Vladislav Iurchenko (“Pirate”)
The year 2024, hard and bloody, has come to the end. It is time to sum it up. In the past year, as throughout almost the entire full-scale war in Ukraine, we have been working in two directions: formation of an organized anarchist guerrilla struggle in Russia and Belarus and attempts to fight the Russian occupiers in Ukraine in more organized forms.
Regarding the first point, we can say that the Lukashenko regime accused in the propaganda film “Children at Gunpoint: Recruited by the Enemy” a group of arrested young anarchists and revolutionaries “Black Nightingales” for receiving money from us. We will not comment on these accusations.
We have already written about our attitude to the “Black Nightingales” and the heroic revolutionary Maryia Misiuk, dedicated to our common cause. Let us say it again: we are proud of Maryia’s moral fortitude, we wish her and all the comrades to stay strong. We consider it necessary to provide them with support through ABC-Belarus, express solidarity in other ways, and fight for their freedom.
Anarchist and revolutionary Maryia Misiuk
The anarchist guerrilla struggle in Belarus and Russia, although it does not currently have the desired scale, has not died out. We call on all comrades who are ready for action to contact us. With concern for your safety, in an equal dialogue, through training in the necessary methods of conspiracy, if you are not familiar with them, we will find ways and methods to be active. The dictatorships of Putin and Lukashenko are not eternal, their collapse can be much faster than it seems at first, as the sudden fall of the Assad regime in Syria has shown. The future is not predetermined, the revolutionaries shape it themselves with their actions. Therefore, join the struggle! Do not forget about the Revolutionary Anarchist Fund which is created to help the guerrillas.
We note also such a negative trend as discrediting partisan resistance through using of voice phishing to deceive and involve elderly people into committing “illegal” actions. We could observe a wave of such arson and other similar radical acts in Russia in recent weeks. It is highly likely that they were orchestrated by the Ukrainian special services. From the anti-regime point of view, it is completely unclear which goals these actions are intended to achieve. The actions of deceived, desperate people will not lead to any critical destabilization. But they obviously erase the line between ideologically motivated partisans and victims of swindlers in the eyes of general public. As a result, the idea of militant resistance loses credibility in the eyes of society. As we noted earlier, the use of voice phishing for involving elderly people in “partisanship” was proudly recognized by the Rospartizan project. Therefore, we believe that comrades with anarchist, leftist, left-democratic beliefs should not cooperate with it. We also do not recommend interacting with all sorts of “curators” and committing combat acts for monetary payment. Coordination of revolutionary guerrilla struggle should be carried out through interaction with other revolutionaries, and not through contacts with shady projects and individuals whose goals may be very far from revolutionary. You can contact us by mail bo-ak@riseup.net
Another field of our work were attempts to organize in Ukraine, to increase the recognition of the anarchists in the Ukrainian resistance. The revolutionary line in this field of work was formulated by our martyred comrade, one of the founders of the Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists (BOAK) Dmitry Petrov in his article “To Be an Independent Force”:
“Anarchists, who realized themselves as creators of revolutionary politics here and now, can afford themselves the luxury of interaction with ideologically alien forces (for example, various fractions of the Russian and Belarusian opposition) and state institutions (for example, the Armed Forces of Ukraine). Since instead of the “sale of principles” and assimilation to unfriendly figures and structures, the expediency and forms of such cooperation will now be determined by healthy political pragmatism — accordance with the interests of the Libertarian revolutionary movement. What helps to develop our structures, to increase our recognition, experience and skills, increase the number of contacts, that serves the final incarnation of our ideas”.
At the very beginning of the full-scale invasion, with Dmitry Petrovs active participation, the Anti-authoritarian Platoon was created inside the Territorial Defense forces of the Kyiv region. In the summer 2022 this unit ceased to exist. But attempts to organize anarchists in one collective unit did not stop. The long efforts of Dmitry Petrov in this field gave a result. In the spring of 2023 he and the group of comrades received green light from the Ukrainian military command to create such a structure under the condition of successful implementation of the assigned combat mission. The 19th of April 2023, Dmitry Petrov and two other internationalist comrades, Finbar Cafferkey and Cooper Andrews, became martyrs in the assault actions near Bakhmut. As we know, there are no anarchist units in Ukraine now.
One of the founders of the BOAK Dmitry Petrov
In the year 2024, the work of the comrades related to the BOAK were concentrated, among other, around the “Siberian Battalion”, a unit in the Armed Forces of Ukraine consisting of mainly Russian citizens with anti-Putin beliefs. In January last year, an interview with our comrade Alexej Makarov, who fought in this unit, became quite widespread. Now the comrade gets rehabilitation after an injury. In February last year, another our comrade came to Ukraine through the “Siberian Battalion” — a dedicated supporter of the BOAK Vladislav Iurchenko (“Pirate”). Despite the opportunity to convey thought media (even big Russian opposition and Ukrainian mainstream media) to a relatively wide audience their ideas, the comrades did not have any kind of autonomy within this unit.
Vladislav Iurchenko (“Pirate”)
The 9th of August 2024 Vladislav Iurchenko became martyr when Ukrainian sabotage groups tried to land on the Kinburn Spit. “Pirate” was not the only one who was killed. The “Siberian Battalion” suffered very heavy losses in this battle. Vladislav became martyr a little more than a month before he turned 23 years old, at the very beginning of his revolutionary path. The comrade will always live in our memory and our struggle. Martyrs are immortal! Şehid namirin!
It is worth to note that Russian regime media, commenting on the death of Vladislav Iurchenko, “recorded” him to the “Russian Volunteer Corps” (RDK). It is a lie, and this lie is very easy exposed. The leadership of the RDK threat their own media resources with very big scrupulosity but they have never mentioned the participation of the “corps” in the landing on the Kinburn Spit. The “Siberian Battalion” and RDK are subordinated to the Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) and the press service of the GUR listed the “Siberian Battalion” among the units involved in this raid, but said nothing about the RDK. Why did the Russian propaganda lie in a such primitive way? Perhaps because it is more difficult for Putin regime to confront on the ideological front a military project with a gloss of left-wing and anti-colonial ideas than Neo-Nazis from the political leadership of the RDK. Then, why a such military-political project wasn’t established during this war? Is it because the Ukrainian neoliberal state which stays very far from anarchist, left-wing ideas and, in general, from ideas of social justice, has no intentions to contribute to spread of the antagonistic ideology and to advance of the organizational level of its opponents? Because the inability of anarchists to organize, in our weakness and small numbers? Because the incompetence of separate representatives of the Ukrainian military bureaucracy? To answer this question requires a more deep analysis, and perhaps this answer (and perhaps, and most likely, even more than one or two) will be presented someday.
However, the idea of creating an anti-authoritarian unit is still alive. In September 2024 it was announced that several comrades from the Resistance Committee had gathered in one mortar platoon and invited people to join them. Unfortunately, there has been no news recently about the further development of this project.
These are some of the results of the past year. Keeping the memory of Dmitry Petrov, Vladislav Iurchenko and other martyrs, we will continue the struggle in the new year, 2025. What it will be like depends on us!
Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists
Anarchist Militant
Current mirror of latest articles and news from site in English: https://boakeng.noblogs.org/
Cudi