A Russian court has issued harsh sentences to seven antifascist and anarchist activists in a controversial domestic terrorism case marred by claims that investigators tortured the defendants to elicit confessions.
Updates to list of anti-war prisoners of Anarchist Black Cross Moscow.
Priest of Russian orthodox church Ioann has been remanded, charged with spreading ”fake news” about Russian army, after he preached that ”peacemeakers go to heaven”, and ”aggressors who have attacked the neighbouring people will go to a hell, which they have chosen themselves”.
Send him a Tolstoyan greeting to address
Greetings! Today is Sunday, June 12 - by the way, the so-called "Russia Day" - and we're continuing our podcast, Trends of Order and Chaos. This is episode 58. Here are the top stories on last week's agenda.
St. Petersburg. Russia. On May 30, the St. Petersburg District Court extended the pre-trial detention of Aleksandra Skochilenko until July 1. The defense submitted a character description of her and documents on her health and ability to serve house arrest, which the judge added to the file but did not consider.
Hi! Today is Sunday, 5 of June and we continue our podcast “Trends of order and chaos”. This is the episode 57. Here are the main stories on the agenda for the past week.
One hundred days of War
This week marked 100 days from Kremlin’s attack on Ukraine. No good news here. Russian army obviously doesn’t have enough power to crush Ukrainians, yet. As victories, they present the occupations of small localities on Donbass.
30 year old Denis Serdyuk, suspected of an arson attack against amilitary call-up center in Volgograd, is being held in remand prison #1 of his town. He is being charged with ”destruction of property” and ”hooliganism”, and may be sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Ever since the beginning of the Russian invasion against Ukraine, we have seen statements by anarchists, communists and leftists not from Ukraine, on how Ukrainian anarchists, communists and leftists should not defend themselves against attack of Putin, but lay down their arms and flee instead.
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Vladimir Sergeev and Anton Zhuchkov were arrested in an anti-war action on the 6th of March 2022. Before his arrest Vladimir worked in a factory. Vladimir did not go to demonstrations before the war began. After the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army on February 24, 2022, Vladimir's attitude toward the Russian state became even worse.
These prisoners have been jailed due to anti-war protests or opinions. They have a wide variety of positions, but all of them are against the Russian attack against Ukraine. There are more prisoners than whom we know the addresses. This list was compiled by Ivan Astashin.
Please translate your letters to Russian for example with Google translate, as currently letters in other languages except Russian are very seldom accepted in Russian prisons.
A continuation of a debate over anarchist positions on Ukraine that previously ran on It's Going Down:
Possibilities to protest in Russia were already significantly limited before the pandemic, and during the last two years, from March 2020 to Russian attack to Ukraine, street demonstrations have been banned with the pretext of the Covid Pandemic. People were demonstrating persecutions against opposition leader Alexey Navalnyi, and in few other cases, but these ended in massive arrests.
We recently received this anonymous contribution, and we publish it as a part of ongoing discussion on the Russian invasion against Ukraine. Text does not necessarily reflect collective views of Autonomous Action.
Tekmil is an instrument of collective reflection. The historical root of what we know as tekmil can be traced to authoritarian communist traditions, such as Stalinism. Although, Mao was the first one among these traditions to put so much emphasis and importance to the methods of criticisms and self-criticism. Overall, we can state that critique and self-critique has been valuable for revolutionary movements in general, and has never been alien to non-authoritarian revolutionary movements in general.
In the context of Rojava, tekmil can be translated as "report" - further, one can trace the development and transformation of this meaning depending on the situation. Still, the literal translation makes sense to keep in mind - humbleness and shortness are valued in tekmil. It contains many cultural codes, mechanisms and ideological assumptions, and it requires an understanding and a solid philosophical and ideological foundation.
The worst thing Putin has done in Ukraine is to reconcile the authorities with the people. The president has turned from an object of universal criticism into the Ukrainian Charles de Gaulle.1 The general of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry offers to deliver himself to the Russian army in exchange for the release of civilians from the besieged city and becomes a national hero. The entire population of Ukraine, from the homeless to the oligarch, unites in a common struggle.
“Autonomous Action” (Avtonom) has always been a group that spreads anarchism in the Russian-speaking world. We don’t care about national borders. But no matter which states our activists are based, social change in Russia is very important to us.
Unfortunately, we must once again delay our festival, this time due to war. Our concept was always to be an open meeting of Russian (and not only Russian) activists in Helsinki. But now borders are closed, and it is unclear if any open social activism in Russia will be possible from now on.
But we plan to organise our festival anyway. We still have spaces and organising group. Our preliminary new dates for the festival are 6th-9th of January 2023.
I’m not surprised by the violence. I am not surprised because I know about the violence that occurs in Russia every day. Senseless cruelty is seemingly the norm for some Russians. I don’t have a ready answer to why this is the case. It’s worth asking sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists for an explanation.
Translation from Crimethinc., as part of a collection of anti-war texts from Russia.
ON MARCH 5TH, a solitary picketer stood in a public plaza in Ivanovo, a small city northeast of Moscow, with a homemade sign stating: “*** *****”.
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.
The results of the first 30 years of “democracy” in Ukraine are, to put it mildly, unconvincing. The economy and the media are in the hands of rival oligarchs, corruption is at staggering levels, economic development lags behind many African countries, and in addition, the country has become the...
This blog as a podcast: Spotify, Soundcloud This blog as video. Kansk is a city with a population of 90 000 in Siberia, Russia. The closest city with a million inhabitants is Krasnoyarsk, 250 kilometers westwards. Two boys, who turned 15 years old last year, Nikita Uvarov and Denis...