2022-04-19 19:08:22
Ukraine War video dispatch: North-Eastern European anarchists respond to the Russian narrative
This is the first of, hopefully many, video and written reports from Ukraine and around produced for Freedom by film-maker and journalist Alexis Daloumis. Alexis spent last few weeks in Kiyv, and previously you may have heard of him due to his other production, Belkî Sibê: A Journey Through The Syrian War and Rojava Revolution. (zb)
As I am writing these lines, life has returned back to Kyiv and the city is functioning with an increasing resemblance of normalcy. The war has moved to the East and Kyiv is no longer under siege. The streets are full of people. More and more shops, bars and restaurants are opening up for business and the soldiers scattered throughout the city in numerous fortified checkpoints seem much more relaxed than a mere couple of weeks ago. The curfew was loosened to 22.00-05.00, instead of 21.00-07.00.
When I first arrived here three weeks ago, the city was an absolute ghost town. The streets were empty, and there was an eery atmosphere of suspicion and dread. Sirens were wailing regularly and back then (unlike now) this actually caused concern. The controls at the checkpoints were thorough and often overzealous.
I travelled to Kyiv to produce coverage of the activities of Operation Solidarity and the Resistance Committee/Antiauthoritarian Unit. This, however, was the culmination of a much broader exploration into a widespread international mobilization of anarchists and anti-authoritarians in support of the resistance to the invasion. Particularly though, in support of these two aforementioned antiauthoritarian structures, as civil and military branches respectively.
In coordination with various networks of solidarity, I travelled through Poland and eventually Ukraine, conducting interviews and gathering material to produce an alternative coverage of the situation that gives voice to the anarchists in the region, creating more space for a discourse that revolves around the views and approaches of our comrades rather than the persistent over-focusing on the role of Nazis in this conflict (however real that may be, on both sides mind you).
I passed from Warsaw, Poznan, Warsaw again, Krakow, Rzeszow, Lviv and Kyiv. This first piece of reportage is a dynamic cross edit of the interviews of more than a dozen anarchists and antifascists talking about the causes of the war and responding to the rhetoric of the Putin regime in regards to the reasons and aims of the invasion.
These interviewees are the very last people that anyone can consider nationalist and that gives their testimony a particular value, extending beyond the scope of Anarchist and far-left audiences, to anyone who is looking for a more sober and even “objective” locally grounded approach to the unfolding events, beyond the control of any corporate or state media, Eastern or Western.
Alexis Daloumis
2.9K views16:08
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