by Theo Russell

The New Worker has received detailed reports from activists in Ukraine about the tactics developed by working people in Ukraine to resist the venal, corrupt Zelensky dictatorship and its increasingly desperate attempts to force men to fight a deeply unpopular war.

Immediately after the NATO-backed coup in 2014 Ukraine’s constitutional system was torn up. The offices of communist and socialist parties and leftwing trade unions were ransacked and some torched by fascist gangs.

Communist newspapers and symbols became illegal, despite the fact that the Communist Party of Ukraine was still one of the largest in the country.

Since the coup dozens of democratic and independent newspapers, TV and radio stations have been raided by the police and banned.

The Russian language, used by around two-thirds of the population and spoken by 80–90 per cent, was banned twice – in 2014 and again in 2022. Russian was removed as an official language of Ukraine, all books written in Russian were removed from schools and public libraries and sent to waste recycling plants.

Last month the mayor of Lvov in Western Ukraine, Andrei Sadovoy, when asked by a journalist “do you think that such a category as ‘good Russians’ exists?” replied: “At the cemetery. Moscals are Moscals,” (Moscal being a racist term for Russian speakers).

In large parts of Ukraine, particularly in the West, children are taught how to perform Hitler salutes and encouraged to beat up Russian-speaking children at school.

We have been told that there are now “language patrols” in Ukraine’s schools, and if a child is caught five times speaking Russian, the parents – even the mothers – are added to the ‘bandits’ conscription lists. These people are then sent to the most dangerous front-line regiments.

After the Russian military operation began in February 2022 every opposition political party was completely banned. A special ‘supervisory body’ gave Zelensky’s government complete control of all media, including newspapers, radio and television channels.

As Roger Waters of Pink Floyd has pointed out, Azov Battalion groupie Vladimir Zelensky was elected president in 2019 “by the 73 per cent of the Ukrainian population that was left able to vote on the promise of ratifying the Minsk agreements and bringing the eight-year-long war in the Donbas to an end. But after that somebody whispered in his ear, and he completely changed his mind about making peace in the Donbas”.

In the summer of 2021 Zelensky declared “We will re-occupy the Donbas”, even though his own official representatives continued to take part in the then ongoing Minsk peace process talks.

We now know of course that while the Donbas republics, supported by President Putin, supported these peace talks for eight years, meeting over and over again with the leaders of France and Germany, the NATO states were using them to buy time to secretly re-arm and train Ukraine to rebuild its army to “NATO standards”.

In 2022 Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande and former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko let the cat out of the bag. And for eight years the West looked the other way while Ukraine broke ceasefire after ceasefire.

Days before the Russian intervention in Ukraine on 22nd February 2022, 120,000 Ukrainian troops launched a second massive offensive against the rebel Donbas people’s republics. The first. the mis-named “Anti-Terrorist Operation”, marks the actual start of the war in Ukraine, in 2014.

The Ukraine monitoring mission of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) actually recorded the massive jump in ceasefire violations from 18th February.

In one shocking incident, the official delegate of the Donetsk People’s Republic to the OSCE monitoring mission was taken prisoner by the secret police, the SBU, forced to stand upright in a pit and severely beaten, in one of the SBU’s secret prison camps.

Ukrainians who oppose the war in any way, or celebrate former Soviet holidays, including on social media, face possible arrest, with prison sentences of 8 to 12 years, with confiscation of all property. This has actually happened to thousands of citizens, including many pensioners. The official number of these ‘new criminals’ is now over 20,000.

Over the last 10 years the Banderite ideology of the organisations that hijacked the Maidan protest movement in 2014, which openly idolises Nazi Germany and its symbols, has gradually permeated throughout Ukrainian society – and it has been adopted and used in practice by the police and military.

Even in Britain most people know of the Zelensky’s regime’s press gangs – known as the ‘bandits’ – who grab people from cash machines, shops and entertainment venues and force them into the military.

Some of these unfortunate ‘captives’ are given three weeks’ training (compared with six months to one year in the Russian military), but many are simply given a uniform and a weapon and sent straight to the front.

Everyone in Ukraine knows that with the current situation at the front this is virtually a death sentence, where the slow and methodical Russian attrition tactics have inflicted horrific losses on Ukraine’s forces.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men are living in hiding, and every day hundreds try to cross the borders, where the regime has now planted thousands of anti-personnel mines to stop their own citizens crossing illegally. Many try to swim or sail up the Dnieper river into Belarus or across to Turkey, Romania and the other countries on the Black Sea.

The contrast with the Russian Federation could hardly be greater. In recent months recruitment has fallen from 30,000 to 20,000 men per month, almost all volunteers. There has been only one limited call-up of reserves, in late 2022.

While some join the Russian military due to highly paid contracts, many – including many communists – join for patriotic reasons and an understanding of the Nazi threat in Ukraine.

Unlike Western populations, the Russian people have been kept fully informed of the Banderite junta’s countless crimes overthe last 10 years.

For example, our media has totally ignored the thousands killed in the Donbas before 2022, including hundreds of children, women and pensioners (and the same goes, conveniently, for the thousands killed in Yemen). But ever since 2014 the Russian media has shown the horrific effects of the artillery, missile, sniper and anti-personnel mines on the people in the Donbas republic.

Moreover, the Russian people are fully aware of Banderites’ aim to completely eliminate the language and culture of Russian speakers in Ukraine, which can be compared to the Israeli attitude towards the Palestinian population.

As the efforts to force people into the army have become more and more desperate, the Ukrainian people’s hatred of the recruiters and the regime behind them has intensified.

Despite living under a brutal dictatorial regime, we are now learning that many Ukrainian citizens, especially the workers, have developed complex tactics to successfully fight back against the hated ‘bandits’.

The conscription gangs now live in great fear and have had to step back from their previously brutal methods, by taking bribes to let people free.

It has now become common for ordinary citizens to carry a range of lethal military weapons to fight back against the ‘bandits’ if there is no other option. Hand grenades, for example, can be bought for a mere $50. Such weapons are now easily available from corrupt and desperate military personnel and army deserters, and it is common for the ‘bandits’ to be beaten up by workers who then seize their weapons.

Last month a deputy in the Rada (parliament), said over 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers had deserted while the Ukrainian media have spoken of 170,000.

Co-ordinated networks are also locating the cars used by the ‘bandits’, which are then burnt or have grenades thrown into them.

While almost all of the ‘bandits’ are committed Nazis, like all officials in Ukraine they are corrupt and basically working for money, being paid ‘per head’ of conscripts taken.

To avoid serious violence they are increasingly happy to take bribes and let people go. Anyone caught without an exemption certificate has to pay $1,000 to be released.

The ‘bandits’ are also using mafia-style protection rackets to extort money. Concert venues, restaurants, bars and clubs need to make regular payments to avoid being raided. In each of Kiev’s 12 districts the ‘bandits’ are earning around $800,000 a month.

Telegram channels have also been set up giving the locations of recruiter checkpoints.

Workers commuting from the suburbs into Kiev are co-ordinating their journeys to catch only certain trains, ensuring they are travelling in large numbers. If the ‘bandits’ board such trains, they risk being beaten up by angry workers or even being thrown out of moving trains.

Workers and employers post guards at workplaces to warn when the press gangs are approaching. Even if the ‘bandits’ manage to surprise the workers, they risk violent clashes with large groups of men armed with building tools.

As the pressure to recruit soldiers grows, the ordinary police have become more directly involved in enforcing conscription, and they too have become the targets of popular hatred.

Recently medical workers, doctors, nurses and others, including women, are also being seized and sent to the battlefronts, not as medical staff but as front-line soldiers.

Even people with non-medical doctorates are being sent to the front to treat wounded soldiers. In one case a doctor of electrical engineering was sent to an operating theatre near the front line and asked to help perform complex operations, and only escaped after paying bribes.

This co-ordinated resistance has turned the tables on the recruiting gangs. Where once they spread fear among the population, now they are the ones in fear for their own safety.

This popular resistance also reflects the wider mass hatred of the rotten, corrupt regime that NATO is propping up, and in particular the secret police and the fascist militias such as Azov, Right Sector, Dnipro, Sich, the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps and Centuria – the violent thugs who have spread terror throughout Ukrainian society since 2014.

A report by the website Declassified UK showed photos of British army officers meeting counterparts from these militias, and at least one was given officer training at the British Army’s elite Sandhurst Military Academy.

Even in Kiev, the heart of the Banderite dictatorship, there is widespread hatred and active resistance against the Banderite junta, the Nazi battalions, the ‘bandits’ and the police.

But while the resistance grows, the junta is also stepping up its surveillance of the population. Our sources say the situation in Kiev is currently very difficult, and that a third wave of arrests is taking place due to the introduction of wider “screening” of the population.

In Kiev there is now a night-time curfew, frequent roadblocks and checkpoints. There have been many arrests and many more people have been forced to go into hiding.

For several years the SBU has been monitoring social media, looking for addresses, anyone opposing the war or the Zelensky regime, or anyone collecting government information. People in these categories are known as “waiting for the Russians”.

A huge new department of the SBU is now using advanced British and US spy software. These checks lead to seizures of computers and phones, and criminal cases if anything is found on them. Even if nothing is found, the ‘bandits’ can still return with conscription notices.

As a result the many people who hate the Zelensky regime have to live a double life, expressing support for the junta and the war in public but secretly engaging in resistance.

The resistance networks provide guidance on how to evade checkpoints, what to do if stopped, and online security. However many people are still being ‘caught’ online as a result of poor security practices.

Anyone on the security services’ wanted lists has to avoid all public transport, and effectively needs to leave the country.

Today in Kiev the ‘bandits’ are not allowed to openly shoot people. no doubt because of the many foreigners and journalists in the city, but anyone caught escaping outside the city risks being shot, even in public. These fugitives often travel on horseback so that they can’t be followed by vehicles.

The vast majority of people in the rich Western countries have no idea of the true situation in Ukraine, as all reports in our media are actually prepared and carefully co-ordinated by the junta and its foreign supporters. All news about Ukraine seen by Western audiences consists of fabrications designed to support Zelensky’s dictatorship.

We also need to look at the true causes of Ukraine’s recruitment crisis and why it is losing the war. This is fundamentally because, contrary to what we are told many times every day, the Ukrainian people do not see the war as a genuine war of defence.

Ukraine is losing the war not because of the greater numbers of Russian troops and weapons, as many believe. It is losing because its people do not regard the war as popular or just.

History has shown time and again that wherever there is mass support for a struggle, no country on earth, no matter how powerful, can overcome it. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Yemen and even Gaza are particularly clear examples of this, and there are many more.

The fact that even in an extremely dangerous environment a co-ordinated resistance against the corrupt and brutal NATO-backed Banderite junta has developed suggests that as the regime starts to collapse, popular revolts could break out in the foreseeable future.

Shame on those who have supported the Nazi criminals in Ukraine for 10 and a half years!

Victory to the Ukrainian democrats and anti-fascists!