Elephant in the room #48 – Anti-authoritarian left in Ukraine before and during the war

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The full scale war continues in Europe for 446 days. And even though Putin’s plans to conquer Ukraine on a couple of days failed, Kremlin is not giving up their plans on taking over large parts of the country. In the struggle against invaders, a lot of different powers took to arms, including leftists and anarchists. With the anti-authoritarian unit gone, most of those people were scattered around different units on the front lines. But their politics are not lost and many still stick to their ideas despite different challenges.

In this episode our interview partner is Lesik from Kyiv, who became politically active more than 17 year ago and through all those years was fighting different struggle for justice and equality. Through his eyes, you can see another side of political activism in Ukraine. We participated together with Lesik in some protests in Ukraine and outside of it many years ago, but the bonds of struggle are strong. Our comrade remain as sharp in his political perspectives as ever and even dares to challenge Noam Chomsky to a duel… a dialectical one, and invites Slavoj Žižek to visit him with a possibility of sleeping on a coach.

This interview is dedicated to our comrades that lost their lives in Ukraine fighting not only for freedom of people, not states. We remember them and will forever carry them through our struggles.

Links of the show:
Timothy Snyder: The Making of Modern Ukraine https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz_1Mx1MaO6sw_
Serhii Plokhy. The Gates of Europe : A History of Ukraine. https://chtyvo.org.ua/authors/Plokhii_Serhii/The_Gates_of_Europe__A_History_of_Ukraine_anhl/
Yuri Samoilenko https://avtonom.org/en/news/anti-fascist-yuri-samoylenko-died-battle-kharkiv-region
Human rights activist and POW Maksym Butkevych https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-maksym-butkevych-conviction-severodonetsk-luhansk/
The Other Chelsea – A Story from Donetsk https://guidedoc.tv/documentary/the-other-chelsea-a-story-from-donezk-documentary-film/

How to support antiauthoritarian fighters and provide humanitarian aid to civilians:
https://www.solidaritycollectives.org/
https://gnip.blackblogs.org/
https://www.instagram.com/hwv_ua/
https://www.instagram.com/radicalaidforce/

International initiatives/campaigns to support Ukrainian resistance:
https://ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org/

Lesik’ personal telegram channel https://t.me/xeres_lsk