By Theo Russell
Campaigners
for solidarity with those resisting the fascist junta in Ukraine have seen some
minor but important victories recently.
Last
month Andrei Sokolov, a Russian left activist and political prisoner, who was
kidnapped by unknown assailants in Ukraine and disappeared after leaving a
courtroom in April, was released from a secret prison after 8 months.
Also
last month, Alla Aleksandrovskaya, the 68 year-old head of the now banned Communist
Party of Ukraine Kharkov district and ex-people’s deputy, was released from
prison and placed under house arrest. She has been in poor health since her
arrest on ‘separatism’ charges in June.
But
there is no room for complacency. Vadim Troyan, deputy commander of the openly
Nazi Azov Battalion has been appointed chief of police the capital Kiev by
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who also has close connections with the Azov
Battalion.
Meanwhile,
totally ignored by the ‘free and democratic’ Western mass media, the war in the
Donbas and deliberate shelling of civilians by the Ukraine Armed Forces and
fascist battalions continues day after day. Dozens of civilians are being
killed and wounded every month, without a whisper from the BBC, whose network
extends to virtually every country in the world including Ukraine.
Another
threat to the Donbas people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk is the
possibility of an armed ‘police’ mission by the Organization for Security and
Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). OSCE has had a mission monitoring the war in
eastern Ukraine for some time and is involved in attempts to implement the two
failed ceasefires under the Minsk agreements, which is why Russia has continued
to participate in it.
But
it is still essentially an extension of European Union imperialism, and has
long been accused of biased reporting by the representatives of the Donbas
republics. Earlier this year large demonstrations took place in the Donbas
after rumours of such a mission, which its leaders declared would be “foreign
intervention”.
There
is no realistic prospect of such a force in the immediate future, but at the meeting
of the ‘Normandy Four’ last month in Berlin Vladimir Putin, and the presidents
of France, Germany and Ukraine, signalled “potential” support for an armed OSCE
mission.
Last
week Dr Yevgenii Gerasymenko, a barrister based in Kiev, told a meeting in
London organised by Liberation that in today’s Ukraine “trade unions exist
legally, but effectively they don’t exist”.
They
have been forced to sell off buildings and Soviet-era assets such as holiday
camps and clinics, and “are now in fact ‘owned’ by wealthy individuals”. Some
have even held joint actions with the armed fascist groups. Anyone protesting
against rocketing unemployment, corruption or lost savings are labelled criminal,
‘separatist’ or “the hand of Putin”.
OSCE
has declared every election in Ukraine since the February 2014 fascist coup
legitimate. And earlier this year Britain doubled its military assistance to Ukraine,
to provide training for an army which now incorporates 84 fascist battalions.There
is absolutely no democracy in Ukraine, and its working people are being
ruthlessly crushed. International solidarity with Ukraine’s citizens resisting
this dictatorship must go on.
