first of all, we would like to share here two reports about our civil and humanitarian work.
Operation Solidarity took humanitarian aid to Chernihiv while gasoline was still available*. The city has suffered severe destruction and is on the brink of a humanitarian disaster, so almost everything is needed there. We have handed over food and clothes to the people, and are preparing for more trips as soon as possible.
* – Ukraine has an acute fuel shortage because of a Russian missile hitting the Kremenchuk oil refinery plant and destroying oil depots.
https://t.me/solidarnistinua
We donated food to the Lipa cafe, which will turn into free lunchesfor those who need them.
From the first day of the war, the Lipa cafe in Kyiv become a shelter for the teams of two cafes and their friends who decided to stay in the city. Soon the kitchen started working again – the cafe workers began preparing and delivering lunches for the old people, hospitals and the military. Today it’s 500 servings per day!
and we also had a visit from a left-wing newspaper from germany:
Serhii Movchan und Yuri Chernata gehören der Organisation Operation Solidarity an. Das Freiwilligenprojekt wurde von Anarchist*innen und antiautoritären Linken in der Ukraine gegründet und leistet praktische Unterstützung. 1/11 pic.twitter.com/h7SmCN57w7
— analyse & kritik @analysekritik@chaos.social (@analysekritik) May 10, 2022
This has been the name of today’s [09.05.] holiday in Ukraine since 2016, replacing Soviet Victory Day. The photo shows our comrade in equipment given by Operation Solidarity posing with a downed Russian APC at the backdrop.
in addition, the victory over nazi germany was also commemorated in berlin on may 9. at the invitation of the post-east migrantifa berlin, a speech by us was read out there. the memorial of the concentration camp neuengamme had already kicked out all official representatives of belarus and russia to commemorate the day of the liberation of the camp in april. in warsaw, the russian ambassador wanted to take part in a commemorative event, but was greeted appropriately. and there were subversive actions in russia as well – before the parade, the city was covered with anti-war stickers along the route and a brave anarchist commemorated Ihor “Crimean” Volokhov during the parade. here are some pictures:
BerlinSt. PetersburgSt. PetersburgWarsaw
we were also happy to see this soli action from italy – an anarchist collective sells homemade pasta and cultivated artichokes at a market and donates the proceeds to us. the action also includes a different perspective on economy and cultivation structures, so it also includes something of the utopia of tomorrow.
we were able to deliver more important equipment – thanks to your donations.
Operation Solidarity bought some of the most needed devices – two SPECTRA TI 35 thermal imaging cameras and handed them over to our comrades on the frontline. This thermal imager has a range of up to 1.3 km, 12 display modes, 8x zoom, built-in rangefinder, IP67 protection and can work for up to 4.5 hours. Soldiers also received binoculars and six artillery compasses.
https://t.me/solidarnistinua
at pramen an anarchist explained his motivation to participate in the armed resistance against putin’s invasion in an interview, we would like to recommend it to you here.
we also have some media teams visiting us at the moment – you can be curious. here is a little spin off where alexis interviewed jake haran from popular front in our office:
there are more and more reports of direct sabotage and attacks on putin’s war infrastructure in russia. this is a good sign – together against war, imperialism and fascism!
comrade alexis is currently working on the third part of his reportage (the first two parts are highly recommended) – and here is a little spoiler, together with the mysterious anarchist driver:
today we present you the fourth part of the report of our anarchist comrades from hamburg about their work.
the text was written in german, you can find the german version below.
solidarity will win
Przemyśl (Anarchist Solidarity – Part 4)
Wo couldn`t go to Krakow anymore (for more information read „Anarchist Solidarity – Part 3“) and we weren`t able to find reliable structures in Warsaw that would take care of business locally. The people that supported us in Krakow went to PrzemyĹ›l, a town at the border to Ukraine to organize everything there. In a car with nine seats and the trunk full of first aid material to take care of war wounds and other stuff we drove there. It was our first time bringing stuff to Poland. Wo could see how this shitty war is escalating because of the orders that were reaching us. In the beginning bulletproof wests and first aid kits were in demand. Now smoke grenade pouches, Celox, Rangefinder, Combat boots sz.45. (“very important, fighter had shrapnel injury in past years”), Tourniquetes and many more. You have no idea what any of these are? Me neither up until this point. I had to google everything: Smoke grenade pouches are bags for smoke grenades, Celox is a hemostyptic to stop the bleeding of wounds that can’t be stopped by a compression bandage or by a tourniquet, Ragefinder are, according to very weird military websites, “the ideal device for hunters, sport marksman and bow and arrow shooters.”, tourniquets are a “ system to completely stop the bloodflow in veins and arteries. It is after the compression bandage the next best way to stop the bleeding of especially multiply penetrating injuries. I said to my wife: ”I would have never thought that I`d have to provide tourniquets.” She just answered: “Be glad you don`t have to buy those for us yet.”
For our next approaches we followed the usual anarchist four-step schedule: 1. Seeing the problem, 2. procure money, 3. Organise, 4. Action.
After we had a brief idea of what was on the list, we looked into our savings box. We had devided our soli-savings into two funds (like Operation Solidarity later did aswell): One only for medical supplies and the other for the support of anarchist comrads in Ukraine and Hamburg plus tactical supplies. Our savings allowed us to buy at least some of the stuff in need (by far not everything, it`s so expensive!). So, on to the third step, the organisation. To make it short: We learned about a store of that we`d never heard before, in an area we didn`t know of and which had workers of whom we didn`t want to know the freetime activities. But they had many items of our list and apparently we weren’t the first ones to buy supplies for comrads in Ukraine.