media accounts of Russian behavior. “The propaganda media machine over here, they sell anything they possibly can to go after Russia.” Tuberville may be the dimmest Putin booster on the Hill, but he is hardly lonely.

It has been two months since the Senate passed, in a 70–29 vote (including 22 Republican yes votes), a $95 billion foreign aid bill that included $60 billion for Ukraine. The Republican-controlled House, by contrast, has been paralyzed. Stories leak out that Speaker Mike Johnson, apparently influenced by high-level briefings he’s received since capturing the gavel, has changed his posture and wants to approve the aid. But Johnson leads, or is at least is the titular congressional chief, of a party that contains a passionate “Putin wing,” and so he dithers. This week, Volodomyr Zelensky has warned that Ukraine will lose the war if the aid is not approved. Yet Johnson is heading not to Kyiv but to Mar-a-Lago.

Pause on that for a moment. The Republican party is now poised to let a brave, democratic ally be defeated by the power that the last GOP presidential nominee save one called “without question, our number one greatest geopolitical foe.” One member of Congress has sworn to introduce a resolution to vacate the speaker’s chair if Johnson puts aid for Ukraine on the floor. And the entertainment wing of conservatism—most egregiously Tucker Carlson—has gone into full truckling mode toward the ex-KGB colonel in the Kremlin.

It’s worth exploring how the Republican party, the party of “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” became the party that now credulously traffics in blatant Russian disinformation while it flirts with betraying an important ally—along with all of its principles.

To some degree, people’s foreign policy inclinations are reflections of their domestic views. During the later years of the Cold War, large numbers of liberals and Democrats were more sympathetic to leftist regimes like Cuba (see Bernie Sanders) and Nicaragua (see Michael Harrington) than were conservatives and Republicans. I wrote a book about liberal softness toward left-wing authoritarianism and, though I haven’t yet read it, I gather that Jacob Heilbrunn’s new book does some similar spelunking about conservatives’ tolerance for right-wing dictators. Certainly some conservatives were more inclined than any liberal to go easy on South Africa because it was perceived to be a Cold War ally. On the other hand, Republican administrations did push allies to clean up their act on corruption, democratic elections, and other matters where they could (as for example in El Salvador).

Trump’s particular preferences and ego needs play a starring role in the GOP’s devolution. Cast your minds back to 2016 and the revelation that the Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee. To rebut this damaging development, Fox News conjurers got busy inventing a tale about CrowdStrike, the company that documented the hack, alleging that the servers had been mysteriously moved to Ukraine so that the FBI could not examine them. In his infamous phone call with Zelensky, Trump fished out this debunked nugget and asked Ukraine’s president, who was then already fighting Russia in the Donbas, to do him a favor before he released the weapons Congress had approved:

I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike. . . . I guess you have one of your wealthy people. . . . The server, they say, Ukraine has it. I would like to have the attorney general call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.

This was bonkers. As the Mueller report made clear, the FBI did get all the data regarding the DNC hack. There was never a shred of evidence that the servers were moved to Ukraine, and in any case physical control of the servers was unnecessary. But what was Zelensky supposed to say? He promised to look into it just as a courtier to a mad king will say, “Yes, your majesty, we will look into why your slippers are turning into marshmallows when the sun goes down.”

As Fiona Hill told me, Tom Bossert, Trump’s first homeland security advisor, tried “a million times” to disabuse Trump of this Ukraine myth, as did CIA Director Gina Haspel, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs, and many others, to no avail. It was, Hill notes, “a too-convenient fiction.”

Because Trump regarded any implication that he had received assistance from Russia as impugning his victory, he latched onto the idea (perhaps whispered by Putin himself in one of their many private conversations) that, yes, there had indeed been foreign interference in the election, but it was Ukraine boosting Hillary Clinton, not Russia aiding Trump. Now, it’s true that Ukraine’s friends reached out to Clinton, but why wouldn’t they? Trump’s campaign manager was Paul Manafort, a paid agent of Viktor Yanukovych, the ousted pro-Putin Ukrainian leader.

Trump nurtured his misplaced grudge for years. Recall that when Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Trump’s initial response was that it was a “genius” move.

I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, “This is genius.” Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine—of Ukraine—Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. He used the word “independent” and “we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace.” You gotta say that’s pretty savvy.

A non-sociopath would say it was raw aggression of the worst kind. A normal Republican of the pre-Trump mold would have been outraged at the attempted rape of a peaceful, democratic neighbor.

Most Republican officeholders are not sociopaths, but they take their marching orders from one and have adjusted their consciences accordingly. The talking point J.D. Vance and his ilk favor is that they cannot be concerned about Ukraine’s border when our southern border is also being invaded. Of course it’s absurd to compare immigrants looking for work or safety to tanks, bombs, and missiles, but that’s what passes for Republican reasoning these days. In any case, it was revealed to be hollow when Biden and the Democrats offered an extremely strict border bill to sweeten aid for Ukraine, and the GOP turned it down flat.

Russia’s fingerprints are all over the Republicans’ failed attempt to impeach (in all senses of the word) Joe Biden. Their star witness, Alexander Smirnov—who alleged that Hunter and Joe Biden had been paid $5 million in bribes by Burisma—was indicted in February for making false statements. High-ranking Russians appear to be his sources.

Whether the subject is Ukraine, Biden’s so-called corruption, or NATO, Putin seems to have pulled off the most successful foreign influence operation in American history. If Trump were being blackmailed by Putin it’s hard to imagine how he would behave any differently. And though it started with Trump, it has not ended there. Putin now wields more power over the GOP than anyone other than Trump. GOP propagandists indulge fictions that even many Russians can see through: Ukraine is governed by Nazis; Russia is a religious, Christian nation; Russia is fighting “wokeness.”

Republicans are not so much isolationist as pro-authoritarian. They’ve made Hungary’s Viktor Orbán a pinup and they mouth Russian disinformation without shame. Putin must be pinching himself.

Source: Mona Charen, “The GOP is the Party of Putin,” The Bulwark, 11 April 2024. Thanks to Mark Teeter for the heads-up.

Putin recommends reviving ‘Come On, Girls!’ contest, following Uralvagonzavod’s example

Following his visit to the Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk regions, President Vladimir Putin instructed regional heads to explore the initiative.

This isn’t the winner of the Come On, Girls! contest in Nizhny Tagil, but a stock image that Rabota.ru figured was good enough.

The list of the head of state’s mandates includes holding corporate Come On, Girls! contests, as is already being done at Uralvagonzavod in Nizhny Tagil, where Putin met with the event’s winner.

Top officials have until November to submit a report detailing how they have implemented the mandate.

Come On, Girls! was a televised Soviet competition that aired from 1970 to 1987. Members of particular professions competed both for the title of best specialist and in creative contests.

During the same visit to Uralvagonzavod, it was suggested to Putin that excursions by schoolchildren to industrial enterprises be made mandatory. For the time being, authorities are drafting labor education lessons for pupils modeled on the Soviet system.

Source: Andrei Gorelikov, “Putin recommends reviving ‘Come On, Girls!’ contest,” Rabota.ru, 9 April 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Traitor(s)

Traitor by Dennis Potter. Source: Internet Archive

Traitor

First broadcast in 1981, this Hidden Treasure play by Dennis Potter stars Denholm Elliott as Harris and Ian Ogilvy as James. It has not been heard for over 40 years.

In a dingy flat in Moscow, he sits alone — a traitor to his family, his friends, his colleagues. Then the international press descend upon him and he gives his first interview — an interview which brings forth terrible, haunting memories.

Adapted for radio and directed by Derek Hoddinott
A BBC World Service Drama production

With thanks to Keith Wickham, Dr Steve Arnold, Ruby Churchill, Louisa Britton, Alison Hindell, Matthew Dodd, Claire Coss, Carl Davies, Helen Toland, Richard Culver, Andrew Jupp, James Peak, BBC Archives and the Radio Circle.

Remastering by Essential Radio.

Source: BBC

On Sunday, Representative Michael R. Turner (R-OH), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said it is “absolutely true” that Republican members of Congress are parroting Russian propaganda. “We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union.

Turner was being questioned about an interview in which Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Russia specialist Julia Ioffe that “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” McCaul blamed right-wing media. When asked which Republicans he was talking about, McCaul answered that it is “obvious.” 

Catherine Belton and Joseph Menn reviewed more than 100 internal Kremlin documents from 2022 and 2023 obtained by a European intelligence service and reported in the Washington Post today that the Russian government is running “an ongoing campaign that seeks to influence congressional and other political debates to stoke anti-Ukraine sentiment.” Kremlin-backed trolls write fake “news articles, social media posts and comments that promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions” while claiming that “Biden’s policies are leading the U.S. toward collapse.”

Aaron Blake pointed out in the Washington Post that Republicans are increasingly warning that Russian propaganda has fouled their party. Blake notes that Russia specialist Fiona Hill publicly told Republicans during the 2019 impeachment inquiry into Trump that they were repeating “politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests,” but Republicans angrily objected. 

Now Senators Mitt Romney (R-UT), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and John Cornyn (R-TX) and a top aide to Senator Todd Young (R-IN), as well as former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and even Trump’s vice president Mike Pence, have warned about the party’s ties to Russia. Former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) has said the Republican Party now has “a Putin wing.” 

Trump has hinted that he has a plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Yesterday, Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Michael Birnbaum reported in the Washington Post on the details of that plan: he would accept Russian annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and the Donbas region. He refuses to say how he would negotiate with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, who has been adamant that Ukraine will not give up its territory to an invader, or Russia president Vladmir Putin, who has claimed all of Ukraine, but after meeting with Trump last month, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said Trump told him he would accomplish “peace” by cutting off funds to Ukraine.

Trump’s team said Orbán’s comment was false, but it is worth noting that this plan echoes the one acknowledged by Trump’s 2016 campaign director Paul Manafort as the goal of Russian aid to Trump’s campaign.

Fiona Hill told the Washington Post reporters that Trump’s team “is thinking…that this is just a Ukraine-Russia thing…rather than one about the whole future of European security and the world order.”

Trump’s MAGA loyalists in the House of Representatives have held up funding for Ukraine for six months. Although a national security supplemental bill that would fund Ukraine has passed the Senate and would pass the House if it were brought to the floor, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) refuses to bring it to the floor. The House returns to work tomorrow after a two-week recess but is so backed up on work that Johnson is not expected to bring up the Ukraine measure this week.  

Clint Watts, the head of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center, told the Washington Post’s Belton and Menn: “The impact of the Russian program over the last decade…is seen in the U.S. congressional debate over Ukraine aid…. They have had an impact in a strategic aggregate way.”

[…]

Source: Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, 8 April 2024 

Azat Miftakhov: “It’s Like They’re Telling Us, It’s No Trouble for Us to Put Anyone Away”

Azat Miftakhov in court. Photo: OVD Info

Anarchist and mathematician Azat Miftakhov has been sentenced to four years in a maximum security facility on criminal charges of “condoning terrorism.” The young man will spend the first two and a half years of his sentence in a closed prison. Miftakhov was detained in September 2023 as he was leaving the penal colony from which he had been released after completing his sentence on charges related to the breaking of a window at a United Russia party office. The next day he was remanded in custody in a pretrial detention center. According to the security forces, while watching TV with other inmates Miftakhov had spoken approvingly of the actions of Mikhail Zhlobitsky, who bombed the FSB’s Arkhangelsk offices [in 2018].

Why do I need to know this? Miftakhov’s wife, Yelena Gorban, argues that this criminal case was launched by members of the security forces who wanted to “extend Azat’s sentence for his past political activity.” In her statement to the court, she said that her husband was aware of the dangers of wiretapping in the penal colony, and so he had avoided discussing political topics in the company of inmates. “The conspicuousness and brazenness with which they fake evidence doesn’t embarrass them. It even plays into their hands. It’s like they’re telling us, ‘It’s no trouble for us to put anyone away,'” the anarchist himself said in [his closing statement at the trial].

Source: It’s Been That Kind of Week newsletter (OVD Info), 30 March 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

A video and audio recording of Azat Miftakhov’s closing statement at his trial and his sentencing, 28 March 2024, Yekaterinburg. Source: FreeAzat (Telegram), 31 March 2024

During the years I was imprisoned on the charges in previous criminal case, I failed to fall head over heels in love with the state, and now I again find myself in the dock. I am now on trial for what the security forces have deigned to call “condoning terrorism” by faking the evidence, as they did five years ago. The conspicuousness and brazenness with which they fake evidence doesn’t embarrass them. It even plays into their hands. It’s like they’re telling us, “It’s no trouble for us to put anyone away.”

We see the same brazenness in the numerous incidents of barbarous torture perpetrated by the regime’s guardians, the FSB. These guardians don’t care that their shameful deeds are made public. On the contrary, these deeds are flaunted as a source of pride. In this way, the state shows its terrorist nature, as anarchists pointed out before the previous presidential election by taking to the streets with the slogan “The FSB are the main terrorists.”

What we were saying back then has now become obvious not only in our country but all over the world. We how see how the [Russian] state’s entire foreign and domestic policy has become a conveyor belt of murder and intimidation. While fake witnesses attempt to prove the charges that I “condoned terrorism,” national TV channels broadcast calls for the mass murder of people who disagree with state policy. We see that the state, while paying lip service to combating terrorism, in fact seeks to maintain its monopoly on terror.

No matter how the Chekists try to intimidate civil society, we see even in these dark times people who find the courage to resist the terror that has spilled over the state’s borders. Risking their freedom and their lives, their actions awaken our society’s conscience, whose lack we now feel so acutely, and their steadfastness to the bitter end stands as an example for us all.

One such example for me was my friend and comrade Dmitry Petrov (aka Dima the Ecologist), who died defending Bakhmut from soldiers who had become tools of imperialism. I knew him as a fiery anarchist who, amidst a dictatorship, did everything he could to lead us to a society based on the principles of mutual aid and direct democracy.

As a graduate of the history program at Moscow State University and a PhD in history, he was well versed in the structure of society and was able to argue his position well, something I had always lacked. And yet he was not limited to theorizing but was also heavily involved in organizing the guerrilla movement, which did not escape the FSB’s notice. Because of this, he was forced to continue his work as an anarchist in Ukraine.

When the grim events of the last two years kicked off, he could not stay on the sidelines. An enterprising comrade, he sought to create an association of libertarian-minded people who would fight for the freedom of the peoples of Ukraine and Russia. Unfortunately, no war is without casualties, and Dima was one of them. It would be unjustifiably selfish of me to admire the selflessness of strangers alone and not to acknowledge the sacrifice of those who are personally dear to me. I am well aware of this, despite my regret that all my fellowship with him is now irrevocably a thing of the past.

And yet I find it hard to accept this loss. Knowing that he was one of the best of us, and wanting to do my best to ensure his sacrifice was not in vain, I have to recognize that my contribution will be insignificant compared to what he was capable of.

What I’ve just said was perhaps unexpected for some people. I cannot rule out that some of my supporters could be disappointed, as I find it difficult, to my own regret, to speak out publicly. Perhaps someone will disagree with my beliefs, which are at odds with pacifism.

Striving to be rational about everything, however, I reject a belief in things whose existence has not been proven. Among other things, I do not believe in the world’s justice. I do not believe that all evil will be punished as a matter of course. That’s why I support vigorously resisting evil and fighting for a better world for all of us.

But even if some of my supporters do not share all of my beliefs, I am still grateful for all of their help.

I am grateful to everyone who has written me letters full of warmth and good wishes. Even amidst the desolation of the penal colony, I received stacks of them almost every week. I am certain that such great attention to me was borne in mind by the people who set out to make me submissive. I find it quite pleasant and touching that people share a part of their lives with me, whether the experiences are joyful or sad. Every letter is very dear to my heart, and I read every single one of them.

Many thanks to all those who have supported me financially. Thanks to them I have never lacked anything during all the years of my imprisonment. There have been times when I have run out of money to support me, but as soon as I put out a call for help, within a few days people who cared about me brought my budget back to a comfortable level. This is very pleasant and impossible to forget. Special thanks to Vladimir Akimenkov, who for more than ten years has been organizing fundraisers to support political prisoners, including me.

I am extremely grateful to the activists in the FreeAzat and Solidarité FreeAzat collectives, who have organized campaigns and events in solidarity with me on a scale which boggles my mind. Your recent “1001 Letters” campaign was one of them. After reading all those letters, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that people in dozens of different countries are concerned about me. Thank you very much to everyone who was involved in this campaign, thus showing me how much you support me.

I am extremely grateful to mathematicians all over the world, and specifically to the Azat Miftakhov Committee, for supporting me on behalf of the mathematical community. I am very touched that people to whom I look up, whose scholarly prowess I dream of achieving someday, know about me and voice their solidarity.

Thank you very much to everyone who has spoken publicly about me. And special thanks to Mikhail Lobanov, who was forced to emigrate to France for vigorously supporting me. But even there, despite all the difficulties of exile, his solidarity with me has been as strong as ever.

Many thanks to the Russian activists, including those who don’t belong to collectives mentioned above, who have risked their comfort by showing solidarity with me while living under a dictatorship. I am very grateful to all who came to support me with their presence by attending the trial. Some of you traveled hundreds of kilometers for this purpose, and some of you did it more than once and more than twice. I was once again pleasantly surprised by such a huge attention to me.

Many thanks to all the honest members of the press who, through their work, have been helping the public to follow my trial.

I thank my defense counsel, Svetlana Sidorkina, for her dedication in defending me at my trials. I never cease to admire her professionalism and I am convinced that I am very lucky to have her. Finally, I would like to thank Lena, my main support in my tribulations. She has helped me through her dedication to overcoming all the difficulties of my imprisonment. On top of that, I am blessed to be in love with her.

As I finish my acknowledgements, I am left with the feeling that someone may have been overlooked. This is a consequence of the tremendous, steady support I have received since the moment of my arrest. I am pleased to see I am not the only one who has been the object of your support—that, despite the dark events of recent years, your solidarity knows no territorial boundaries. This is what gives me hope for a bright future for all of us.

Source: “Azat Miftakhov’s Closing Statement in Court: Yekaterinburg, 28 March 2024,” Telegra.ph. The emphasis is in the original. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to the Fabulous AM for the heads-up.

The War on Terror

This is not the first time the editors of our local newspaper have “platformed” the lies of the mendacious and violent fascist butcher Vladimir Putin.

1. US warns that Russia will invade Ukraine. General disbelief, daily Russian mockery. (December 3 2021-February 24 2022)

2.  Russia invades Ukraine, kills tens of thousands of people, kidnaps tens of thousands of children, commits other ongoing war crimes (February 24 2022-present)

3.  Russia blames US for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (March 2022-present)

4. US warns of terror attack in Moscow. Putin denies any risk and mocks the United States. (March 7 and March 19 2024).

5.  Terror attack near Moscow, ISIS takes responsibility, Russia meanwhile kills Ukrainian citizens with drones and missiles as it has for more than two years. (today, March 22 2024)

6.  Russia’s security apparatus, focused on bringing carnage to Ukraine, has failed in Moscow.  Russia’s leaders, focused on demonizing the US, did not protect Russians. What next? Where to direct the blame?

7.  It would not be very surprising if the Kremlin blames Ukraine and the United States for terror in Moscow and uses the Moscow attack to justify continuing and future atrocities in Ukraine.

Source: Timothy Snyder, “Moscow Terror: A Chronology That Might Predict,” Thinking about…, 22 March 2024

This past Friday, 22 March, a horrifying terrorist attack took place in Crocus City Hall in the outskirts of Moscow.  Islamic State plausibly claimed responsibility.

Earlier that day, Russian authorities had designated international LGBT organizations as “terrorist.” Also earlier that day, Russia had carried out massive terror attacks on Ukrainian cities. Those actions reveal the enemies Putin has chosen. As the attack on Crocus City Hall demonstrated, his choices have nothing to do with actual threats facing Russians.

Russia and the Islamic State have long been engaged in conflict.  Russia has been bombing Syria since 2015.  Russia and the Islamic State compete for territory and resources in Africa.  Islamic State attacked the Russian embassy in Kabul.  This is the relevant context for the attack outside Moscow. The horror at Crocus City Hall obviously has nothing to do with gays or Ukrainians or any other of Putin’s enemies of choice.

Putin had publicly dismissed the real threat. The United States had warned Russia of a coming attack by Islamic State.  The United States operates under a “duty to warn,” which means that summaries of intelligence about coming terrorist attacks are passed on, even to states considered hostile, including (to take recent examples) Iran and Russia.  Putin chose to mock the United States in public three days before the attack. 

People reasonably ask how a terror attack could succeed in Russia, which is a police state.  Regimes like Russia’s devote their energy to defining and combating fake threats.  When a real threat emerges, the fake threats must be emphasized.  Predictably (and as predicted), Putin sought to blame Ukraine for Crocus City Hall.

What if Russians realize that Putin’s designations of threats are self-serving and dangerous?  What if they understand that there are real threats to Russians ignored by Putin?  He has devoted the security apparatus to the project [of] destroying the Ukrainian nation and state.  What if Putin’s obsession with Ukraine has only made life worse for Russians, including by opening [t]he way to actors who are in fact threats to Russian life, such as Islamic State? 

These are the questions Putin must head off. It is not easy, however, to blame Ukraine for Islamic State terrorism.  Putin’s first media appearance, nearly a day after the attack, was far from convincing.  The specifics he offered were nonsensical.  He claimed that the suspects in the terrorist act were heading for an open “window” on the Russian-Ukrainian border.

The term “window” is KGB jargon for a spot where the border has been cleared for a covert crossing.  That the leader of the Russian Federation uses this term in a public address is a reminder of his own career inside the KGB.  Yet Putin had obviously not thought this claim through, since a “window” must involve a clear space on both sides of the border.  For escaping terrorists, it would be the Russian side that opened the window.  By speaking of a “window” Putin indicated that the terrorists had Russian confederates preparing their exit, which he presumably did not mean.  It seems that Putin was hastily making things up.

Setting aside the “window” business, though, the whole idea that escaping terrorists would head for Ukraine is daft.  Russia has 20,000 miles of border.  The Russian-Ukrainian part of it is covered with Russian soldiers and security forces. On the Ukrainian side it is heavily mined.  It is a site of active combat.  It is the last place an escaping terrorist would choose. 

And there is no evidence that this is what happened.  Russia claims that it has apprehended suspects in Bryansk, and claimed that this means that they were headed for Ukraine.  (Western media have unfortunately repeated this part of the claim.)  Regardless of whether anything about these claims is true, Bryansk would suggest flight in the direction of Belarus.  Indeed, the first version of the story involved Belarus, before someone had a “better” idea.

In moments of stress, Russian propaganda tries out various ways to spin the story in the direction preferred by the Kremlin.  The reputed suspects are being tortured, presumably with the goal of “finding” some connection to Ukraine.  The Kremlin has instructed Russian media to emphasize any possible Ukrainian elements in the story.  Russian television propaganda published a fake video implicating a Ukrainian official.  The idea is to release a junk into the media, including the international media, and to see if anything works. 

Amidst the flotsam and jetsam are those who spread Russian propaganda abroad, who try out versions more extreme than Putin’s.  Putin does not directly deny that Islamic State was the perpetrator — he simply wants to direct attention towards Ukraine.  But actors outside Russia can simply claim that Ukraine was at fault.  Such actors push the discussion further than the Kremlin, and thereby allow Russia to test what might work abroad.

As a result, we have a bizarre discussion that leads to a harmful place.  Islamic State claims responsibility for Crocus City Hall.  The Islamic State publishes dreadful video footage.  Russia cannot directly deny this but seeks help anyway in somehow pushing Ukraine into the picture.  Those providing that help open a “debate” by denying that Islamic State was involved and making far more direct claims about Ukraine than the Kremlin does.  (This brazen lying leads others to share [a] Islamic State perpetration video (don’t share it; don’t watch it).  So the senseless “debate” helps Islamic State, since the reason it publishes perpetration videos is to recruit future killers.)

Meanwhile, Russia’s senseless war of aggression against Ukraine continues.  In its occupied zones, Russia continues to kidnap Ukrainian children for assimilation and continues to torture Ukrainians and place them in concentration camps.  It continues to send glider bombs, drones, cruise missiles and rockets at Ukrainian towns and cities. 

On the same day as the attack at Crocus City Hall, Russia carried out its single largest attack to date on the Ukrainian energy grid, leaving more than a million people without power.  Among other things it fired eight cruise missiles at the largest Ukrainian dam. Russia attacked the city of Zaporizhzhia (the consequences are in the four photos) and other cities throughout Ukraine.

On Friday Russia fired, in all, eighty-eight missiles and sixty-three explosive drones into Ukraine. And that represents just a single day (if an unusually bad one) of a Russian war of terror in Ukraine that has gone on for more than two years.

Putin is responsible for his mistakes inside Russia. And he is at fault for the war in Ukraine.  He is trying to turn two wrongs into a right: into his own right to define reality however he likes, which means his right to kill whomever he chooses. 

Source: Timothy Snyder, “Moscow Terror (2): The Claim and the Blame,” Thinking about…, 24 March 2024

It is obvious that the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall on the evening of 22 March 2024, during which 133 people were killed, according to the official count, has clear goals and objectives. A week before Putin’s “election” I wrote that, after receiving a “mandate from the people,” Putin would unleash a mass terror campaign. But for this, of course, he needs a decent and obvious excuse. The exemplary terrorist attack in broad daylight in politically unreliable Moscow is intended to convince society that “decisive action” is what it needs now.

Why would Putin do that? It’s simple logic. Come hell or high water he has to win the war he has unleashed. This is obvious, for it is a matter of self-preservation. If Putin does not win, he is a weakling, a lowlife, and at the same time the person to blame for hundreds of thousands of deaths not only of Ukrainians, but also of Russians. It is clear that he will not last long in this state. Not to mention such a trifle as his sick, wounded ego, repeatedly insulted by Ukraine. But victory would wipe everything out, because victors are not judged, Putin is convinced, taking his cue from his idol Catherine the Great.

So, Putin has to have victory at any cost. But two things have long prevented him from achieving it: 1) his numerous domestic enemies, and 2) a lack of “manpower” in the ranks of the army.

Putin intends to solve problem number one by means of a mass terror campaign against malcontents, especially since he has long been urged to do so by a well-rehearsed chorus of heralds, from Dmitry Medvedev and General Gurulyov to a host of other, lower-ranking epigones of contemporary Russian fascism. Guessing the mood of their Führer, they demand that, at very least, he restore the death penalty; at most, that he carry out “total executions of the terrorists and crackdowns against their families” (per the latest quotable quote from Medvedev).

We can only guess at this point whether Putin’s forthcoming terror will exceed Stalin’s body count or whether the current ruler in the Kremlin will limit himself to “merely” increasing the number of prison sentences meted out to dissidents by a factor of two and carrying out demonstrative executions of dozens or hundreds of his fellow citizens. But there is no doubt that a serious expansion of such tactics is on his agenda.

Putin will solve problem number two through a mass mobilization. This is nothing new either. Piling hundreds of thousands of soldiers into the enemy’s trenches is a time-honored tactic practiced by both the Russian and Soviet military, and, as Putin has seen, it has worked well in the “meat assaults” on Avdiivka, Bakhmut, Severodonetsk, and many other small Ukrainian towns. But these towns are nothing compared to the million-strong cities of Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, and Odesa, not to mention the three-million-strong Kyiv. So there must be massively more cannon fodder. The second problem is directly related to the first.

Combined with large-scale crackdowns, the mobilization is sure to proceed more vigorously this time round.

As a bonus for the Kremlin, this terrorist attack diverts public attention (at least for a while) from such things as Russia’s largest-ever strike on Ukraine, involving a hundred and fifty missiles and drones, which happened just a day before the events at Crocus City Hall.

I’d now like to talk about other explanations of this terrorist attack. Looking through the news related to it, I honestly could not help but marvel at the comments of certain respected colleagues, opposition Russian analysts, who easily took the bait about IS, Islamist terrorists, and the other nonsense that the FSB obligingly leaked to the public in the first hours after the attack through the Russian media and Telegram channels.

To clarify, certain people of “non-Slavic ethnicity” were chosen to directly perpetrate this heinous crime. There are hundreds of thousands of Tajik, Uzbek, and Kyrgyz migrant workers in Russia, EVERY ONE of whom is literally turned inside out by the Russian Interior Ministry upon arriving in Russia, including with regard to their attitudes to radical Islam and similar things. The Russian secret services thus have the broadest selection of perpetrators available for such a terrorist attack.

Let us ask ourselves an elementary question: how could Islamist radicals purchase not only assault rifles and pistols but also the flamethrower with which the terrorists torched the unfortunate audience members at Crocus City Hall without the knowledge and support of Russian “law enforcement”? Is such a thing possible in today’s Russia, and in Moscow to boot? If someone thinks that it is possible, I would simply remind them that when members of Eduard Limonov’s National Bolshevik Party tried to buy weapons somewhere in the Altai Territory back in the 2000s, their plan was instantly exposed. The idea of Tajiks buying assault rifles and flamethrowers in today’s militarized Russia, which is chockablock with surveillance cameras and special services, is a bad joke.

Let me also remind you that the initial semi-official Russian explanation was that the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall was revenge on Russia for its actions in Syria and Chechnya. Seriously? So, it matters not a whit that the Russian army and its air force have not conducted any active operations in Syria for two years now? If you have not been paying attention during this time, let me just remind you that the Kremlin is certainly not concerned with Syria right now. For the last two years all Russian armed forces, including those operating from military bases in Syria and in Armenia, have been deployed in destroying Ukraine. There have been no large-scale military operations in Chechnya for almost twenty years.

However, as it turned out, all this argumentation was completely superfluous, because my gullible colleagues were made to eat their lunch by Putin himself and his favorite propagandist, Margarita Simonyan. As a shadow of her “boss” (as she herself dubs Putin), Simonyan naturally cannot afford to indulge in improvisations not vetted by him, and especially at such a crucial moment. On her Telegram channel, she bluntly pointed out who, in her (and therefore her boss’s) opinion, had organized and perpetrated the terrorist attack: “It wasn’t IS. It was the Khokhols.”

The “boss” himself, who was supposed to address the nation in the early hours after the terrorist attack, unexpectedly postponed his address by twenty-four hours. The delay appears to have been caused by technical blunders. Obviously, organizing the details of a terrorist attack is not Putin’s pay grade. It is clear that in such cases the relevant special services are simply given the go-ahead from the top brass. They are told to do their job. The operation was entrusted, of course, to professional hatchet men. As usual, they made a miserable mess of it. You need a large-scale terrorist attack? The Russian security services always have two or three dozen Tajiks on hand for this purpose, who can be hastily given their marching orders, paid, and… And that’s basically it. The Tajik passport found in a car allegedly belonging to the terrorists is, of course, a masterpiece. It is clear that no terrorist, as he sets off to carry out an attack, ever forgets to take his passport with him. It was meant as a helpful hint to law enforcers, and also so decent folk would know whom to hate. It is strange that the business card of the already half-forgotten Dmytro Yarosh was not found in the car as well.

But the point is that this special operation were certainly not meant to spoil relations with the Islamic world. Russia’s allies—Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas—might take offense.

In addition to the domestic agenda we mentioned above, the terrorist attack was meant to firmly link the globally condemned villains of IS with Ukraine in world public opinion.

This was why Putin’s speech on the terrorist attack was postponed for almost twenty-four hours. The dictator’s dodgy mind was deciding how to clean up the mess made by his numbskulls and tie up the loose ends. That is, to tie IS (or any other Islamists) to Ukraine. And he probably thinks he has figured out how to do it. As he put it, [the terrorists were trying to escape through] “a window prepared for them on the Ukrainian side of the border.”

All these tricks of Putin’s are painfully obvious to people capable of thinking, but he doesn’t care about that. Moreover, having sensed a change in the mood of his American “partners” (remember the reports that the U.S. has been pressuring Ukraine to stop hitting Russian oil refineries, and the fact that for almost two months no American aid has arrived in Ukraine and it is not known whether it will arrive in the future), Putin makes a high-pitched appeal to all countries to unite against this inhuman evil—that is, against Ukraine + Daesh.

Another very important point from Putin’s speech, indicating that he is paving the way for a mass terror campaign at home, is that he called the shooting of civilians at Crocus City Hall nothing more or less than “a blow to Russia, to our people.” He, his propagandists, and the Russian media have already established the link between Islamist terrorists and Ukraine. The next logical step is to claim that those Russians who support Ukraine are direct and immediate supporters of the terrorists who struck “a blow to Russia, to our people”—that is, that they are enemies of the people.

To be honest, all of this is as monstrous as it is predictable. I will repeat what I have said many times before: as long as Putin is alive and in power, things will get even worse and even scarier.

Source: Alexander Zhelenin, “The terrorist attack at Crocus City: who benefits from it and what will happen next,” Republic, 23 March 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Don’t Stomp on the Ants, Sweetheart

KING CITY, Calif. — A group of men in masks opened fire at an outdoor party in central California, killing four people and injuring three others Sunday evening, police said.

Police responded to a reported shooting around 6 p.m. in King City and found three men with gunshot wounds who were pronounced dead in a front yard, the King City Police Department said in a statement.

Four other people sustained gunshot wounds, including a woman who died after being transported to Mee Memorial Hospital in King City, about 106 miles (170 kilometers) south of San Jose.

The three injured men were transported to Natividad Hospital in Salinas, police said.

Several people were at the party outside a residence when three men with dark masks and clothes got out of a silver car and fired at the group. The suspects, who were not immediately identified, then fled the scene in the car.

The investigation is ongoing, police said.

On Monday French lawmakers will vote on whether to enshrine in the country’s constitution a “guarantee” of women’s “freedom” to have an abortion. They will meet at a joint session of the lower and upper houses of parliament in Versailles, a rarely convened body known as the Congress. A constitutional revision requires three-fifths of the votes. 

Such cross-party support is widely expected. Last Wednesday the French senate, which is controlled by the opposition centre-right, voted overwhelmingly in favour of the bill. The revision also enjoys backing from the governing centre and the opposition left. Emmanuel Macron, the president, wants women’s freedom to have an abortion to be made “irreversible”. French politicians of all stripes have worried about the potential for a future rolling-back of such guarantees—especially since America’s [sic] Supreme Court overturned the ruling that protected abortion rights there in 2022.

Sources: Spanishdict.com daily newsletter, 4 March 2024; Monterey Herald, 4 March 2024; Time, 4 March 2024; The Economist daily newsletter, 4 March 2024; the YouTube channels of The Insider (“Navalny’s Last Rally”) and Novaya Gazeta (“The Most Emotional Statements of People Who Came to Say Goodbye to Alexei Navalny”), with thanks to Tiina Pasanen; Andrei Bok (Facebook), 2 March 2024; Duolingo; random internet stock image.

News from Ukraine Bulletin 84

Monterey, California, 13 February 2024. Photo by the Russian Reader

News from Ukraine Bulletin 84 (12 February 2024)

A Digest of News from Ukrainian sources

In this week’s bulletin: War, fascisisation and resistance in Russia; two years of war by a Ukrainian feminist; more evidence of Russian torture and secret trials and theft of property.

News from the territories occupied by Russia:  

Russian FSB tortures three Ukrainians for ‘saboteur plot’ arrests in occupied Crimea  (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 9th)

Russian propaganda turns the elimination of its officials in occupied Lysychansk into ‘a monstrous attack on a bakery’  (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 9th)

‘I live in a modular town and weave nets,’ — a resident of Borodianka (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 8th)

Huge mass ‘sentences’ after fake trial of Ukrainian POWs whom Russia accused of its own war crimes (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 8th)

Seven years of hell for supporting Ukraine in Russian-controlled ‘Donetsk republic’ (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 6th)

Russians plan to teach schoolchildren in temporarily occupied territories to assemble UAVs (Ukrainska Pravda, February 5th)

‘I realised that it’s a kilometre to run through unexploded shells to get to the well…’ — Chronicles of occupied Izium  (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 5th)

Russian invaders move to strip Ukrainians forced to flee occupied Berdiansk of their homes (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 6th)

Russia has turned Crimea into a huge prison for political prisoners and hostages from Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts  (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 5th)

News from Ukraine – general:  

To the President of Ukraine V.O. Zelenskyi, about the change of army command (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 9th)

Beyond Greener Grass: Strategies Towards Ukrainian Transnational Cultural Reconstruction  (Cedos, February 9th)

Our people are at home: 207 Ukrainians were returned from captivity (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 6th)

The Housing Leadership Lab  (Cedos, February 6th)

“Ukraine is a left-wing, anti-authoritarian project”  (Ukraine Solidarity EU, February 4th)

“Tensions are building in Ukrainian society as a result of neoliberal policies imposed by the government”   (Ukraine Solidarity EU, February 3rd)

2 years of war, a Ukrainian feminist point of view  (Ukraine Solidarity EU, February 1st)

Analysis and comment:

Suspicious secrecy over crash of military transport plane which Russia claims was carrying Ukrainian POWs  (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 7th)

Ukrainian Parliament should become more open to the media and the public  (Zmina, February 6th)

International Court of Justice rules that Russia must answer over Ukraine’s Genocide case (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 5th)

War, fascization, and resistance: Perspectives on Russian imperialism (Links, January 23rd)

Research of human rights abuses:

Lisne from the air: damage and destruction (Tribunal for Putin, February 9th)

The Butchers of Vovchansk: Suspects named  (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 8th)

“Before sharing your own story, it is crucial to hear first the story of those with whom you are talking” — Oleksandra Romantsova (Centre for Civil Liberties, February 8th)

Justice for War Crimes  (Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, February 7th)

War-related news from Russia:

(Hopeless) Nadezhdin. The Kremlin did not allow a loyal “oppositional” and Ukrainophobic candidate to participate in the election  (Opora, February 9th)

Russian election: “Nothing happens in social life without human effort” (Posle Media, 7 February)

Campaign for political prisoner Azat Miftakhov (January 29th)

Upcoming solidarity actions in the UK:

The future of Ukraine.  Thursday 15 February, 2024, 18:30 – 20:00 Location: Europe House, 32 Smith Square, London. 

Saturday 24 February, 2pm. Two years resisting Russia’s invasion. Assemble Marble Arch and march to Trafalgar Square. Called by Support Ukraine / London Euromaidan, supported by Ukraine Solidarity Campaign.

Saturday 24 February, 4.0pm UK time. An online “assembly against the war and its logic”. Organised by Permanent Assembly Against the War.

Thursday 7 March – Evening –  Fundraiser Showing of 20 Days in Mariupol – for medical aid appeal for at Novovlynysnk Central Hospital at The Garden Cinema, London.

==

We are now on Facebook and Substack! Please subscribe and tell friends. Better still, people can email us at 2022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com, and we’ll send them the bulletin direct every Monday. The full-scale Russian assault on Ukraine is going into its third year: we’ll keep information and analysis coming, for as long as it takes.

This bulletin is put together by labour movement activists in solidarity with Ukrainian resistance. More information at https://ukraine-solidarity.org/. We are also on twitter, and the bulletin is also stored on line here.

1001 Letters for Azat Miftakhov

687 letters out of 1,001. “I wish [you] much strength and determination. It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

💌The Azat Miftakhov letter writing campaign continues!

🔥 Since the last appeal to write to Azat, the Solidarité FreeAzat Association has received 687 letters out of its goal of 1,001 letters!

✈️ We received letters from a huge number of countries. Azat is supported by people in France, Russia, Belgium, Nicaragua, Mexico, Germany, Lithuania, the UK, Switzerland, Italy, Poland, Canada, Finland, Australia, Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Georgia, South Korea, Armenia, New Zealand….

Fifty countries in all!

🫠Today we learned that the military court’s first hearing in Azat’s case has been scheduled for February 12 in Yekaterinburg. We have even less time than we thought. There is one week left to get all the letters.

🫶 We urge everyone who hasn’t written yet to write a letter to Azat Miftakhov before February 12, to show solidarity with and verbal support for a person who has been imprisoned for no particular reason.

😳You can write to the Association’s e-mail—libertepourazat@gmail.com—or use the Google form.

😳We would like to remind you that Solidarité FreeAzat Association is going to send the letters via Zonatelecom, an electronic service for dispatching letters to Russian inmates, and therefore we need your full support.

😳You can make a donation to offset the cost of sending the letters.

🤮 If you have a Russian bank card, send money to:

Mastercard 5469 3800 5929 3380 (Sberbank)
Elena Gorban

🤮 If you want to donate using a non-Russian bank card you can use this payment service:

https://www.helloasso.com/associations/solidarite-freeazat/formulaires/3

Please note that the service will charge a commission on the payment, and you need to manually lower the amount of the commission to 0 euros.

Write letters to those who need them so much now!

❣️*The postcard [above] was drawn by Hans, an artist from Germany.

Source: FreeAzat! (Telegram), 5 February 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Posle for the heads-up. Please note that the Google letter-writing form, linked to above, is in Russian not least because the correspondence received by Russian inmates must be in Russian in order to pass censorship. If you need help negotiating this, don’t hesitate to write to me at avvakum@protonmail.com.

Azat Miftakhov

We’re launching a fundraiser to pay for mathematician Azat Miftakhov’s lawyer

Azat Miftakhov is a political prisoner, anarchist and mathematician convicted in 2019 on charges of disorderly conduct for allegedly breaking a window at a United Russia party office. In 2023, Azat was detained when he was released from prson and charged with “condoning terrorism.” According to police investigators, Miftakhov “deliberately in the presence of two convicts publicly condoned terrorism” while serving his sentence for disorderly conduct in Penal Colony No. 17.

According to the testimony of the other inmates, while watching the evening news on TV in May 2023, Miftakhov said that he would “avenge” a friend who had been killed while fighting for the Ukrainian army. The principal testimony in Azat’s new case was given by a identity-protected witness. He claimed that Miftakhov had condoned the actions of Mikhail Zhlobitsky, who carried out a suicide bombing at the Arkhangelsk offices of the Federal Security Service (FSB).

We are now raising 500,000 rubles [approx. 5,100 euros] to pay the lawyer defending Miftakhov against the new charges of violating Article 205.2.2 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code.

You can click the link, below, to support the fundraiser using a non-Russian bank card [via Stripe].

I want to help!

You can send a transfer in Russian rubles to Tinkoff card 5536 9140 9963 7302, tied to phone number +7 (991) 938-0181, Roman Vyacheslavovich P. (Mark the reason for payment as “mathematics.”)

Source: Memorial Political Prisoners Support, 9 Februrary 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Posle for the heads-up.

Bohdan Ziza: “A Cry from the Heart”

Bohdan Ziza, a Ukrainian artist, poet and activist, is serving a 15-year sentence for “terrorism” after pouring blue and yellow paint – the colours of the Ukrainian flag – on to a municipal administration building in Evpatoria, Crimea, his home town. He made and circulated a video of the action – on 16 May 2022, shortly after the all-out Russian invasion of Ukraine – and for that was also charged with “incitement to terrorism”.

Bohdan Ziza. From his instagram channel

This is Bohdan’s speech from the dock, before being sentenced by a Russian military court on 5 June last year.

Do I regret what I have done?

I am sorry that I over-reached, and that my action resulted in charges under the Article [of the Russian criminal code] on terrorism. I am sorry that my grandmother is now without the care and support that she needs. Apart from me, she has nobody. And I am sorry that I can not now help others who are close to me, who need that help now.

As for the rest: I acted according to my conscience.

And also, according to my conscience, I do not deny or disavow what I did. I behaved stupidly, and could have expressed my opinion in some other way. But did I deserve, for what I did, to be deprived of my freedom for ten years or more?

I would like to appeal to the court: do not follow the regime’s script, do not participate in these awful repressions. But obviously that would have no effect. The judges and other similar political actors are just doing what they are told.

For these reasons, I will continue to protest, even in prison. And I am well aware of the sentence I may receive, and how it may affect my health and even my life.

But am I worthy of the life that I live? Is each one of us worthy of a carefree life, when we stay silent at a time when, every day, innocent people’s lives are being taken?

This was the worst night of my life. I never experienced anything like it. I thought we would die. There were three Kinzhal rockets, and loads of Kalibrs. They fell very close, they were right above our building. The building shook – several explosions, one after the other. For the first time in the war there was a white glow, the sky was white from the explosions. It was as though we were in a trench, not in our own home. At one moment I thought that it was all flying towards us. There was the very clear sound of a rocket, and then a very powerful explosion. But we have been lucky, again, and we are still alive.

That was a message from my sister, in Kyiv, who had to live through another night of bombardment of the city by the Russian armed forces.

When she went out in the morning, she learned that one of the rockets had hit the next-door building.

For many people, this war that is going on now is happening over there somewhere, far away.

One of the staff at the pre-trial detention centre said to me: “Bloody hell, I am sick of this war. Whenever you turn on the TV, it’s more of the same.” I answered that the war is not over and so you can not get away from it. And then he said: “Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s just that everything is getting more expensive. The cost of running a car now!”

And that’s the problem, here in Russia. For you, this war is an inconvenience, an irritation. You try to wait it out, living your usual life, trying to avoid bad news, and in that way simply not valuing simple things, not valuing the fact that you can wake up in a warm bed, in a warm flat, and say to someone who is dear to you, “good morning”. At a time when in the country next door, millions of people are losing their homes, losing their loved ones, when whole cities are being destroyed. Every day. That’s the everyday reality for Ukrainian citizens now.

In theory, Russian people’s failure to act could be explained, if only what is happening was not being done by Russian hands. The hands of those who bear arms, and those who don’t do anything to stop them. Every day that an ordinary Russian person carries on, reasoning that this is all politics and doesn’t concern him, and living his normal life, he adds money to the Russian Federation budget and in that way sponsors this criminal war.

Of course there are those who do not support what is happening, who take action, who are not silent participants: journalists, various activists – those who refuse to keep quiet.

My action was a cry from the heart, from my conscience, to those who were and are afraid – just as I was afraid – but who also did not want, and do not want, this war. Each of us separately are small, unnoticed people – but people whose loud actions can be heard. Yes, it is frightening. Yes, you can end up behind bars – where I, for sure, did not plan to be. Even for these words I could face a new criminal case. But it is better to be in prison with a clear conscience, than to be a wretched, dumb beast on the outside.

I am also an ordinary citizen of my country – Ukraine – who is not used to keeping quiet when confronted with lawlessness. I am not alone here today in this “goldfish bowl” [slang for the glass cage in which the accused appears in Russian courts]. There are more than 200 people with me: Ukrainian political prisoners, serving time in Russian prisons on fabricated charges. Many of them are Crimean Tatars, who are once again faced with repression by Russia. I am myself half Crimean Tatar, and angry at our people’s suffering.

Many Ukrainians are serving time in Russian prisons simply because they are Ukrainians, and were somewhere that the Russian state thought they should not be. In Russian prisons people are beaten up for speaking in Ukrainian. Or not even for speaking it, but simply for understanding it. Bastards among the guards at pre-trial detention centres or other places where people are imprisoned address prisoners in Ukrainian, to see if they get a reaction, to see if they provoke an answer or a response. If a person reacts, they beat him up.

Those who so passionately seek “Nazis” in Ukraine have not opened their eyes to the Nazism that has emerged in Russia, with its ephemeral “Russian world”, with which armed forces have come to us, to try to extirpate Ukrainian identity.

People in prison suffer in the most terrible conditions. Many of them are elderly. More than 40 people [in the pre-trial detention centre] have critical health problems, and can not access the medical treatment that they need. People die in prison. They are not criminals. Deport them from the country! Why do you keep them here?

I am no kind of terrorist. It sounds ridiculous to even say that. I am a person with morals and principles, who would rather give his own life than take the life of another person. But I am not ready to give my life to the Federal Penal Enforcement Service of the Russian Federation.

I declare a hunger strike, and demand that I be stripped of my Russian citizenship. I demand that all Ukrainian political prisoners be freed. If anything happens to me in prison, I want the world to know that it happened only because I am a Ukrainian, who took a stand against the war in his country.

And if this is my last word, let it be my last word in the Russian language. The last thing I will say publicly in Russian in this country, as long as this regime lasts. The reddish regime.

[Ziza then switched from Russian to Ukrainian, and recited this poem. Explanation of names mentioned below.]

I am not Red, I am Crimson!

I am not playing to the gallery!

These are not rhymes, they are wounds!

And I am not Melnik, I am Bandera!

The weather: it’s snowing in my summer,

From Symonenko’s motherland

I go to the end, like Teliha!

And I believe in wings, like Kostenko!

□ Note. The Ukrainian for “crimson” (“bahrianyi”), was also the pseudonym of Ivan Lozoviaha, a dissident writer and political exile from 1932 to his death in 1963. Andriy Melnik and Stepan Bandera were leaders of Ukrainian nationalist partisan military formations in the 1940s. Vasyl Symonenko was a Ukrainian poet, active in dissident circles until his death in 1963. Olena Teliha was a feminist poet, member of a nationalist underground cell in Nazi-occupied Kyiv, killed by the Nazis in 1942. Lina Kostenko is a Soviet-era dissident who has continued working as a poet and writer in post-Soviet Ukraine.

□ This is translated from the Russian text on the Graty news site, with reference to the Crimea Human Rights Group report. Thanks to M for help with translation.

□ What happened next. After Bohdan Ziza made this speech to the Southern District Military Court in Rostov, Russia, on 5 June 2023, he was sentenced by the judge, Roman Plisko, to 15 years in a high-security penal colony. Shortly after that, Ziza wrote to Zmina, the Ukrainian human rights organisation. He ended his hunger strike and then wrote to Uznik on-line, which coordinates correspondence with anti-war prisoners in Russia, to thank them and the many supporters who had written to him.

On 27 September 2023 Bohdan Ziza’s appeal against his sentence was rejected by Maksym Panin at the military court of appeal in Vlasikha, near Moscow.

Bohdan, who marked his 29th birthday on 23 November, was moved to Vladimir prison. On 5 December, the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group reported that he had been visited by his lawyer and is in good spirits. He is sharing a cell with Appaz Kurtamet, another Crimean Tatar political prisoner, and was serving time in a punishment cell after stating that he is not a criminal and refusing to wear prison clothing.

□ What we can do. Advice to non-Russian speakers who wish to write to Bohdan and Appaz is included in this article on the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group site. The group also appeals to other countries’ diplomats to help Ukrainian citizens in Russian prisons (although this does not include Bohdan, since he was compelled, as a teenager, to take Russian citizenship after Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014).

□ More information. Solidarity Zone (see facebook, telegram and twitter) supports anti-war activists jailed in Russia. The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, Crimea SOS and Zmina are among the Ukrainian human rights organisation that publicise the fate of more than 180 Crimean political prisoners in Russian jails. SP, 17 January 2024.  

□ Bohdan Ziza’s own art and poetry is on instagram and youtube.

Source: “Crimean political prisoner Bohdan Ziza: ‘My anti-war action was a cry from the heart’,” People and Nature, 17 January 2024. Thanks to my friend and comrade Simon Pirani for his outstanding work here and elsewhere, and for his kind encouragement to repost this important document of Ukrainian resistance to Russian fascism.