Olexander “Vampire”

From Solidarity Collectives
March 16, 2026

Olexander “Vampire” — an anti-fascist, a fighter and a comrade — has been killed at the frontline.

This is a painful loss for his friends, comrades, and everyone who knew him or crossed paths with him in the shared struggle.

Below, we share a few memories of the kind of person he was, his life’s journey and how he will be remembered.

“Zhulik”:
I got to know Sasha a bit better when I was in the movement myself. It just so happened that he was friends with one of my very close friends. He was training to be a paramedic, and I think that also said a lot about him. Despite his difficult character, he always wanted the best for people, wanted to help them…

Then he went to Crimea, and our contact was cut off for a while, but when full-scale war broke out, he was active there in Crimea too — he hated the empire and wanted it to come to an end!

I remember that Sasha was always a very idealistic person, looking at the world, like all of us, through the prism of defiance and anarchism. He always believed that all people are equal and that there is no division. He was very quick to spring into action, so I wasn’t particularly surprised that he had returned to Ukraine to fight the occupiers. Although he loved the sea dearly and had a dream of living there, relaxing and, most importantly, fighting!

We will avenge you, Sasha; we will turn your ideas into reality, we will destroy the russian regime, and all people will finally be equal. There will be no gods, no masters, no executioner.

Rest in peace, Vampire; we will bleed them out in your honour!
---------

Olexander “Vampire” was a man who spent his entire short life fighting against nazism and fascism in all their forms.

Almost every time we met, it was accompanied by anti-establishment chaos — conversations, arguments, plans, and anger at a world built on oppression and lies. He was one of the few people who was completely devoted to his ideas, and this devotion was evident in every aspect of his life.

Despite his complex nature, Olexander was a truly kind-hearted man. He always came to the rescue and helped in any way he could, expecting nothing in return.

With the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Olexander refused to accept imperialist encroachments and joined the partisan resistance [in Crimea]. As a result, he was forced to flee the peninsula.
He returned to Ukraine and, without a second thought, immediately enlisted. He wasn’t afraid of losing everything and wasn’t afraid of the fight, because all he needed was his beliefs.

He was an anarchist, anti-authoritarian fighter, poet and a very good friend. We will miss you. The memory of you will live on forever in our hearts.

From Olexander’s friends.
On the shield

Comments

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 05/30/2026 - 08:31

solidarity collectives are not anarchist? what are these tags. they at least claim to be anarchist

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 05/30/2026 - 09:47

Enough with these loaded tags already. Please? I agree with the sentiment of these tags, but why can't you just comment on the article itself rather than immediately steer them in a certain direction by using your authority inherent as a moderator. I think you are actually killing discussion and discouraging critical thought even if your tags exhibit critical thinking. Just post the article, and join the rest of us down here trying to makes sense of things together.

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 05/30/2026 - 12:05

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

you won't let them post snarky pictures or rollovers and now no tags? 

consider this an exercise in maintaining your own position in the face of other people's opinions. being able to do that will definitely come in handy. promise. 

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 05/30/2026 - 12:55

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

"someone else's opinions" and it's using your admin privileges to snipe at a group on one of their member's death notices. If @news doesn't view SC as anarchist (which I agree on for the record), why post this here at all?

I mean, it is all a bit silly of course, given that @news still has up their original mission statement claiming that this website is somehow a "non-sectarian news service". That has never been true.

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 05/30/2026 - 15:09

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

there's a difference between being sectarian and being partisan. anews absolutely posts things that the moderators disagree with. that doesn't mean that the mods don't have opinions on things. 

is the sniping the issue or is it the tags being directive? if you're complaining that people can't make up their own minds if they know the moderators think something, what a sad perspective on anews readers. if you're complaining that the moderators are mean to groups that they don't consider anarchist--and that YOU don't consider anarchist, apparently--then what are you implying would be gained by being "nice"?

in this case, regardless of the group announcing his death, maybe vampire was an anarchist. his friends seem to think he was. 

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 05/30/2026 - 15:59

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

I agree that there's a difference...and the collective consistently lets its sectarianism shine through. They are not simply "partisan", as you seem to be implying, which would mean they hold their nose and post things they disagree with without adding their commentary. Instead they regularly deride and attack the groups whose writing they repost, all while claiming to be "non-sectarian" on the About Us page of the site.

I'm not sure why you're bringing up being "mean" and "nice", that kind of moralism gets us nowhere in this discussion. This is about exercising the principles that a group publicly claims to have as a "non-sectarian source for news for and about anarchists".

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 05/30/2026 - 17:22

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

you say you agree there's a difference, but your comment elides that difference rather than explaining what you think the difference is. 

non sectarian as i understand it here is posting stories that the moderators don't think have a solid or interesting understanding of anarchist thought. 

partisan means that the moderators get to point out their disagreement. perhaps you mean that a proper partisan response would be what the initial anon asked for, which is comments from the moderators rather than tags? which i guess is fair, but again seems to give a lot of power to the tags and deny a lot of power to readers. i personally appreciate it when people/authors/moderators/whatever are explicit about their biases.  

"mean" and "nice" are not moralistic (it can be good to be mean, and bad to be nice, for example) but that's a non sequitur. the questions are trying to follow the shifting parameters of anon's (your?) complaints about the tags. 

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 05/30/2026 - 20:16

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

LMAO... amusing accusations here. So the mods are killing discussion with the use of tags, and... by not giving their opinions about something? Oh, oh... and let's not forgry the absolute totalitarian DESPOTISM of using barely-sarcastic rollover pics!

Wayne Price@ (not verified) Sun, 05/31/2026 - 19:38

ANews is a broadly anarchist site. Its contributors include anarchist-communists and Stirnerite egotists, revolutionaries and pacifists, advocates of working class revolution and anti-working class gradualists, supporters of small-group insurrections and proponents of mass upheavals, and quite a range of other anarchist views.

Yet no one (as far as I know) has called for refusing to print articles by working class revolutionaries or by Stirnerite individualists. Or by either side of any of these other divisions. Yet there are frequent calls for rejecting anarchist supporters of Ukrainian self-defense against imperialist Russian aggression. "Why are such un-anarchist, statist, nasty, views allowed to appear on our beloved ANews?" it is often asked. In general, however, the ANews committee has NOT acceded to such protests, to their honor. I respect them for that. But it is a common reaction. And In this case, the moderators have--very unusually--published a bunch of hostile tags below the article, clearly taking sides. I hope that will be a rare case.

The Solidarity Committee describes itself as anarchist , anti-authoritarian, and anti-fascist. Its members think they are anarchists. (see Interview with Mira. https://www.solidaritycollectives.org/en/toxic-pacifism-interview-with-…) The person they mourn regarded himself as an anarchist. And there is a large proportion of European and Ukrainian anarchists who agree with them. (Also U.S. revolutionaries like me who regard themselves as anarchists.) So unless readers are going to demand ANews adopt a program of specific opinions on sorts of anarchist controversies, it would be hypocritical to ask that it publish only one side of this (or any other) controversy among anarchists and other libertarian socialists.

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 06/04/2026 - 11:37

In reply to by Wayne Price@ (not verified)

Solidarity Collectives also consider open neo-nazis like Sergey Petrovichev and Alexey Makarov to be "anarchists". And by "open" I mean Petrovichev posted on his own facebook a pic of himself hanging out with other neo-nazis under a White Rex banner, a known neo-nazi brand. He also posted a pic of himself wearing a t-shirt of the UPA who collaborated with the original Nazis in WWII. Meanwhile, Makarov in an interview admitted to having been a member of the neo-nazi National Bolsheviks in Russia and the far-right Christian nationalists of Brotherhood in Ukraine, but didn't offer a single negative word about either group, let alone renounce them. So, I wouldn't trust Solidarity Collectives to tell me who's an anarchist or not, since to them, fascism and anarchism are comfortably compatible.

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