Russia

John McDonnell MP and other protesters demand release of jailed labour movement activists outside the Russian embassy in London, 2022 In September 2021 Russian socialist and trade unionist Igor Kuznetsov was arrested for “inciting mass disorder” (though the Telegram messenger system!) Two months he was also charged with participation in an “extremist community”, the socialist organisation Left Resistance. Now, in a move reminiscent of the treatment of dissidents in the late Soviet Union , Kuznetsov has been sent to a psychiatric institution. The Serbsky Centre to which he has been sent is the...

The two-day incursion (22-23 May) into the Russian region of Belgorod by the Freedom for Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps — military units made up of Russian citizens who are fighting for Ukraine — caused panic amongst Russian officials and was widely covered across the media. The Russian militias claim they briefly occupied up to 42sqkm of Russian territory, and had two fighters killed. While some details remain obscure the broad politics of the matter are now clear. It is inconceivable that such an operation, involving scores of Russian fighters, carried in tanks and armoured...

Michael Baker misses the point a little, I think (letters, Solidarity 673 ), when he criticises my quoting of a Ukrainian poll which asked a question of Ukrainian attitudes towards Russians. Indeed, Ukrainian attitudes towards Russians have changed, which is my point. I didn’t write the polling question, just used it as evidence to back the case. Putin’s imperialism has pushed the peoples apart. However, if our eventual goal is to see the removal of barriers between peoples — borders, suspicion, hostility and other more benign features of national differences, too — then the assertion of...

Action from Russia’s civil society, labour movement, and individual protestors continues. It is undeniably at a low ebb, but may be the base to build a larger and more resilient movement at a future stage, and aid the Ukrainian resistance in their fight for self-determination. The Russian anti-war movement has faced severe and broad repression, with laws tightening and punishments being given both to experienced activists who could organise anti-war activity, and average people who might otherwise be tempted in taking part in street protest or other actions. An article in the Financial Times...

Dan Katz’s article in Solidarity 672 is a necessary corrective against blanket anti-Russian policies in Ukraine. Stoking divisions based on perceived national or ethnic lines within a country helps no-one, and socialists should argue strongly against policies and practices that attack the Russian language itself, as if it were the real enemy. However, while I understand the motivation, it is wrong to describe it as a “tragedy” that fewer Ukrainians now see Ukraine and Russia as “one people” since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. If this statistic tells us anything, it is that the...

Photo: Anna Hope, FAR Oxford On Thursday 11 May, Russian ambassador to the UK Andrey Kelin was invited to speak in Oxford. The event, advertised as a "Q&A", was hosted by the Oxford Russian Club, a "society" that is not affiliated with the university but uses its prestige to garner interest. A collection of pro-Ukrainian protestors demonstrated outside the venue – after having bookings at Magdalen College and a local church cancelled, the event was moved to the house of one of the society’s members. As Kelin left his car, protestors shouted “murderer” at him in Russian, and "Putin will fall’...

The Morning Star used to hedge articles on the Ukraine war with a formal condemnation of the Russian invasion. Sometimes, too, there’d be a reminder to readers about the reactionary nature of Putin’s regime. No longer. A recent (3 April) editorial contains no hint of criticism of the invasion or of Putin. In fact, it gloats over the fact that “a resolution before the United Nations calling for Russia to withdraw from Ukrainian territory failed to attract votes from all but a tiny handful of states outside the North Atlantic alliance.” The obvious satisfaction taken in this vote (described as a...

A new bill has been brought to the Russian Duma that would recognise feminism as an “extremist ideology”. Oleg Matveychev, who drafted the bill, stated in his speech introducing the bill that “the network of feminist organisations in our country are soil in which extremist actions will grow.” In one sense, Matveychev has a point – if the anti-war movement is “extremist”, then it is certainly the case that feminist organisations have been leading that movement since the very first days of the war — most notably, Feminist Antiwar Resistance (FAR), now the largest anti-war organisation in the...

In the 1938 article, “Learn to think”, Leon Trotsky argued that if fascist Italy sent weapons to aid – for its own malign reasons – nationalist rebels against France in Algeria, socialists in Italy should not oppose and even help that.

Maksysm Butkevych. His t-shirt says "No one is illegal" Maksym Butkevych, a Ukrainian soldier with a long record as an anti-racist and migrants’ rights activist, has been sentenced to 13 years in prison by the “Supreme Court” of Russia’s puppet “Luhansk People’s Republic”. Ukrainian activists are saying that the case against Butkevych was fabricated and his confessions forced. Butkevych, 45, is an anarchist by political background and a journalist by trade (for some years he studied and worked in the UK). Over decades he has been involved in many anti-racist, anti-fascist, migrants' rights and...