The following article was written by comrades of the Assembly group in Ukraine. It originally appeared in English on the libcom website. The Assembly comrades have requested that we post it on the ACG website as well.
A little more than a month that has passed since the release of the “Assembly” winter interview fully confirms its thesis about the approaching revolutionary situation in the country. The Ukrainian parliament is on the verge of a crisis: few deputies want to take political responsibility for the bill on strengthening mobilisation, the adoption of which has been postponed to April. Parliamentarians promise that the bill will not include online summonses or blocking of bank cards for evasion. From the calculations of the National Bank of Ukraine, in January 2024 alone, the population withdrew 27.4 billion hryvnias from Ukrainian banks. Why is this not a nationwide spontaneous strike? Moreover, according to an NBU report published on March 11, the volume of foreign remittances from people to the country has been falling for the second year in a row. Over the past year, the amount decreased by 7.8%, in 2022 – by 10.5% (that is, from $14 billion in 2021 to $12.5 in 2022 and $11.6 billion in 2023). Obviously, those who left the “country of dreams” before the full-scale invasion take their families with them instead of returning to them even after the war. At the same time, according to the deputy chairman of the same NBU, Sergiy Nikolaychuk, the expenses of Ukrainians abroad are much greater than the transfer of funds to Ukraine: the outflow from the cards of the population in the “travel” category amounted to $20 billion in 2022 and $18 billion in 2023. The people vote against the state, which wants to see them as dumb cannon fodder, not only with their legs but also with their wallets.
Another example of how unannounced quiet sabotage can force the state to unclench its jaws may be the plans voiced by the new commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi to dismiss those who refuse to fight from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and using the money saved to double combat payments, to 200 thousand hryvnias per month. The only question is, why then are they going to mobilize hundreds of thousands of recruits if they are preparing to purge the army of unmotivated personnel? One way or another, no one knows what will be in the final voted version of the bill. All we can say with certainty is that even if they manage to bend the people by adapting the initial draconian version, the critical mass of those who is not going to die for the money of the IMF, BlackRock and Ukrainian respected citizens will not disappear anywhere – moreover, this public can only become more dangerous.
Lieutenant General Oleksandr Pavliuk, the new commander of the AFU Land Forces, posted on March 24 the follow alarm about his subordinates:
“How will I surrender without a fight”: why the enemy can defeat us with the help of the Ukrainians themselves
The highest pilotage of the art of war is to destroy the plans of the enemy and defeat him without using his troops in battle.
And judging by the last months, the Russians are very skilful in using ancient Chinese stratagems of warfare. And some of our fellow citizens, unfortunately, have lost the understanding that their acts and public statements have turned into a powerful weapon in the hands of the enemy. Who did not leave, does not leave, and will never leave his desire to destroy Ukraine.
Let’s recall what was written and distributed in our social networks two years ago and compare it with what is happening now. From queues to the enlistment centres and memes “if to serve – everyone is sick, but if to fight – everyone is healthy”, we reached the harassment of the military from the enlistment centres and moral support for evading the defence of Ukraine.
Two years ago (not having even a tenth of today’s air defence equipment, weapons, and experience of a full-scale war!) we, with all that, perfectly understood how important it was to disrupt the mobilisation in Russia. They rejoiced at every military commissariat set on fire there, rejoiced at the queues of their evaders, who fled in panic to Georgia and Kazakhstan.
From the unity and cohesion of that time, our space of news and discussion has slipped (or rather, ossified!) not without the help of our wonderful bloggers and free media. In the news channels, there are many reports about “unfortunate drowning people in the Tisa” or “combat Hutsul” squads.
But there are almost no materials related to the work of the enlistment centres, the specifics of military service, the need to perform military duty. Publications are not interested in such topics. Appeals from the media for clarification of these issues are individual. Can’t make a flashy headline? Will the target audience hide their eyes?
A separate topic is the attitude towards military personnel of the enlistment centres Today, the enlistment centres and their guard companies are mostly staffed by servicemen who lost their health in the war and were deemed unfit to serve in combat units. How did it become acceptable to treat these people who went through hell as enemies and call them “man hunters”?
Why is it that in all the materials about “illegal acts of the enlistment centres” the most important emphasis is deliberately omitted: first of all, illegal is the refusal of men from their constitutional duty to defend Ukraine?
Not to mention the fact that all shots like “packing into a bus” fundamentally (!) do not contain what exactly led to such consequences in the behaviour of the heroes of the material.
In various social networks: YouTube, Facebook or TikTok, there are many videos with content taken out of context. We are often reproached: “it’s your own fault, you don’t change!” It does not. We change, we see our shortcomings and work every day to become better, more understandable! There is a lot of work ahead, and it will be much more difficult without your help! After all, only together we will be able to withstand this influx and ultimately Victory!
Break the alliances of the enemy, divide his battle formations – the ancient Chinese war strategy teaches. Contrasting the army with civilians is one of its points.
So before sharing the “flagrant story of rights violations” and the plight of the “poor evaders”, it’s worth asking yourself: who is this really helping to win the war?
Definitely not to Ukraine»
There have been so many examples of passers-by fighting off people kidnapped by camouflage catchers in recent months that there is no point in listing them here. Let’s limit ourselves to more vivid stories.
In particular, on February 6, enlistment agents visited the Hutsul village of Kosmach in the Ivano-Frankivsk region (the birthplace of the legendary rebel leader Oleksa Dovbush). The residents did not greet them very friendly. They were surrounded by a female group exclaiming that “war has not been declared in the country” and that the visitors “will be beaten.” Subsequently, the women went out to an improvised protest in the centre of this village. Rumours began to spread throughout the settlement that a raid of the enlistment office was planned, so women came out to stop it and also demand “fair mobilisation.” In the centre of the village, they began to stop cars, including the car of Ivanna Grepinyak, who was traveling with her 6-year-old daughter. Protesters said the woman was filming their gathering on her phone. They started pulling her out of the car, tearing out her hair, taking away the car keys, and hitting the child. Ivanna claims that the protesters accused her of being an “information leaker” and coming to “hand over” local men to the military commissars. The protesters moved away from Ivanna’s car only after someone exclaimed that this was not the vehicle they were waiting for. Most of the protesters ran to the car that had approached from behind, at which time Ivanna was able to leave Kosmach. The woman went to the hospital complaining of injuries inflicted on her and her daughter by protesters. Doctors diagnosed the girl with a contusion of the soft tissues of the nose, and the 24 y/o with a probable closed head injury. She was hospitalized. In turn, women in Kosmach say that communication with the driver was polite. From their point of view, it was Grepinyak who began to insult the residents, swore obscenely, provoked, and subsequently ran over one of the protesters’ feet.
The next day, a village meeting was held in Kosmach, where enlistment officers tried to explain why and how the mobilisation was taking place. However, people reacted emotionally to these arguments, demanding to know from whom Ukraine needs to be defended. After fruitless discussions, people began chanting “Shame!” It was barely possible to avoid a physical clash between the military and the community – but that was only the first bell. (Meanwhile, the regional enlistment centre of Ivano-Frankivsk this week reported that 39 thousand people are wanted in the region for ignoring summonses.)
On March 7, in the village of Ploska (about 5 km from the Romanian border in the Chernivtsi region), Hutsul cavalerists attacked them with the axes. According to the cops, those mentioned in the post of Pavliuk came to the enlistment checkpoint and provoked the conflict. The viral video shows two persons in camouflage talking to a man sitting on a horse and holding an axe. Then, a SUV appears in the frame and hits one of the servicemen. Then, getting out of the car, the driver stopped and hit him in the forearm with the butt of an axe. Another attacker also struck a serviceman in the shoulder with the butt of his axe. The men damaged the windows of the enlistment car and fled. It was 28 y/o and 43 y/o local residents. Both were taken into custody under Part 4 of Art. 296 of the Criminal Code (hooliganism with particularly aggravating circumstances) without right of bail. The article provides up to 7 years of imprisonment.
An axe is the Hutsul weapon, including in the fight against mobilisation. Like it had Dovbush and his insurgents (in fact, the Western Ukrainian analogue of Robin Hood)
These are two brothers, their sister said that one of them lost a son during the war. He went to the enlistment office, but there he got beaten and threatened. And when they met again, the man decided to take revenge. The second brother served in Donbass from 2015 to 2018. According to the lawyer, he was shell-shocked.
According to the police and the prosecutor’s office, on the evening of the same March 7, in the village of Mala Rogan near Kharkov, a drunken 25-year-old local resident took an RGD-5 grenade from the balcony and, in the presence of people on the street, threw it under the car of some 31-year-old female military living in that village. So he decided to take revenge on her because of a long hostile relationship. Her blue Kia Sorento parked near the house was damaged by the explosion. The woman was at home and there were no injuries. Based on archives of social networks, we found out that this woman is Maryana Malykhina, she earlier terrorised the community, beating neighbours and locking them in the basement. “This is a generally creepy person, causing a stir throughout Rogan. She’s always yelling that she’s the navel of the Earth because she’s a warrior. She threatens everyone, even children, even her family is afraid of her,” locals characterise her. The guy was detained, he was informed of suspicion on the same Part 4 of Art. 296 of the Criminal Code.
On March 21, in Novovolynsk of the Volyn region, two enlistment employees visited the dormitory of a 50-year-old man due to failure to appear on a summons to dispatch. He stabbed the visitor twice – the first hit was blocked, and the second hit him in the stomach. After this, he allegedly tried to cut his wrists; an ambulance was called to the scene. The cops opened a criminal case under Part 1 of Art. 121 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (inflicting grievous bodily harm), the desperate man faces imprisonment for a term of 5 to 8 years. “Rambo: First Blood” in the Ukrainian way…
Around midnight March 24, in Svitlovodsk of the Kirovograd region, somebody threw two Molotov cocktails along the facade of the building of the first department of the Olexandria district enlistment centre. The fire that arose was immediately extinguished by its staff. No people were injured. The attacker faces from three to ten years in prison. Information is from the media, there are no official press releases.
On February 29, about 50 people gathered near the town hall of Buchach in the Ternopil region because of the death of a 49-year-old man from epilepsy on the same day. He got from the enlistment centre to intensive care without consciousness. The deceased’s sister says that he was hospitalised twice due to epilepsy, which is documented. Most of them were from the native village of the dead, and others from other nearby communities also came. The mayor and the military commissar came out to talk with them; the police and the prosecutor’s office said that they were conducting a check and that there were no signs of violent death on the body.
On March 29, footage appeared from the Khmelnytsky region of angry women mob breaking the glass of an enlistment bus during the distribution of summonses in the Shepetivka district. A fat man in military uniform who was in the car fled from it. This turned out to be somewhat more difficult for them than dragging one guy into a bus in a crowd – they have to call the police to the scene. In a group against a group they are not such heroes!
Not about the war as such but also social struggle: on March 6 in Korosten of the Zhytomyr region, thousands of pensioners came to the town hall to protest the reduction of Chernobyl surcharges. A fight broke out with the police at the rally, and an ambulance was also called there. Additional payments to pension were reduced from 13 000 hryvnias to only 3200 hryvnias. “The police stood at the door of the town council. The deputy mayor came out to the people and said that the mayor would come to them. But for some reason the people were indignant that the mayor would not come, and they themselves began to break into the town council. When they broke into the town council, there was a scuffle. They did report one injured woman there, our police officer immediately called an ambulance for this woman,” stated the regional police speaker. Then the protesters blocked the highway to Kiev walking along the pedestrian crossing.
On March 25, in the Transcarpathian region, several dozens of women blocked two roads near Mukachevo demanding to mobilise “only by a civilised and legal method.” Despite the fact that blockades took place at pedestrian crossings so that there would be no reason to punish for traffic violations, the cops tried to disperse them. “Everyone understands that there is a war going on, we need mobilisation, we are fighting for independence and for a better life for our children. But such terrorist, bandit methods of mobilisation, when people in balaclavas simply beat and kidnap from the streets – this is unacceptable, since this is a violation of all rights and human freedoms, which lead to distrust of the authorities and the commander-in-chief. And in turn, this will lead to riots within the state, which is what the rashist authorities are waiting for,” the organisers wrote on Facebook. During the protest, a line of cars (mostly trucks) formed on the road. Certain trucks had loads related to the military activities. Cops at once said that they identified the woman organised the protest. Under Art. 279 of the Criminal Code (blocking transport communications), she faces up to 3 years of restriction of freedom.
By the by, one of the resonant examples of “uncivilised mobilisation” in Transcarpathia happened to our compatriot from Kharkov. Yevgeny Khabarov, born in 1996, was, from the words of his girlfriend Hanna Sukhanova, kidnapped from a hotel near the western border and subjected to severe torture in the enlistment centre of the Khust district. After this he cut his wrists. The press service of the facility admitted that on March 13 he was detained by border guards and handed over to them, but attempted suicide that same night because he behaved inadequately and took five gidazepam tablets. Logically, after taking five its tablets (many people take this sedative in conditions of war stress), the kidnapped should have been quieter than water instead of banging his head against the wall in hysterics. Apparently, the headhunters just decided that they could get away with it anyway, so just did not bother. But in the case of bodily harm to their colleagues, somehow no one claims that the enlistment officers injured themselves…Yevgen’s hematomas after “beating himself” and attempting suicide in Khust
Photo: su_hanna_/Instagram
In general, nothing surprising that so many recruits escape from the army. As it became known in mid-March from the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine, 4690 criminal cases of military escape from units were opened only in the first two months of 2024. For comparison: in 2022, there were only 6 thousand cases of unauthorised leaving of military units, in 2023 – already 16 thousand. At the same time, only a small part of cases reach suspicion: 24.9% in the first year of a full-scale war and 13.6% in the second. If the January-February dynamics continue in 2024, the number of fugitives will officially amount to more than 28 thousand. The revelations of the Ukrainian military in their conversations:
“4th day from the arrival of all newly mobilised, 4th unauthorised leaving of the unit. In order”
“Our mobist had a record: out of 11 recruits in a month, 8 left without permission”
“After the east, when we were taken out for restoration, the number of unauthorised leaving increased in many times”
“We had up to 10 a week consistently. Some came back, but still”
On the screenshot: a member of the Ukrainian special unit complained at the end of December that drug addicted deserters from the AFU supposedly cheated him out of money in Kharkov. Kremlin propaganda quickly took this story, although they themselves had the same: near Moscow, short before the same New Year, a former prisoner, sentenced to 9 years for robbery and escaping from Storm Z, robbed and killed the 90 y/o father of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church press service
From other side of the front, 21 fighters from the 155th marine brigade of the Pacific Fleet after defeat during the assault on Novomikhailovka in the Ugledar direction (south of the Donetsk region) locked themselves indoors and refused to follow orders. They were threatened with execution. As one of them said, about 150 people died for one forest belt. From their video statement published on February 9:
“They don’t consider us as people. A barrier detachment was deployed – snipers who acted against us, their own. At the same time, we want to write a mass appeal to all authorities so that this will eventually stop. Yesterday 3 assault groups were sent, of which only 3 people reached, no [fire] cover was provided. Those who were wounded had no idea of evacuation – they got out as best they could. People who returned, they were sent back with knifes, without weapons. Our command says that we are meat. No one here considers us to be people. We just want this to stop. To be considered people. We are not meat.”
As reports the Russian opposition project “Go to the Forest,” the number of deserters who turned to them for help increased ten times from January 2023 to January 2024. In January last year there were only 28 of them, that is 4.7% of those who applied. Particular growth began in October: 218 out of 1197 (18.2%). For November there were 174 out of 1481 (11.7%), for December – 253 out of 1426 (17.74%), and January of this year set a record: 284 out of 784 requests, or 36%! The speaker of this organisation, Ivan Chuviliaev, told the “Assembly” in winter that desertion mainly occurs in the Kupyansk-Liman direction. However, the geography is expanding.
Its founder, Petersburg liberal activist Grigory Sverdlin, posted on March 12 the results of their campaign by February 23: “207 people who want to desert have contacted us over the past 10 days. Thank you very much to everyone who helped celebrate our Deserter Day! Who filmed reports and wrote articles – in total there were 186 publications and broadcasts, reaching almost 3 million people. Thanks to everyone who shared posts, conducted excursions, film screenings and lectures in Favor of “Go to the Forest,” and posted our stickers in Russian cities and even army units. Many thanks to the deserters who were not afraid to record video messages to their former colleagues. Thanks to those who donated to us – we raised $9,249, and this money is enough to help about 60 more people.” As Chuviliaev explained to us, these 207 were divided approximately equally between the Svatovo-Kremennaya line (as it was usually) and Avdeevka. It is also noteworthy that in the comments under the posts of this team visitors often draw attention to the need for the same structure for those who refuse to fight for Ukraine. Due to the much smaller size of Ukraine and the ban on travel abroad even for civilians, the chances of success of such an endeavour are slim, and yet, this foreshadows the possibility of stopping the carnage from below!
One way or another, for Ukrainians there is no point to wait until the whole occupying forces run away – until this happens, there may be physically no one left on this side. If even the head of state himself says that he did not warn people from the front-line territories about the full-scale invasion because panic would have set in and the national currency would have collapsed, one can imagine how long this state is ready to win a more favourable negotiating position with someone else’s blood. When the state hopes to survive at the cost of your death, fighting it back becomes more necessary than ever before!
Caption to photo:This yellow Niva has become in Ukraine a truly popular meme of resistance to state terror