Note on the Russian-Ukrainian war

Reactions against mobilisation in Russia

(From ”Il comunista”; no. 175 ; December 2022)

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Until now, the Russian authorities have avoided decreeing a mobilisation, believing that it was unnecessary and because they considered the tens of thousands of soldiers (probably 200,000) fighting in Ukraine to be sufficient; this, moreover, allowed them to maintain the fiction that this was not a war but a limited “special operation”. Thus, by not affecting large masses of the Russian population, the war had limited consequences for the political stability of the country. The Western sanctions even served as proof that Russia had been attacked by the US and its allies.

However, the setbacks and casualties suffered in the fighting eventually forced the Russian government to announce a “partial mobilisation” of several hundred thousand reservists (the exact number was not given) at the end of September. Reactions were immediate: demonstrations against the mobilisation were held in more than thirty cities, leading to more than a thousand arrests. These reactions were sometimes violent (burning of recruitment centres, etc.). On 15 October, in a military camp in the town of Belgorod, near the Ukrainian border, two mobilised men of Tajik origin killed more than a dozen soldiers before they themselves were killed; mobilisation seems to have more weight in the peripheral regions which gives rise to strong discontent. In the same camp in August, hundreds of soldiers refused to be sent into combat and denounced their unbearable living conditions in a video (1).

In addition, tens of thousands of people have left the country to avoid recruitment, and are increasingly facing rejection from… many European countries that refuse to let them cross the border. At the end of September, the conditions for Russians to enter the European Union were tightened. The European High Representative for Foreign Affairs said that “if a Russian citizen wants to stay in the EU for more than 90 days, he should not be given a visa”. The Czech Foreign Minister, for his part, said: “Those who flee their country because they do not want to fulfil the obligation imposed by their state do not meet the criteria for receiving humanitarian aid”(2).

The Ukrainian government is pressuring European states to refuse to accept Russians fleeing mobilisation. The Ukrainian ambassador to Switzerland, for example, has asked Switzerland not to accept Russian deserters because they pose a “danger”(3).

Even the government in Kyiv itself is faced with a number of attempts by men to leave the country (which martial law forbids for men between 18 and 60) in order not to be sent to the front: in August, Ukrainian border guards have detained more than 6,000 men who have tried to go abroad since the start of the war (4)…

The bourgeois states may be in conflict or at war, but they are solidly in accord against those who refuse to become cannon fodder.

The response of the proletarians must be class solidarity directed against all the bourgeois states involved in the conflict!

 

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(1) Cf. dailymail.co.uk, 16 October 2022

(2) Cf. www.obsarm.info/spip.php?article409

(3) Ibidem

(4) Ibidem

 

 

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