"Surely, we do not agree with his fanciful political positions. First of all, we do not consider the parties to the Russian-Ukrainian war as proxies (see our position in more detail <https://t.me/spalakh_ch/15>), because Ukraine is waging a war of national liberation against the background of the inter-imperialist confrontation between the Russian Federation and NATO. Among others, there is a fiction about the involvement of NATO and the GUR in the terrorist attack in Crocus (Moscow), because in fact terrorists from ISIS were involved there. Such ridiculous statements are exactly what got him under the article. But we focus on the injustice for which he was convicted: for verbal criticism of the authorities and opposition from the "left". For the same reason, repressions can affect a wide range of left activists, including Spalakh. His usual telegram correspondence with comrades from Russia was passed off as "*communication with the Russian special services*", which is an unacceptable accusation.
Bohdan Syrotyuk was chosen as a target for the SBU because he was almost the only left-wing activist in his town of Pervomaisk. He was a Komsomol member there for a long time and a former member of the Communist Party of Ukraine, and therefore had an "unclean record" for repressive bodies actively engaged in the so-called “decommunization”. In this way, they want to condemn him not for treason and not for connection with the Russian special services, that's just a cover, but for his consistent position of criticizing the Ukrainian government, which is unacceptable in a country that supposedly defend freedom of speech, as the Ukrainian "liberal" government claims, but in fact is ready to arrest people solely for their words. Bohdan faces up to 15 years in prison. Given his own weak health and the dependence of his grandmother on his help, this is an inhumane sentence equivalent to death. We call for solidarity from all progressive forces of Ukraine in the fight against repression, irrespective of all political differences!" Quoting from https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/europe/repression-of-marxists-in-ukraine/ "Few Ukrainians have spent as many years of their life fighting authoritarianism as Volodymyr Chemerys. The sixty-year-old Ukrainian human rights campaigner’s record of activism reads like a history of Ukrainian protest: the 1990 “Revolution on Granite” against Soviet domination of the country, today dubbed the “first Maidan”; the 2000–2001 “Ukraine without Kuchma” protests targeting an independent Ukraine’s later, similarly repressive president; founding human rights bodies that monitored and gave legal aid to the Euromaidan protesters in 2014; and fiercely criticizing <https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/totalitarian-tendencies-in-post-maidan-ukraine/> Ukraine’s post-Maidan establishment and the growing menace of the far right that came with it. When the Russian invasion began, things kicked up a notch. In July 2022, officers with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the country’s chief law enforcement and domestic spy agency, entered Chemerys’s home, broke one of his ribs, and seized his electronics. (Chemerys provided *Jacobin* with medical documents from July 2022 documenting a fractured tenth rib). His crimes, according to the “official warning” he received after the visit, included “his openly pro-Russian position,” “criticism of the activities of the Ukrainian authorities” during the war, and denying Russian aggression against Ukraine by portraying the war since 2014 “as an internal civil conflict.” “Political persecution of leftists and other dissidents has not become something new since February 24, 2022,” Chemerys says. “It’s just that since February 24, they have acquired a larger scale.” ... The Hunt for Traitors One of those Telegram channels <https://t.me/s/repressionoftheleft> was “Repression of the Left and dissenters in Ukraine,” which from its creation on March 15 documented the deteriorating state of political freedoms and human rights in wartime Ukraine. “Charges of state treason and collaboration are often trumped up and used as a form of political repression without any evidence of actual treason and collaboration,” says Katchanovski. Some of the cases highlighted in the channel bear this out. On April 14, Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation announced <https://web.archive.org/web/20220414093324/https:/dbr.gov.ua/news/dbr-vikrilo-ochilnika-frakcii-partii-opzzh-mariupolskoi-miskoi-radi-na-mozhlivomu-spriyanni-kraini-agresoru> it had taken into custody a Mariupol city council member and leader of the local OPZZh branch, charging he had spoken “in favor of restoring economic ties with Russia” prior to the war, and “that on the eve of the military invasion, the collaborator on his official page in Facebook wrote a call for the overthrow of the current Ukrainian government.” The latter is a highly questionable interpretation of the culprit’s February 22 post <https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2022/04/14/7339516/>, which read simply: “The authorities that failed to restore peace in Ukraine and reintegrate the Donbas must go.” A week later, the SBU announced <https://ssu.gov.ua/novyny/za-dva-misiatsi-sbu-neitralizuvala-ponad-250-potuzhnykh-kiberatak-zneshkodyla-desiatok-botoferm-i-zablokuvala-50-tys-akauntiv-u-sotsmerezhakh> it had “neutralized” the Workers’ Front of Ukraine in Odessa, a Marxist organization founded in late 2019, charging the group was “coordinated and funded by the occupiers.” Though providing no evidence for that charge, the SBU cited as among the group’s subversive activities the printing of “anti-Ukrainian materials,” trying “to spread the forbidden communist symbolism with calls for the resuscitation of the Soviet Union,” and planning “mass rallies.” The outlets <https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fOCpdiSkog8J:https://www.ukr.net/news/details/odesa/90954608.html&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nz> reprinting <https://suspilne.media/231169-v-odesi-zatrimali-ucasnikiv-prorosijskogo-ruhu-robitnicij-front-ukraini-sbu/> the SBU’s charges added that the group had also written “anti-capitalist posts.” They pointed to one published in the war’s second week, which lamented that the war had rehabilitated Ukraine’s oligarchs and political elites while strengthening reactionary extremists, and that it wouldn’t have happened without the “diligent efforts of both domestic and foreign big capital.” The organization told *Jacobin* that the member detained in Odessa was released, and that accusations of Kremlin links are a “way to discredit the organization” that “was used before the war” to widespread ridicule, but has become more effective since the invasion. Drawing particular <https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/11/22/anti-imperialist-youth-intensify-campaign-to-free-kononovich-brothers/> international attention <https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/greek-communists-submit-new-urgent-question-eu-over-ukraines-kononovich-brothers> has been the arrest and prosecution of communists Mikhail Kononovich, leader of the KPU’s youth wing, and his twin brother Aleksander. Ethnic Belarussians with Ukrainian citizenship, the brothers were accused <https://www.facebook.com/SecurSerUkraine/posts/311870461039871> by the SBU of working for both Russian and Belarussian intelligence and of holding “pro-Russian and pro-Belarusian views.” The Kononoviches say that the accusations are fabricated and politically motivated and, in a recent statement <https://vk.com/wall-147972908_971>, charged that they had been beaten and tortured while detained for seven months, stating that “now in Ukraine, ‘communist’ means death.” Before the war, they had campaigned <https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/ukrainian-young-communists-lead-campaign-against-zelensky-land-sell-off/> against Zelensky’s push to allow private sell-offs of Ukrainian farmland and sparked controversy <https://hromadske.volyn.ua/volyns-ki-braty-komunisty-vidsviatkuvaly-novyy-rik-vdoma/> for a variety of views, including advocacy for the rights of Russian speakers and against fascist movements in the country. They’re far from the only leftists targeted. In March, a Telegram news channel approvingly posted <https://t.me/dnepr_operativ/12011> images of an alleged “saboteur” being arrested in the Dnipropetrovsk region. The figure was identified as left-wing activist Oleksandr Matyushenko. In the past, Matyushenko has charged <https://liva.com.ua/lviczya-novyie-dneprovskie-levyie.html> that “after Euromaidan, the right[-wing] consensus fully dominates Ukraine,” and that government and right-wing opposition “compete with each other in anti-communism and xenophobia.” He has also criticized <https://liva.com.ua/ihor-kolomoyskyi.html> far-right militias like the Azov Regiment and the oligarch bankrolling them. One of the photos of his arrest shows a man’s hand hovering over a bloodied Matyushenko, holding the Nazi-inspired <https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/azov-battalion-drops-neo-nazi-symbol-exploited-by-russian-propagandists-lpjnsp7qg> Azov emblem. Matyushenko’s wife later told <https://www.jungewelt.de/loginFailed.php?ref=/artikel/423834.krieg-in-der-ukraine-stundenlange-pr%C3%BCgel-und-dem%C3%BCtigung.html> the German left-wing newspaper *Junge Welt* that SBU members had entered and searched their apartment, confiscating computers and other property, while another man in military uniform — the one brandishing Azov’s emblem — spit in her face, cut her hair with a knife, and beat her husband for hours. The two were later taken to SBU headquarters, she said, where officers interrogated them, threatening to slice off their ears. Kharkiv activist Spartak Golovachev, a critic of the Ukrainian government who had earlier been detained for taking part in anti-Maidan protests in the region, was likewise reportedly <https://novorosinform.org/ukrainskie-siloviki-pohitili-harkovchanina-spartaka-golovacheva-91555.html> arrested in March, when he was delivering humanitarian aid to local residents. His last Facebook post said <https://vk.com/wall2251316_10481> simply that people were “break[ing] down the door armed in Ukrainian uniform. Goodbye.” It echoed the final post <https://t.me/dadzibao/7106> of Odessa-based newspaper editor Yuriy Tkachev (“They have come for me. It was nice to talk”) before *his* March arrest by the SBU. A prominent blogger attacked <https://ms.detector.media/trendi/post/28366/2021-10-25-tsentr-protydii-dezinformatsii-sklav-perelik-telegram-kanaliv-yaki-prosuvayut-prorosiyski-naratyvy/> in the past for spreading “pro-Russian narratives” — like backing <https://suspilne.media/249432-sud-u-spravi-odeskogo-redaktora-prorosijskogo-sajtu-tajmer-perenesli-cerez-vidsutnist-tehniki/> the 2014 anti-Maidan protesters in Odessa and investigating far-right involvement in a deadly 2014 fire <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qDtDZlg3nY&t=2190s> there that left dozens <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/02/ukraine-dead-odessa-building-fire> of them killed — Tkachev was initially accused <https://nv.ua/odesa/glavreda-odesskogo-taymera-privlekayut-k-ugolovnoy-otvetstvennosti-za-rabotu-na-okkupantov-50220597.html> of “high treason” for allegedly producing <https://focus.ua/ukraine/509859-za-mnoy-prishli-v-odesse-sbu-zaderzhala-zhurnalista-yuriya-tkacheva> “combat propaganda in the interests of the Russian occupiers” and giving out sensitive military information. Yet the evidence <https://culturemeter.od.ua/odesskogo-zhurnalista-zaderzhala-sbu-podozrevajut-v-shpionazhe-i-gosizmene-132825/> supposedly <https://culturemeter.od.ua/odesskogo-zhurnalista-jurija-tkacheva-vypustili-iz-sizo-sbu-136451/> backing this charge is tenuous at best: screenshots show Tkachev asking members of his Telegram channel for information about what kind of fighting, if any, was happening where they were located.... https://jacobin.com/2023/02/ukraine-censorship-authoritarianism-illiberalism-crackdown-police-zelensky Michael Pugliese > > > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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