Анархическое движение

This week, The Final Straw Radio spoke with Petr, a Russian anarchist member of the group Autonomous Action, who is living in Europe right now. For the hour we speak about the invasion of Ukraine, a bit about the resistance inside of Russia to the war drums and the Putin regime, the dangers of a nuclear conflict, the impacts of increased sanctions and anarchists organizing across the borders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus against the war and against tyranny.

War in Ukraine has already increased the level of repressions in Russia, but there are not yet any new criminal proceedings against anarchist or anti-fascist activists. In this new exceptional situation, we are channeling some of our resources to humanitarian needs which go beyond our usual narrow focus of supporting repressed anarchists and anti-fascists. 

In picture: action of Left Bloc activists against FSB.

As the full scale military operation began this morning, it is important to show that the Russian people don’t need this shameful war. There were dozens of antiwar protests all over the country in the past days mostly in the form of single-person pickets, which according to Russian laws don’t need any notifications. But the majority of protestors were detained nevertheless.

Hello, it is Saturday, and we are continuing our podcast "Trends of order and chaos". This is episode 43. Of course, you know perfectly well what is the main topic of the last week.

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On Thursday, February 10, a Russian court handed down sentences for terrorism to three teenagers from the Siberian town of Kansk. The boys were arrested in the summer of 2020 for posting leaflets with political slogans on the local FSB building. After searching their phones and uncovering a “plot” to blow up a virtual rendering of an FSB building in the video game Minecraft, investigators charged the teens with making explosives and training to participate in terrorist activities.

The sentence in the case of the Kansk teenagers will be given on Thursday, the 10th of February 2022 at 3PM in Krasnoyarsk time (11 AM Moscow time, 8 AM GMT). Three anarchists from the Krasnoyarsk region are accused of “studying terrorism” and storing explosives. Nikita Uvarov, Denis Mikhayuulenko and Bogdan Andreev were arrested in the summer of 2020 for spreading leaflets that criticised the state, and for supporting political prisoners. At that time they were 14 years old.  

This time around there's both good news and bad news, so lets start with the good ones.

Maxim ”Hadad” Smolnikov released from remand in custody

Ilya Romanov needs support for rehabilitation

Ilya Romanov has been an activist in the anarchist movement since 1987. He was sentenced to prison twice, for 10 years in Ukraine in 00’s and 7 years in Russia in the last decade. In 2019 he almost died as a result of a cerebral hemorrhage. Due to the delay in the medical intervention, he lost the capacity to move the right side of his body. 

We got in touch with several anarchist comrades to talk about the recent protests on the streets of different cities in Russia: looked into political events of 2020 and how they brought people to the situation with protests.

With the comrades we managed to clarify if Navalny is a nazi and the whole protest should be ignored by the anarchists or leftists. And of course we talked about anarchists and their participation in protest movement.

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For over three months, people in Belarus have been fighting against the authoritarian regime. In 26 years, dictator Lukashenko has built a system aimed at suppressing any political life. The coronavirus and a number of economic problems have greatly changed what is happening in the country. In a few months, Belarusians have learned to self-organize. The presidential elections provoked a wave of the largest protest in the country's history! But the tyrant does not want to give up his throne. At least 5 people were killed (some died under strange circumstances).

On the morning of September 1st, 34-year-old anarchist Alexey ”Socrates” Sutuga died, due to severe head injuries, in the intensive care unit of the Sklifosovsky Institute. For more than a week, doctors fought for his life, but the injuries were too serious.

 (about “the investigation” of the connection between the “network” case and the disappearance and death of two young people in Ryazan oblast)

Meduza presents a version according to which Maxim Ivankin, a defendant in the case of “Network”, in plain view of Alexei Poltavets participated in the murder of their acquaintances, Artem Dorofeev and Ekaterina Levchenko (Degree of Poltavets’es involvement in the murder is not specified).

The Moscow Anarchist Black Cross group is supporting the declaration released by the Rupression-campaign about Arman Sagynbaev, prisoner of the so-called Network case, and will stop supporting him. Arman has been removed from the list of political prisoners, supported by the ABC Moscow.

On the evening of may 17th, some dozen acivists gathered in the office of the anarchosyndicalist workers' union FAU in the center of Jena, Central-Eastern Germany, for a ''Long Night of Solidarity'' to get informed on the repression and torture against our comrades in Russia and Italy. There were presentations on both cases, that are similar in the aspect of the use of anti-terrorism operations and fabricated accusations against political activists.