No US-Ukraine war on Donbas and Russia

Joint statement 

initiated by Solidarity with Novorossiya & Antifascists in Ukraine

The right-wing government of Ukraine, supported by the US, has been at war with the people of the independent Donetsk and Lugansk republics in the Donbas for seven years. More than 14,000 people have been killed, according to the United Nations. The people of Donetsk and Lugansk live under a blockade by Ukraine and its Western allies. Workers in Ukraine suffer repression, joblessness and price hikes while their government sells off the country to Wall Street.
    On April 3, a Ukrainian military drone strike killed 5-year-old Vladik Shikhov and wounded his 66-year-old grandmother in Aleksandrovskoye, Donetsk. On April 4, another Ukrainian drone strike wounded a civilian in Nikolaevka, Lugansk. On March 22, a 71-year-old pensioner was killed by sniper fire near the capital of Donetsk. Many members of the anti-fascist People’s Militia have also been killed while defending residents.
    Since January, Ukraine has been building up its military forces on the front line of the conflict. It uses prohibited weapons, targets civilians, schools and homes in violation of international law and regional ceasefire agreements. Battalions of troops affiliated with neo-Nazi groups have been sent to the region, replacing regular Ukrainian Army troops. But the Ukrainian and U.S. governments and mainstream media blame Donetsk and Lugansk for taking steps to defend themselves, and threaten Russia for pledging to protect the people there if Ukraine invades.
    The Biden administration, as the Trump administration did before it, wants to stop the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project that would allow Germany and other Western European countries to purchase Russian gas. Children, elders and other civilians in Donetsk and Lugansk are considered expendable targets by Kiev and Washington as they try to provoke a crisis to give them an excuse to further NATO military expansion and punish Russia.
    In recent days, the US and NATO have been warning of a Russian military buildup near the Ukrainian border, but never mention that one of the largest US Army-led military exercises in decades has begun and will run until June: Defender Europe 2021, with 28,000 troops from 27 countries operating in a dozen countries from the Balkans to the Black Sea. This is where the real danger of war is coming from.
     We say no! People in the U.S. don’t want war with Russia to protect the profits of Big Oil and U.S. banks. We don’t want the U.S. proxy regime in Ukraine to kill our sisters and brothers in Donetsk and Lugansk. We don’t want U.S. troops to be sent to fight and die in another needless conflict. We need an end to racist police brutality and anti-Asian violence. We need money for jobs, housing, healthcare and schools, not war.
    End U.S. aid to the Kiev regime! End all U.S. wars and sanctions! Shut down NATO and bring the troops home!

Endorsers:

Individuals:

•  Jose Maria Sison: Chairperson Emeritus of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle
•  Phil Wilayto: Coordinator, Odessa Solidarity Campaign
•  Berta Joubert-Ceci: Coordinator, International Tribunal on U.S. Crimes against Puerto Rico
•  William Camacaro, Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle
•  Sharon Black, Peoples Power Assembly
• John Parker, Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice, Los Angeles;
•  Joe Lombardo, National Co-Chair, United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC)
• Professor Vijay Singh, editor, Revolutionary Democracy journal, New Delhi (India)
•  Bridget Dunne, Solidarity with the Anti-Fascist Resistance in Ukraine (UK)
•  Theo Russell, International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity (UK)
•  Andy Brooks, General Secretary, New Communist Party of Britain
•  Gedrius Grabauskas, Chairperson, Lithuanian Socialist Front
•  Donatas Shultsas, Chairperson, Lithuanian Union on Human Rights; 
• Heinrich Bücker, Coop-Anti-War-Café Berlin
•  Panagiotis Papadomanolakis, Editor, GuernicaEu (Greece)
•  Gerry Downing, Socialist Fight (UK) 

Organisations: 

• Anti-Imperialist Front
• Socialist Unity Party (U.S.)
• Struggle-La Lucha newspaper
• Borotba (Ukraine-Donbass)
• Communist Party of the Donetsk People’s Republic
• Union of Political Emigrants and Political Prisoners of Ukraine
• Women In Struggle-Mujeres En Lucha
• Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
• Workers Voice Socialist Movement (U.S.)
• International Action Center
• No Pasarán Hamburg (Germany)
• Anti-NATO Group Berlin-Brandenburg (Germany)
• “Frente Unido América Coordinamento Ucraina Antifascista (Italy)
• "Latina" Berlin (Germany)
• Communist Revolution Action – KED (Greece)
• Liaison Committee for the Fourth International (LCFI)
• Frente Comunista dos Trabalhadores (Brazil)
• Tendencia Militante Bolchevique (Argentina)
• Socialist Workers League (U.S.)
• Trotskyist Faction/Consistent Democrats (UK)
• Socialist Solidarity Party of Bangladesh
• Molotov Club

We will not forget the barbaric fascist crime in Odessa!

Never forgive, never forget!

By Theo Russell

On 2^nd May, 2014 a barbarous crime took place in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, committed by a fascist mob who were emboldened by the violent coup 10 weeks earlier – a coup which was enthusiastically supported by US and European Union (EU) leaders, and welcomed by the UK government.

At least 46 anti-fascist protesters died, and over 200 were injured, when the Odessa Trade Unions House was surrounded and fire-bombed by a mob composed of members and supporters of the many explicitly fascist Ukrainian organisations.

Many believe the actual number murdered was far higher but after six years no investigation whatsoever has been carried out. According to the Stalkerzone blog as many as 300 people died on that day.

The February 2014 coup was spearheaded by the openly fascist Right Sector armed militia and the far-right, openly anti-Semitic Svoboda Party. Victoria Nuland, US Undersecretary of State for Europe and Eurasia, famously admitted in a talk to eager American business representatives that her government had spent five billion dollars to subvert the elected Victor Yanukovich-led government.

In response to this coup protests and uprisings took place across the predominantly Russian-speaking cities of southern and eastern Ukraine, shocked by the rise to power of fascist parties, armed fascist militias, and the sight of Nazi thugs and football hooligans looting and burning trade union and communist party offices.

They rightly feared that the fascist bands were preparing to descend on their cities and towns to crush any resistance, and to impose their reactionary, racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, anti-Roma and anti-Russian views on them.

This movement was known as the ‘anti-Maidan’, and in Odessa an anti-fascist protest camp was set up in Kulikovo Field, one of the city’s largest squares outside the main railway station.

Unfortunately the fascist and ‘ultra’ football hooligan mob was swelled by allies coming from Kiev and other western Ukrainian cities, who attacked and firebombed the protest camp, forcing the protestors to retreat to the Odessa Trade Unions House, where they were surrounded.

The mob then petrol bombed the building and held firefighters back, whilst the police stood idly by. Any protesters trying to escape were beaten, and many murdered, by the mob. This was deliberate mass murder in one of Ukraine largest and most beautiful cities.

There is abundant evidence of the massacre and of the perpetrators involved, and detailed documentaries have been made in France and Germany, but the puppet government in Ukraine, aided by a silent western mass media, has swept the event under the carpet, hoping the world will forget it ever happened.

There have been several international investigations, including one by the European Council which severely criticised the Ukraine government’s failure to prosecute anyone for these crimes.

Even the US State Department made a statement in 2015 that supported calls for an investigation and prosecutions, and condemned the intimidation of relatives campaigning for justice.

But in practice, the EU politicians failed to follow up their token judicial report with any real pressure and the State Department statement was merely a token gesture, a handy reply for journalists asking questions about the massacre.

But the citizens of Odessa have not forgotten. For six years the Council of Mothers of 2^nd May has campaigned for justice, and citizens still rally and lay flowers in front of the Trade Unions House every year on 2^nd May.

It is virtually impossible to get news on the treatment of anti-fascists in Ukraine but an American campaigner who visited Odessa two years ago was told that several members of the Council of Mothers have been harassed, and some framed and jailed by the Ukraine’s Security Service, the infamous SBU, which has eagerly carried out the orders of the fascist-infested Kiev regime.

The president of the Council of Mothers, Victoria Machulko, has been raided by the SBU several times and was detained whilst memorials to mark the massacre have taken place.

Alexander Kushnaryov, the 65-year-old father one of the victims, Gennady Kushnaryov, and retired military officer Anatoly Slobodyanik, 68, were fitted up in an SBU sting operation and are now in prison, whereas those who carried out the massacre have not even had charges laid against them.

Under the present regime in Ukraine, which enjoys the support of the USA, EU and Britain, there is no democracy and all opposition to the regime has been silenced.

Trade union offices have been ransacked and burned, Holocaust memorials have been repeatedly vandalised, the largest opposition party, the Communist Party of Ukraine, has been banned, communists, socialists, Jewish and gay people have been attacked by fascist gangs, and members of the judiciary have been threatened and intimidated.

Even moderate newspapers and TV stations have been raided or closed down, and journalists have been assassinated, even recently in the centre of Kiev. Thousands have been prosecuted, jailed or driven into exile for allegedly supporting ‘separatism’, meaning opposition to the war in the East.

A quick internet search will produce copious, detailed evidence of all these crimes – just google ‘attacks on Roma camps in Ukraine’, for example, yet the editors of western media outlets don’t regard such events as important enough for daily prime-time news.

The British government actively supported the ‘Euromaidan’ movement, and the then foreign secretary William Hague told parliament that the 2014 coup, which saw openly fascist, Nazi-admiring parties become part of the government and the entire state structure, was in fact a legal change of government.

The UK has sent 75 Army trainers to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and sponsored ‘educational’ activities aimed at sanitising Second World War Ukrainian fascist leaders who collaborated with Nazi Germany in the genocide of 5–7 million people, a quarter of Ukraine's population, including 1.5 million Jews, and the deportation of two million people to Germany.

The New Communist Party calls for justice for the victims and families of the Odessa Trade Unions House massacre, and for all those who took part in the murders to face trial.

We also call for the release of Alexander Kushnaryov and Anatoly Slobodyanik, and an end to the harassment of relatives of the victims of the massacre.

We believe the day will come when justice will be done, when the whole world will be aware of the barbaric crime six years ago, and new new, free and democratic Ukraine will be realised.

We will not forget this fascist crime and we look forward to the day when 2^nd May is commemorated around the world!

Solidarity with Ukrainian and Donbass anti-fascists

The following letter was sent on the 3rd April  2020

We send solidarity greetings from the UK to all those living under a fascist-infested illegitimate government in Ukraine, defending and building the anti-fascist people’s republics in the Donbas, and to the hundreds of thousands forced into exile by political repression, attacks by fascist gangs and economic austerity.

Although we have had no recent Ukraine anti-fascist solidarity actions, we have by no means forgotten your struggle and the sacrifices you are making.

We were intending to begin organising another Ukraine anti-fascist solidarity protest in London in the near future, but unfortunately events in the form of the Covid-19 pandemic have overtaken us.

All of us have been working hard on other political issues, including helping to organise a very successful meeting attended by 400 people in central London on March 3^rd  which exposed the lies, tampered and falsified evidence being presented at the current MH17 trial in The Hague.

Ever since the February 22 2014 Ukraine coup we have been aware of the illiegal nature of that regime change, the open involvement of actual fascists in the government, police and armed forces, the complete suppression of democratic rights and freedoms in Ukraine, and the physical attacks on political parties, trade unions and even the courts.

We have not forgotten the heinous crime at the Odessa Trade Union House on 2^nd  May 2014 and the many other outrages perpetrated by the fascist bands, and we have not forgotten the criminal, barbaric ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’ launched in April 2014, unleashing all-out war against civilian anti-fascist protestors in Donetsk and Lugansk.

We know that the fighters of the people’s Donbas and Lugansk People's Militias are making daily sacrifices in the front-line trenches, and that civilians – women and men, children and the elderly – are being killed and injured every day in attacks by the Ukraine armed forces and the fascist brigades.

In our solidarity work for the anti-fascists in Ukraine we are also faced with confronting the lies and whipped up hysteria against the Russian Federation and Vladimir Putin, which have continued for almost a decade.

We have no illusions about the capitalist, oligargic nature of the Russian Federation, but we reject the attempts to portray it as totally undemocratic, and we call for an end to the trade sanctions the constant western interference designed to economic instability and provoke protests. And this coming from governments which kiss the feet of the reactionary fuedal monarchs of the Middle East, and instigate coups and regime change from Brazil and Bolivia to Hong Kong.

Above all we are aware of the vital support given by the Russian Federation to the Donbas people’s republics, the generous hospitality extended to large numbers of Ukrainian exiles, and its open condemnation of the fascists in Ukraine.

We also applaud the the sacrifices made by the Russian volunteer fighters in the Donbas, by the Russian Federation’s armed forces to defend the popular front government in Syria, and the strong support the Russian Federation has extended to Cuba and Venezuela.

This anti-Russian hysteria has created a poisonous atmosphere in which anyone challenging the lies and false flag operations of of US-EU-NATO imperialism risks being labelled as a Russian asset, in a repeat of the anti-communiist witch-hunts of the 1950s.

Unfortunately many progressives, social democrats, trade unionists, and even the anti-fascist and anti-racist organisations on Britain, have fallen for this demonisation, even though it is clearly a repeat of the lies and fake news used against Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gadaffi and Hafez al Assad. This has prevented them from even discussing the most dangerous revival of fascism in the whole of Europe.

Once again we renew our support and solidarity with your organisations, which will continue as long as it takes until democracy has been restored throughout Ukraine, and communists, socialists and anti-fascists are allowed to operate freely again.

Andy Brooks

New Communist Party of Britain

Ian Donavan

Trotskyist Faction of Socialist Fight.

Gerry Downing

Socialist Fight

Bridget Dunne

Solidarity with the Anti-Fascist Resistance in Ukraine (SARU)

George Shaw

Posadists in Britain

As well as:

Frente Comunista Dos Trabalhadores (Brazil)

Tendencia Militante Bolchevique (Argentina)

Socialist Workers League (USA)

The letter was sent to the Communist Party of the Donetsk People’s Republic; Borotba, the underground Ukrainian anti-fascist resistance movement and the Union of Ukrainian Political Refugees

• Report in the Donbas communist media
• Report by the Communist and Workers Front of Brazil
  

A Comedy Show in Ukraine

The first round of Ukraine’s presidential elections has put a well-known TV comic streets ahead of the country’s current leader, Petro Poroshenko. What will happen when the two face off in the final poll is another matter.

We always say that bourgeois elections, when they are held, are used so that the smallest number of people can manipulate the largest number of votes. Ukraine is no exception.

Poroshenko is an immensely rich Ukrainian oligarch, known as the ‘Chocolate King’ because he owns a confectionery empire. His rival Volodymyr Zelensky is a popular comedian of Jewish origin who his enemies claim is a pawn of a Ukrainian media baron.

In high office Poroshenko has been a loyal vassal of the US imperialists who put him there in the first place. Zelensky, who made his name by portraying an incorruptible Ukrainian president in a popular television series, may be of the same ‘Euromaidan’ mould but he, at least, doesn’t openly depend on the support of the rabid nationalists and the Nazi militias that have propped up the Poroshenko regime over the last five years.

The anti-fascist resistance grew out of the ‘Anti-Maidan’ movement in the largely Russian-speaking Donbas, Odessa and Crimea regions that sought to prevent the far-right groups, which hijacked the ‘Euromaidan’ protests, from entering their towns and cities after the February 2014 fascist coup in Kiev. The autonomous Republic of Crimea seceded in 2014 and later joined the Russian Federation. The people of the Donbas took up the gun to drive the fascists out and set up the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics in the same year.

The agents of US imperialism and the European Union tell us that the poll was “free and fair” – but it was nothing of the kind. The anti-fascist resistance has been driven underground and the leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine was barred from standing on the grounds that its name, symbols and constitution did not comply with the “decommunisation” laws of 2015.

Although some 65 per cent of the electorate voted in last week’s presidential poll, Ukrainians have been voting with their feet over the last five years. Over three million work in Russia and another two million have gone to Poland.

Average wages have fallen to £245 per month, deaths far exceed births, taxes have increased and petrol prices have risen dramatically. No wonder that only nine per cent of Ukrainians have confidence in their government.

The fact is that Washington’s puppet government in Ukraine has failed and like Poroshenko the USA has few options available.

Although thousands of anti-fascists have gone into exile and hundreds languish in Ukraine’s prisons, with Russia’s support the resistance in the Donbas cannot be defeated. The junta in Kiev is under constant threat of military defeat in a new war, the collapse of its army, or a popular anti-fascist revolt.

It is only a matter of time before the illegitimate dictatorship is swept away and peace and freedom are restored, not only in the Donbas but in all of Ukraine. Our work in Britain is to mobilise the widest possible support for anti-fascists in Ukraine, where they are currently waging the most difficult struggle against fascism in the world.

Resisting the fascist junta in Kiev

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. 

Ukraine in 2016: echoes of 1930s Germany

By Theo Russell

On paper, the current Ukrainian government under prime minister Volodymyr Groysman has cleaned up its image, with two far-right, anti-semitic parties, Svoboda and the Radical Party, no longer in the coalition.

But the far right and neo-Nazi militias have been given official recognition. In 2015 84 of these battalions became part of the National Guard, the Patrol Service of Police, or under Ministry of Defence control. The interior minister, Arsen Avakov, has close ties with the Azov, Aidar and Tornado battalions.

These militias continue to run amok across Ukraine, mounting racist, anti-semitic, anti-communist and homophobic attacks, threatening and intimidating judges, and frequently kidnapping defendants when they are released by the courts.

Persecution of journalists

In May, the anonymous Mirotvorets (Peacemaker) website published 4,000 names and contact details of journalists including the New York Times, Reuters and BBC, who covered the shooting down of MH17 in July 2014. They were labelled “accomplices in terrorism” for receiving press accreditation from the Donetsk People’s Republic.

‘Peacemaker’ received support at the highest levels in Kiev for this action. One of Avakov’s top advisers, Anton Gerashchenko, said the list was published as part of the “information war” with Russia, and anyone who questioned it was a ‘separatist’, now a crime in Ukraine.

An advisor to the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) then announced the journalists were being investigated as potential spies.

In March, the British government funded a ‘Peace-building school’ run by the Maidan Monitoring Information Centre, linked to the same “Peacemaker” website. The event, “Stepan Bandera: Myths and Reality”, sought to sanitise the image of the World War 2 Nazi collaborator.

A speaker from Ukraine’s Committee of State Ideology told the school “we should do our part to refute the myths - Soviet myths - about the fighters for the independence of Ukraine”.

Bandera was a follower of  Mykola Mikhnovs’kyi, who called for a Ukraine “free of Russians, Poles, Magyars, Romanians, and Jews”, and Dmytro Dontsov, who translated the writings of Hitler and Mussolini into Ukrainian.

He led the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which in 1939 called the German army “the army of allies”, and 1941 set up a Ukrainian Waffen-SS division, the Nachtigall Battalion. The OUN played a leading part in anti-Jewish pogroms, patrolled Jewish ghettoes, and assisted in deporting two million people to Germany.

In 1943 the OUN(B) killed 100,000 Ukrainian Poles. Between 5 and 7 million Ukrainians, including 1.5 million Jews, died under the Nazi occupation. Under the April 2015 law on ‘honouring the memory of fighters for Ukraine's independence’, it is now a crime to denigrate Bandera, the OUN or OUN(B).

UN and International Red Cross barred

Last May, the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) cancelled a visit to Ukraine after being refused access to sites where the secret police (SSU) is believed to run secret prisons. The SPT’s chair Sir Malcolm Evans spoke of " numerous and serious allegations that people have been detained, and torture or ill-treatment may have occurred" at these sites.

In February, the Union of Political Emigrants and Political Prisoners of Ukraine gave evidence of the prisons to the International Red Cross which also requested access, but it too was refused by the SSU.

Silencing of the opposition

Under the May 2015 ‘de-communisation law’ the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) has been banned. The main annual holiday now marks the foundation of the OUN(B), and in 2014 the SSU was re-organised on the lines of Bandera’s fascist movement. It cannot be denied that fascist ideology is now firmly embedded in the Ukrainian state.

There are now 4,000 people charged with "separatism", a criminal offence. Many supported referendums and protests in 2014 calling for separate status for cities in the east and south such, or have simply criticised the "Anti-Terrorist Operation" in the east in which 9,000 people have died.

In May, when a court in Odessa released taxi driver Evgeni Mefedov, accused of joining a protest, it was stormed by Right Sector fascists who searched cars, (including police cars) leaving the court. The judges were terrorised into making a new charge - threatening to kill one of the fascists - and Mefedov was thrown back into prison.

In April, the senior editor of a TV station near Odessa, Elena Glishchinskaya-Romanova, was raided at 5:30am and arrested by the SSU’s "Alfa" anti-terrorist unit searching for “agitation and propaganda material”. She and her children were held at gunpoint.

Using ‘evidence’ such as materials from the Party of Regions (led by the overthrown President Victor Yanukovych) and history books, she was accused “threatening the territorial integrity of Ukraine” and jailed for two months, since then extended several times, but eventually released after an international campaign.

Assassinations, kidnappings and disappearances

In April 2015 the well-known journalist Oles Buzina was murdered, but when two neo-Nazi suspects were arrested, a huge far-right rally demanded their release. At the main suspect’s trial, the judge was threatened, her office torched, and he was freed.

In April, Andrei Sokolov, a member of the socialist Borotba (Struggle) movement , was seized by four unidentified men and driven away after being released by a court. Since then he has disappeared.

After visiting the Donbas in 2014, he drove into an AFU checkpoint and was charged with "aiding a terrorist organization". After ‘proof’ of his guilt was obtained under duress, he agreed a deal to in exchange for pleading guilty, only to be kidnapped on his release.

On July 13 Mikhail Kononovich, a parliamentary candidate the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU), was attacked by neo-Nazis armed with pipes and chains.

In June, Alla Alexandrovska, 67 year-old head of the Kharkov CPU and member of the national parliament four times, was arrested and charged with separatism, 'posing a threat to a state security' and 'terrorism'. She worked with Sloboda, an organization with very moderate demands within Ukraine’s current laws. After falling ill in detention, she attended court connected to an IV tube.

As the "separatist" movement has faded away, Alexandrovska’s arrest marks a new crackdown on the ‘legal’ opposition, including the left of the Opposition Bloc, the Union of Left Forces and the Progressive Socialist Party.

UK, EU and NATO cosy up to Ukraine

The UK, European Union and NATO are forging ahead with developing ties with Ukraine, on the basis that it is “defending its territorial integrity”. A 100-strong UK military team has trained 2,000 Ukrainian troops; some may have members of the far right battalions now part of the Ukrainian army.

In March an EU-Ukraine Association Agreement was signed, and in June the EU Commission said Ukraine had met “all benchmark requirements” for a visa-free regime with the EU.

NATO has offered “Association Partnership” status to Georgia and Ukraine, already members of its ‘Partnership for Peace’ programme, at its Warsaw summit, and 1,800 NATO troops took part in the Rapid Trident military exercise in Ukraine in June.

The next stage of dictatorship

Artyom Buzila, a journalist for legal media outlets now in exile after being 11 months’ detention for ‘separatism’, recently outlined the next stage of dictatorship in Ukraine. 

“The regime is tottering: millions of people are suffering from the economic situation and price hikes, and many are tired of the police state. However, the valiant SBU keeps locking up freethinking citizens in its dungeons.

“Ending the legal opposition has become the next task of the SBU (and the Kiev regime as a whole) after finishing with the radical ‘separatists’ and while the remains of the Russian Spring were forced underground.

“Arrests, harassment – anything is possible. And meanwhile, the repression continues with no end in sight. Who will be next?”