Anarchists should not be spreading Putinist propaganda

In picture - armed AntiMaidan thugs in Odesa, 2nd of May 2014.

From Avtonom

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The argument is based on both ethical and factual points. I will start by commenting on the latter, as unfortunately it seems like these comrades have fallen into an alternative reality, shaped by Russia Today and other Russian-sponsored social media disinformation.
 

 

In picture - armed AntiMaidan thugs in Odesa, 2nd of May 2014.

Who started the war in Ukraine?

According to this group of Italian anarchists, the 2014 war

“began in 2014 with the attack against the Russian-speaking communities of Ukraine. In which Ukraine committed  the violence, attacks, rapes, homicides, and bombings against the people of Donbass (roughly 14.000 deaths between 2014 and 2022, including hundreds of children); the horrible massacre of Odesa of the 2nd of May 2014, when unarmed protesters calling for the independence from Ukraine, who where hiding in the local union building, were slaughtered and burnt alive by a crowd of armed nazis escorted by the police. ...horrible massacre of Odesa of the 2nd of May 2014, when unarmed protesters calling for the independence from Ukraine, who where hiding in the local union building, were slaughtered and burnt alive by a crowd of armed nazis escorted by the police.”

And the war started due to these ”provocations.” That is to say, according to Italian anarchists, the 2022 war was, in a way, started by Ukraine. 

As with many wars, the 2014 Donbass war does not have a single starting point. Before the war, there were the Euromaidan demonstrations in Kiev, during which more than 100 people died. According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior, – I hope this is not  “the attack against the Russian-speaking communities of Ukraine” that Italian anarchists are referencing:

After Maidan, Russia occupied and annexed Crimea. From the 27th of February 2014 on, one Russian soldier died – I suppose this is also not the Ukrainian attack Italian anarchists are speaking of. 

In many Eastern Ukrainian cities, supporters of the ousted president Yanukovich had occupied administrative buildings, but these occupations were relatively non-violent. However, on the 12th of April 2014 armed troops lead by Russian GRU colonel Igor Girkin, later identified as a participant in the efforced disappearings in Chechnya,  took over city of Sloviansk. They began taking hostages and murdering local people they suspected of opposing Russian interests, and also ransacking the homes of the local Roma minority. So, the war did not begin in 2014 with the attack against the Russian-speaking communities of Ukraine, but with a Russian secret services agent attacking an Ukrainian city with his troops, following Kremlin orders. 

Obviously, the reasons behind the start of the war are complicated – conflicts between various groups of oligarchs, mistrust between political elites in different regions of their respective countries, connected to the language issue but not only. There is not much of a controversy or dispute in terms of who escalated the conflict; Girkin has himself said that  

As for the 14000 deaths that the Italian anarchists refer to as the victims of the war in Donbass, the source of this claim is not indicated, but this is , which I suppose is the ultimate source. Of these 14000, 4400 are estimated to be Ukrainian armed forces losses , and 6500 is the estimated numer for the Russian and separatist troops losses. Of the 14000, the UNCHR lists 3404 civilian victims, from both sides of the front, as Russian and separatist troops also regularly shoot at civilian dwellings and spread mines. However, of these 3404 victims, 3039 are from the period between 2014 and 2015, and 298 of the victimes from the Malaysian civilian airplane Russian soldiers shot down accidentally. In 2021, before the attack in February 2022, only 25 civilians died in the conflict, on both sides of the front combined. Of these, 12 died in accidents involving mines and other explosive remnants. These numbers are not disputed by either side, and the UNCHR report is actually based on the numbers reported by officials in the ”separatist” republics themselves. Thus it should be obvious that there was no genocide of the people of Donbass by the Ukrainian side going on in 2022, and that the conflict had mostly dwindled down up until the full-scale Russian invasion. 

What happened in the Odesa trade union building?

When it comes to the Odesa trade union building fire on the 2nd of May 2014, there is a large amount of reporting directly from the scene () . On that particular day, there was a march by pro-EuroMaidan football fans, which was attacked by armed pro-Russian AntiMaidan protesters, whio cooperated with the police. In the photo you see AntiMaidan activist Vitaly Budko shooting with his assault rifle, allegedly killing Igor Ivanov from the opposing side. However the EuroMaidan fraction gained the upper hand, they chased the AntiMaidan protestors to the Palace of Trade Unions, which burned down and where a number of people died. Among the victims were also who who had nothing to do with the AntiMaidan activists. 
 


Anti-Maidan thugs shooting pro-EuroMaidan march behind police lines in Odesa.

The EuroMaidan crowd in Odesa were basically Ukrainian nationalists and right wing liberals along with some fascists, the AntiMaidan crowd were Russian nationalists and right wing conservatives with a flavor of Soviet nostalgia. None of these groups had anything to do with anarchism, anti-authoritarian ideas or any other kind of leftism apart from Stalinism, and picking a side between them would be ridiculous. Now, if anarchists or anti-fascists attacked some right-wing march, lost the fight and got killed, I would mourn the victims but I would not claim that “unarmed protesters had been slaughtered.” Of course, I would not wish death from carbon monoxide poisoning in a burning building even on Russian nationalists or Stalinists, but that kind of thing can happen when you start a fight and lose. You can find many videos of the fire online, for example you can see that the fire spreading from both outside and inside the building; it is highly likely AntiMaidan protestors were not very careful with their Molotov Cocktails. In other videos, you can see the EuroMaidan crowd reacting differently to the people trapped inside building – some beating up those escaping the building, others helping them escape using ladders.  

The course of events in Odesa is not disputed. The local journalist group, , has gathered various conspiracy theories on their website, and refuted them . Although local police were passive during the events, they managed to investigate the violence to some extent, and to bring some of the EuroMaidan crowd into the court (violent AntiMaidan figures escaped to Russia before being arrested). However, due to the extreme pressure against the court, none were sentenced for the fire. 

There are no two widely diverging stories when it comes to what transpired in Odesa, nor generally in regards to the events that took place in Ukraine in the spring of 2014. Even serious pro-Kremlin analysts are not claiming that Igor Girkin was an oppressed Russian-speaking Ukrainian, or that AntiMaidan protestors were attacked first in Odesa. Such fantastic alternate histories have been saved for social media and other trashy internet, and the gullible Western audience of Russia Today. 

What about fascism in Ukraine?

If a war starts, it is usually a good approach to ask local anarchists, of which there are plenty in the Ukraine. Unfortunately, Italian anarchists seem to have consulted shitty Kremlin propaganda first. The same goes in regards to the influence of Nazis and fascists in Ukrainian society, which is both wildly exaggerated by Russian propagandists, and understated by Western liberals. It was Ukrainian anarchists and anti-fascists fighting against these same Nazis for years. No one knows the situation with Nazis better than the Ukrainian comrades, and they are best placed to estimate the severity of the danger that Ukrainian fascists pose to the wider Ukrainian society. I am not saying that other people should not have an opinion, I am not Ukrainian myself, I can hardly read the Ukrainian language, and I have only visited Ukraine 4 times in my life. I disagree with many Ukrainians about many Ukrainian events, but I ask for their opinion first. 

It is strange to read that anarchists are concerned about the arrests of Putinists priests. Obviously, some of the leftists being repressed in Ukraine, have been against Putin all of their lives, and this is an issue that is not receiving enough attention, but it is impossible to compare the current level of repression in Ukraine to that in Russia.

On the ethics of resistance

As for the more ethical argument of not joining a state army and refusing to defend against imperialistic aggression; this is not connected to specific events but personal ethics. War is murder, and joining murder, for whatever cause, right or wrong, must be decided by the individual because the moral responsibility is always on the individual. I am no-one to demand pacifism, nor to ask someone to kill another. 

Italian anarchists do not mention the topics of imperialism and colonialism even once in their statement. The Ukrainian war is portrayed and understood as a war between two equally authoritarian national governments, Ukrainian and Russian, or as a proxy war between two power blocs, the NATO and Russian-Chinese blocs. But Putin, the Russian elite and a large part of the brainwashed public do not consider Ukraine a “proper state”, but rather as a part of Russia taken over by some uppity and primitive peasants who are speaking a funny Russian dialect. The purpose of the war is to make Ukraine a Russian satellite, it is a war of imperialist conquest, either to create a buffer zone, or in the best case scenario for Kremlin, to assimilate all Ukrainians into Russian society. 

There are hardly any imperialist conquests, which have not, also, been some kind of a proxy (or direct) war between colonialist or imperialist countries. Similarly, very few anti-colonial uprisings have succeeded without opportunistically seeking help from competing power blocs. 

The Palestine conflict has for decades been, besides a national liberation struggle, a proxy war between Western and Soviet blocs, and most recently a proxy war between USA and Iran. These two aspects do not exclude each other.  Every single word by Italian anarchists, written about the Ukrainian war benefiting capitalist war industries describes the Palestine conflict just as accurately, which has for decades been a testing ground for Israeli military technologies, and now occasionally for Iranian technologies as well. Does this mean that Palestinians should stop resisting, give up their land to settler extremists and move to whichever country agrees to accept them? Should Kurds also stop resisting? Anti-colonial and anti-imperialist resistance often happens within a state, or quasi-state framework, and most countries in the world have recognised a Palestinian state. If Israel and USA were to recognise a Palestinian state, and then continued to kill and ethnically cleanse Palestinians, would that be acceptable? It should not be too much to ask that the same principles be applied to all anti-imperialist struggles, not just the Ukrainian one. 

Ethical issues and anarchist strategy are of course more complicated than factual inaccuracies. None  of us can tell the future. We do not know what will happen in Ukraine, nor do we know whether the efforts of Ukrainian anarchists and anti-fascists will bear fruit or result in a bitter defeat. 

Only time will tell who was right – those who fought against imperialism as volunteers in the trenches and gathered supplies for the volunteers, or those who called for desertion on the internet. But even the latter should take care that their statements are based on facts, and not on murky Kremlin propaganda which does not stand at the slightest scrutiny. I can accept and respect anarchists having different principles and different strategies, but I cannot accept anarchists spreading falsified facts.

Antti Rautiainen

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There are 58 Comments

good article! walks the tight rope over the propaganda abyss and shows receipts

why so many anarchists need to be reminded not to trust propaganda narratives from putin OR his enemies, is just another eternal september.

defend that statement

Ukrainian government’s vocal support for Israel is more evidence that Ukraine is basically fascist

You're using false equivalents. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.

> Italian anarchists do not mention the topics of imperialism and colonialism even once in their statement. The Ukrainian war is portrayed and understood as a war between two equally authoritarian national governments, Ukrainian and Russian, or as a proxy war between two power blocs, the NATO and Russian-Chinese blocs. But Putin, the Russian elite and a large part of the brainwashed public do not consider Ukraine a “proper state”, but rather as a part of Russia taken over by some uppity and primitive peasants who are speaking a funny Russian dialect. The purpose of the war is to make Ukraine a Russian satellite, it is a war of imperialist conquest, either to create a buffer zone, or in the best case scenario for Kremlin, to assimilate all Ukrainians into Russian society.

Tho Ukrainian IS a dialect of Russian, and as a national-ethic group Ukrainians never existed prior to the nationalist movement during WW1... which was in itself a proxy movement backed by the Hapsburg and German Empires, up against their enemy, Russia.

Ukraine sure is a "legit" nation-state, as much as Misrael or Saudi Arabia are. It won its independence i the '90s... conveniently at a time when Russia was an impotent empty shell run by mafias and a drunk clown, and the US/UK bloc was dominating the world without -for the first time ever- any enemy of importance. The '90s were the theater of the logical splitting apart and collapse of the socialist bloc (incl. Yugoslavia, even if they were not a USSR member country). There was a goal, expressed back in the '90s by conservative US think tankers, to insure that socialism doesn't make it to the 21st century, and they achieved it.

ALL OF YOU guise gotta read Brezinski's book from the late '90s, if you haven't, titled "The Grand Chessboard". There's a large portion about Ukraine in there, and what's been happening with the country is pretty much in line with what this hawk was saying. Zbigniew btw was the main foreign policy brainiac of the Democrat Party, even more active than the late Kissinger, and apparently still is... despite being dead.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/zbigniew-brzezinski-after-putins...

I'm also starting to have doubts about Avtonom since their recent attempt to defame the West Bank group Fauda, and their apparent lack of response to their critics.

Brzezinski famously wrote that without Ukraine, Russia would cease to be a great power and promoted a plan for NATO to expand all the way to Ukraine which the US has adopted. The US promised Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastward if the Soviet Union accepted German reunification. When the Soviet Union disbanded and desired to become part of Europe, they were instead denied and destabilized and Clinton began NATO expansion east. Bush Jr. committed to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia.

Most Ukrainians themselves were against the plan, favoring neutrality over NATO membership and elected Yanukovych, who ran on a platform of neutrality. The U.S. decided to help bring down Yanukovych in a CIA coup and then vice-president Biden helped choose the post-coup government. Ethnic Russians in Ukraine virulently rejected the post-coup government and called for autonomy of the ethnically Russian regions.

Obama and Biden armed the post-coup government to attack the ethnically Russian regions. Putin called Biden to stop NATO enlargement and engage in negotiations with Russia over mutual security arrangements and Biden rejected the call. Putin then launched the invasion to push Ukraine to the negotiating table. Zelensky immediately called for negotiations based on Ukraine’s neutrality. An agreement to end the fighting was reached based on Ukraine’s neutrality and an end to NATO’s enlargement to Ukraine. Biden stepped in to stop the deal, with the U.S. informing Zelensky that the U.S. would not support neutrality.

Russia seems to want to negotiate with minimal demands: No NATO expansion. Neutral Ukraine. Nazis out of Ukraine government & military.

Maybe this is 'Putinist propaganda' but it sure seems like US business as usual

maybe zerzan WAS right: anarchists will be the last ones to get it. those three sentences before your last one are the regurgitation of talking points that for all intents and purposes have been abandoned.

It's good to finally get a concise and geopolitically correct analysis of the Uke/Russ war! Thankyou oh wise anarchist anon for this, I've copied, printed and framed this on my "Comment of the Year" board. Thx again!

Hey, I'm the one who first talked about Zbigniew's master plan!

I know brah, but you were less concise, and I have a short memory span,,,,,you lose.

Yes, it is. Not just in the sense that the entire Cold War was fought via proxy conflicts but in terms of Ukraine itself and how western powers rescued and protected the Ukrainian fascists like OUN (including Mr Hunka , the SS officer who was cheered by Canadian parliament, who was just ruled safe from extradition).

If you think the only alternative to “putinist propaganda” is banderaite propaganda you have a bad case of Dichotomy Syndrome.

That's projection: RT has a loyal following in the north American extremist far right, and now seemingly pro Putin propagandists. The above comment, itself, implies an oversimplified either-or-dichotomy.

You refer to the Stalinist state-capitalist dictatorship as the "socialist bloc" and its demise as the defeat of "socialism." As an anarchist-socialist I am not surprised by your support for Russian imperialism.

You quote a paragraph from the article, but do not really answer it. Your response to charges of ignoring "imperialism and colonialism" is to agree with Putin about Ukraine not being a real country (only started in WW I, you claim). But whatever the history, the Ukrainians regard themselves as a country. In 1991 the big majority voted for national independence, including most Russian-speakers. That many of them wanted more autonomy is not the same as wanting to break off from Ukraine. That is what, finally, determines that they are a nation which should have its self-determination

Whatever the history of negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, influenced by the US, there is no justification for Russia's wholesale attack on the country.

Anarchists oppose all states, but defend all oppressed peoples in determining their own futures. This includes the Palestinians, the Kurds, the Myanmarians, and the Ukrainians.

> You refer to the Stalinist state-capitalist dictatorship as the "socialist bloc" and its demise as the defeat of "socialism."

Stalinism was gone for decades in thr USSR when it collapsed. But more importantly, **Yugoslavia was always anti-Stalinist to the bone and not part of the USSR**, so were the other Asian states part of the socialist bloc, namely China and Vietnam. I called it the "socialist bloc" as this includes those who weren't the best buddies of the US due to being Leftist regimes.

I have no idea what you think you mean by Stalinism. Perhaps you mean the government of Joseph Stalin and nothing else? On the other hand, you seem to define "socialism" as not being "the best buddies of the US". Apparently this is also your definition of "Leftist regime."

"True socialism consists of hoping for and provoking, when possible, the subjected people to drive away the invaders, whoever they are.” --Errico Malatesta (who generally identified himself as an "anarchist-socialist")

pointing out that the US is manipulating Ukraine into a proxy war with Russia is somehow support for Russian imperialism? the US is funding this war (to the tune of 100 billion so far with another 60 billion on the way, not a small expenditure) while tens of thousands of Ukrainians (and Russians) are being slaughtered. pointing out the reasons behind the war is not justifying anything. if you want the Ukranian people to have self determination then the CIA coup and US manipulation should be concerning. everyone has the right to self defense, but defending all oppressed peoples also includes oppressed Russians who are dying in this pointless war as well as Ukrainians. by your logic you are supporting US imperialism.

The CIA had no significant role, and there was no coup. The revolution resulted from Yanokovich's failed attempt to crack down on the Euromaidan protests, which only happened because Russia forced Yanokovich out of a trade deal with the European Union. Russia pulled itself into this war due to its endless attempts to intervene in Ukraine's politics (since the fall of the Soviet Union) and make things worse for itself every time. No US/CIA manipulation was needed there. I don't see why Anarchists should buy into these LaRouchite conspiracy narratives as the cause of this war, let alone spread them on the internet. It serves no purpose and only distorts our understanding of events in the world and limits our ability to have cross-border solidarity because every uprising or social movement in any country is considered within either the Chinese or Russian 'sphere of influence' or whatever will be framed as a CIA/NED sponsored movement.

I don't know about that, It's been pretty well documented that The CIA, National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, and NGOs like the Open Society Foundation were all involved in this which is standard U.S. operating procedure, the same kind one used on dozens of occasions around the world. . The point person was Victoria Nuland, who was first Dick Cheney’s principal deputy foreign policy advisor, then George Bush Jr.’s ambassador to NATO, then Hillary Clinton’s spokesperson, and by 2014 Assistant Secretary of State.

The Russians actually caught on tape an intercepted call between Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt (now Assistant Secretary of State). Nuland explains to Pyatt that Vice President Joe Biden will help choose and cement the post-coup government. Obama, Biden, and their team armed the post-coup government to attack the ethnically Russian regions. The 2014 Ukraine team, including Biden, Nuland, Jake Sullivan (then and now Biden’s national security advisor), Geoffrey Pyatt, and Antony Blinken (then the deputy national security advisor), remains the Ukraine team today.

What you are calling a revolution sure looks like a military coup to me? But who knows, shits fucked and doesn't look good for any of us now matter how you frame it.

It's not 'well documented', it's a dumb narrative that tries to claim that donations to liberal NGOs can instigate revolts and overthrow governments (or even stear them in a particular way). That is not how it works, color revolutions are an entirely bogus concept. This is a narrative are pushed LaRouchites, leftists with terminal-Russia today brain and straight up reactionaries to dilegitimize protests.

Furthermore, the Nuland tapes don't indicate anything remotely like a coup. The US plus some other countries were trying to negotiate a settlement between the opposition and Yanucovich in order stabalize the situation (aka restore order). That is all they reveal, which isn't even a secret. That whole settlement failed because Yanucovich away after his own security forces abandoned him because they thought he would throw them under the bus (because you know: they were murdering people in the streets on his orders). Making his government non-existent. That's not a coup, that just a dumb political shitshow. Nobody fucking plans this type of shit.

Beyond that there was no armed attack on Russian speaking Ukrainian regions (they are by enlarge not even ethnically Russian, they just speak Russian as first language) by the new government. That was lie spread by Russian media in an attempt to instigate a counter-revolt, which did not succeed because the government didn't come after them and there were only some confrontations between some maidan protesters in a few place as mention in the article. No actual armed combat occurred before the Russians invaded in 2014 in Crimea and then later Donbass & Luhansk. And defintly no ethnic cleansing of Russian-speakers, not in the least because Kiev itself is a fucking Russian-first speaking city.

so the US were just trying to stabilize and restore order? nobody plans this kind of shit? hmmm... also you say the CIA had no significant role, which suggests that they had some role. what is your definition of no significance? asking for my LaRouchite friend.

it's as "LaRouchite" to claim that there were color revolutions that it is Marxist to claim that there's been such a thing as US imperialism. In other words, you may use any type of guilt-by-association logical fallacy to dismiss ANY position, but that doesn't make you sound any more credible, especially when color revolutions have actually happened and predated the LaRouche PAC, you weakling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution

These were all set up by the CIA (the concept was the creation of Gene Sharp) as nonviolent protests in favor of pro-NATO parties and movements in Post-Soviet countries. To pretend that there was no CIA manipulation in East Europe at least since the collapse of the USSR is pretty dumb and you'd better find stronger arguments next time.

In 1991, Crimea voted almost unanimously for independence from Ukraine. Now explain why that doesn’t matter if the other results of this 30 year old referendum are so important to you that they should stand forever. Because of the unity of the Ukrainian state? I thought you don’t believe in states? What’s magical about 1991? Crimea was not part of the Ukrainian SSR until the 50s. Figure your shit our Wayne or it’s all too obvious that you’re just swallowing banderaite propaganda instead.

"We believe and support ethno-national statist constucts as far as they aren't Russia."

- some pro-NATO, pro-Israel sockpuppets

What is the point about Crimea? The Russian state invaded and seized it in 2014. After which, neither the Ukrainian state nor the US imperialists had done anything about this. There was shooting over the phoney breakaway "republics," but not over Crimea.

The current war had nothing to do with Crimea until the Russians invaded Ukraine, in other parts of the country. Of course once the war had spread, Crimea became an issue, but it was not what the war was about.

(BTW, references to the self-determination of Crimea comes with ill grace from the Russians who expelled the Indigenous Crimean Tartars and still have not let them all return and continue to discrimination against them to this day. But, as I said, that is not what the war is about.)

What is the point about Crimea?

Brain helper 4 u... On two instances, Crimea has voted to become sovereign from Ukraine, and then Kyiv denied this region's independence. So which referendums are reliable? Those that favor alliances with Western powers, or with Russia?

(IMO as anarchist... ALL these referendums are bullshit as I reject the rule of the majority, regardless of how legit the voting process was. But have fun keeping arguing for the legitimacy of the Ukrainian state, and its ethno-national constituency)

Let me repeat: Even after Russia invaded and seized Crimea, neither the Ukrainian state nor the US imperial state did anything about it. The current war began when Russian armies invaded northern and eastern Ukraine and were resisted. Crimea was not the issue. Whether or not the Crimeans want to join Russia was not the issue of the war and is a red herring.

As a linguistics hobbyist, I need to fact check this statement. The normal definition given for languoids is that they are languages if they are not mutually intelligible. No matter how you want to slice it, Ukrainian and Russian are not mutually intelligible. I’m not going to dispute your claim about the ethnic group thing because I don’t know enough about history for that, but I do know enough about languages.

They have distinct vocabulary, phonology, alphabets, and dialects of their own.
Next you are going to claim Chinese or Arabic is one language… I hope you don’t think that…

I'll allow it

Giggy, you might want to leave your hobbyhorse where it is unless you know something about the specific case in question as opposed to this type of soundbite. Russian and Ukrainian are incredibly similar and have a high degree of mutual intelligibility, and this is only part of the reason that so many Ukrainians are bilingual. It also shouldn’t really politically matter whether one is a dialect of the other.

On the other hand, there are tragically many cases of people who speak virtually identical languages (Croatian and Serbian, Hindi and Urdu..) that are divided for political reasons and that nationalists go out of their way to pretend are much more different than they are, as a token of difference / superiority …

Yes, I know most Ukrainians are bilingual, they have *high* degrees of mutual intelligibility, around 50% from what I can find in studies, but that’s nowhere near the percentage required to qualify as a dialect. I am friends with a Slavic linguist and multiple Russian and Ukrainian speakers.

I agree with your second paragraph, and I even mentioned some of them in my post; I don’t get your point here.

Sources Time!
Edwards, Elizabeth, "Russian and Ukrainian: Like Two Drops of Water" (2022). Student Research Submissions. 502.
https://scholar.umw.edu/student_research/502
Rehbein, Jochen and Romaniuk, Olena. "How to check understanding across languages. An introduction into the Pragmatic Index of Language Distance (PILaD) usable to measure mutual understanding in receptive multilingualism, illustrated by conversations in Russian, Ukrainian and Polish" Applied Linguistics Review, vol. 5, no. 1, 2014, pp. 131-171. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2014-0007
Vajda, Edward J. Review of The Linguasphere Register of the World's Languages and Speech Communities. Language, vol. 77 no. 3, 2001, p. 606-608. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2001.0197.
Eberhard, David M., Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2023. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. Twenty-sixth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com.

Don’t care.
The US is getting ready to spew $95bn worth of death and destruction into Ukraine and Palestine as well as prepping Taiwan to be the next provocative sacrifice. This is the evil empire I’m concerned with. Comparing Ukraine with Palestine is moronic, the accurate comparison is with Israel. And by the way, Ukrainian nationalism has never existed without being close enough to fascism to hold hands with, not 100 years ago, not 10 years ago and not today. It didn’t really exist before much more than 100 years ago and would probably have never survived and thrived without being actively propped up by first the Nazis and then the CIA.
Now go ahead and call me a putinist imperialist for pointing out the obvious facts.

it's nice that you feel that way, but implying that there's a meaningful distinction between the # of fascists between the warring sides is odd. and wrong. the former wagner group comes to mind before its self-destruction.

Sorry, this makes no sense. try rereading and commenting again (or not).

it contradicts the implication that ukrainian fascism is somehow more widespread than russian fascism that follows from your claim about the proximity of ukrainian nationalism to fascism. this is true for every single nation-state. please try to keep up.

Mmm… no, not really. Like it or not the concept of Russia as a country has been established for a very long time and for most of the past century it has been tied in with explicit anti-fascism. If you think everything other than anarchism (or western style capitalist democracy?) is fascism, I guess that’s a take. But it’s not an accurate assessment of which countries(“*”) have fought for or against literal nazism. If you can’t process the fact that modern day Ukraine has more monuments to holocaust perpetrators than the rest of the world put together without being like “buh buh but what about Wagner?!” you may have a case of Lib Brain. Cmon, try and keep up!

if they just switch the word "fascism" for blood thirsty, ultra-nationalist reactionaries, then their point stands ... and it's an anarchist one, not liberal

Again, no, not really, because that wasn’t my point at all. My point was that there is a huge fucking problem if western anarchists are engaging in denial/defensiveness about Ukrainian fascism and its relation to US empire.

20 years ago we rioted against the Iraq war and people said we must support saddam, we must want the taliban to rule America, etc. Now they pretend they were against it all along. It’s never allowed to criticize the empire from within when it’s at war, and our government likes to pretend that it isn’t at war right now. And certain anarchists like to play along and join in the hysteria against the empire’s enemies like they don’t even know what they’re doing. “All states are bad” so we’re not going to protest when they flatten the “enemy country.” How is that going to work when shit continues to escalate?
WAKE UP

that wasn't your point, i know. i appreciate your point too, just wondering if part of the disagreement was just a semantic one?

as an antifascist, i've often found that clarification helpful. when somebody is bickering with me about whether the group of dangerous reactionaries that are literally threatening us count as technically, actual, dyed-in-the-wool, FASCISTS or just something extremely adjacent to it, of course the answer is - wtf are we doing, bickering about semantics right now?

i'm just as likely to get stabbed or shot at by an ultra nationalist so ...

ah, the anarchist concept of tying in 'anti-fascism' with settler-colonial nation-states like the russian fed. i guess it's time for people to start defending every member of the former allies. instead of neuroticizing about US intervention (funding in actuality), please consider that some illiberal regime feeling threatened is not justification for war. also love the implication that having a neo-nazi private military used for neo-colonialism in Africa and warmongering in Ukraine is a 'lib brain' concern! very McAntiImperialist.

if you're going to concern-troll about Evil Empire, at least have an interesting position like revolutionary defeatism.

Wagner is gone now, but the US has all sorts of mercenaries in its employ that are no less fascist, from
BLackwater to the IDF…

Whoever said there was anything specifically anarchist about antifascism? Are you somehow unaware that the USSR lost tens of millions of people in the struggle against Nazi Germany - the fascists having come to power originally on their platform of anti-communism-??? Or how this has persisted since then as a core part of Russian identity? You can say that both sides are wrong and I will agree. If you say that both sides are fascist you are literally wrong and I will shove your cherry-picked examples spoon fed to you by the western msm right back in your face.

I am one of many people who would never have been born if the Red Army had not defeated the Nazis in my grandparents’ homeland. And if they had not done that the western allies would never have dared invade Italy and later France. And yet westerners have the nerve to explain that Russia are the ones who “don’t really understand what happened in WWII” the way we do from way over here. I’m sorry but it’s fucking bullshit and I will always call this out. The west took the surviving Nazis on board to create key entities of the Cold War state like the CIA and NASA not to mention all sort of covert proxy war stuff. Calling Russia fascists because they’re authoritarians and you don’t like them is literally lib brain because it has nothing to do with history and everything to do with distracting the postwar west’s fundamental embrace of fascism in order to continue the war on the communists who were the only force to oppose fascism from day 1.

yes, the neo-nazi private military is gone via self-destruction as i mentioned above, however its elements and the aims its being used for are still there. yes, i know the USSR 'lost' millions of people in that war. since you keep whinging on about ww2 for some reason, an important thing to note here is that ukrainians were among those casualties. likewise, there were russians in the SS. this is a complete non-argument.

Well good to know! Yet the OUN was a much bigger force in the region and they actively collaborated with the SS to send people to the death camps.

Many more Ukrainians fought for the USSR than for the Nazis, that much is definitely true. You’re right, times have really changed. Good luck with your Banderaist hasbara, sorry for “whinging” about WWII and the holocaust you fascist sympathizing limey puke. Yes, orders of magnitude more people LOST their lives in Eastern Europe in that time period than in the west. Or are you in denial of that too?

Revolutionary defeatism is almost exactly my point, or part of it…

And if you’d like to get caught up on recent Russian history in its specifics, assuming you can get caught up on WWII almost anywhere, I recommend a short book Russia Without Putin by Tony Wood. It’s very readable and puts the rise of the Putin regime and present day RF system in a proper historical, social, economic etc context. Rather than relying on the standard western propaganda bogeyman myth that focuses on a “mad dictator” (insert and replace with Saddam, Milosevic, Gaddafi, etc, but never understand the actual situation in the country so that we can always just put in a dictator we like and then forget about it and not have to understand western imperialism’s wildly outsized role)

Just that Ukrainian nationalism was first propped up by the German Empire and the Hapsburg, before being recycled some 20 years later by the Nazis... but since that was the "Second Reich", well that's kinda close.

I'd yet have to see a national liberation movement that wasn't propped up by foreign imperialist influences.

Bougainville, I guess? No wait... they're aren't White enough to get recognition from Western anarcho-spooks. /s

Yes, true. And to be even more fair Ukrainian nationalism can be traced back a bit farther to sources like the Cossacks especially the Khmelnitsky uprising with its exceptionally huge and bloody massacres of Jews and other minorities. I say sources because it would
be pretty revisionist to characterize the Cossack state thus created as the first “independent Ukraine” since the concept of Ukrainian identity or even a specific Ukrainian language really didn’t exist yet.

Good article. One question- you mention consulting Ukrainian anarchists about the proportion and effect of fascists in Ukraine, but I didn't see what their answer was. Could you go into detail about that topic?

Most of this exchange is beside the point. Ukraine, which fought Nazi Germany in WW II, had lots of German sympathizers and has some fascists even now? Funny how these USSR apologists never go even further back and ask how come the Ukrainians came to hate the Stalinist regime? Like the mass starvation of Ukrainian peasants and war on the Ukrainian peasants which Stalin ordered and killed hundreds of thousands at least. No wonder many Ukrainian peasants greeted the Germans as saviors, until the German's genocidal policies drove them back to the Russian state. In any case, Stalinist Russia had the same state system as Nazi Germany, or hadn't you anarchists heard about that?

Whatever the history of Ukraine and Russia, Russia is an imperialist state and Ukraine is not. And Russia had no right to invade the Ukrainians. And the Ukrainians have the right to resist.

Wayne, still waiting for your thoughts on the 1991 Crimean independence referendum. Or did your handlers issue you your talking points yet?

Of course, far more Ukrainians fought for the Red Army than for the Nazis. But as the supreme Ukrainian history understander you must already know that. It’s weird how this comment makes it seem like you don’t, though!!

And Wayne, can you please at least sketch for us your definition of the word “imperialist” since you use it constantly? How is imperialism an attribute of specific states? Is Israel imperialist? Do you think imperialism means any time a country attacks another country? Why does an imperialist country (which I’d assume you admit the US is) paying for another country’s war not implicate that country in US imperialism when it’s clearly a concrete component of it? Do you think of imperialism as only when wars are fought for “bad reasons”?

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