Eastern Europe

Against Putin, back Ukraine

William Burns, director of the CIA, estimates that Russian casualties in Ukraine have reached around 15,000 killed and perhaps 45,000 wounded. Russia has suffered the same number of military fatalities in a few months of war in Ukraine as the USSR in the decade it fought in Afghanistan. A growing number of Russian troops are refusing to fight. For example, Corporal Ilya Kaminsky and 77 other troops from Russia’s 11th Air Assault Brigade have refused to return to the front after four and a half months without leave during which, according to Kaminsky, around 1,000 troops — or half his battalion...

Russia expands imperialist aims in Ukraine

Putin’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, declared to state media outlet RIA Novosti on 20 July, that Russia’s war aims now go beyond the seizure of the east of Ukraine. On 23 July, in Cairo, he went further: Russia’s aim is to remove Ukraine’s government. Attempting to blame the West, Lavrov said Russia would have to push Ukraine’s forces further back as the US had supplied Ukraine with highly accurate, longer-range weapons. The US believes Russia intends to stage sham referendums in southern Ukraine, perhaps as early as September, and then declare the annexation of areas round Kherson and...

Belarus: support the "railway partisans"

International campaigning continues in support of prisoners in Belarus accused of acts of sabotage against the country’s railways in the mass protests of 2020, and in protests earlier this year against Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. In the summer and autumn of 2020 protests and demonstrations swept through Belarus after Alexander Lukashenko, in power since 1994, was declared the winner in an election which international monitors dismissed as one based on intimidation, repression, violence and straightforward ballot-rigging. Workers of Belarusian Railways – a state-run organisation controlled by...

Belarusians resist Lukashenko's military call-up

Only a fortnight before Putin attacked Ukraine, using Belarus as one of the launch pads for his invasion, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko issued Decree No. 34 . Signed off on 9 February, the decree ordered that call-up papers for “active-duty military service” were to be issued to all Belarusian males who turned 18 years of age in the period February-May. But by mid-July the number of conscripts who had responded to the call-up amounted to a mere 6,000 – despite over 43,000 call-up papers having been issued. In part, this mass evasion of the call-up reflects the general lack of...

RMT conference demands release of Belarus rail workers

The July 2022 Annual General Meeting of UK rail and transport union RMT - currently engaged in national strike action to defend wages, jobs and conditions on the railways - passed the following in solidarity with rail workers in Belarus, jailed for taking action in solidarity with Ukraine. Free the Belarus Railway 11 This union notes that: 1. on 19 April 2022, more than twenty leaders and activists of the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions (BKDP) were detained by State Security. At least ten are still in custody, including the BKDP President and International Trade Union...

Political ripples from the war

On 17 June Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev discussed world politics with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg. Tokayev repeated his refusal to recognise the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics in eastern Ukraine, formally recognised by Russia two days before the invasion on Ukraine on 24 February. In January Russian troops had helped Tokayev snuff out a crisis in Kazakhstan. But Kazakhstan has a long border with Russia and a large ethnic Russian minority in its northern areas. Russian MPs then threatened Kazakhstan. Konstantin Zatulin said,...

Online meeting, 6:30pm, Sunday 26 June: Rail and Tube workers fight back

Join us via Zoom at 6:30pm on Sunday 26 June to review the week's strikes, discuss next steps, and make plans for solidarity.

Speakers will include RMT activists from Network Rail, TOCs, and LU.

We'll also be joined by Olga Karatch from Our House, the Belarusian human rights organisation, will...

The landmark novel of Estonian literature

Estonian women landworkers c. late 1890s Len Glover reviews Vargamäe (vol. 1 of the Truth and Justice pentalogy), by A H Tammsaare; first English translation by Inna Feldbach and Alan Peter Trei; published by Vagabond Voices, Glasgow, 2019. Estonian fiction is not that well-known in the English-speaking world and small nations have to shout loudly for their voices to be heard. Considered by many to be the landmark novel of Estonian literature, A. H. Tammsaare’s 1926 book Vargamäe is now, at last, available to the English language reader. Tammsaare (originally Anton Hansen, 1878) was born into...

Belarus: free the Railway Eleven

Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko kept himself in power by rigging elections in 2020 and then using mass arrests and terror against the movement which rose up against him. There are now about 1,200 political prisoners in Belarus, including working-class activists from the independent trade union movement which struck in opposition to Lukashenko. Belarus is closely aligned with Vladimir Putin’s Russia and allowed Russia to invade northern Ukraine in February, using Belarus as a staging post and a base. Tens of thousands of Russian troops were deployed from Belarus. The invasion...

In Georgia, workers challenge a Russian oligarch

Mikhail Fridman is one of the wealthiest men in Russia and a close associate of Vladimir Putin. He was included in the earliest lists of individuals sanctioned by the West for his complicity in the criminal invasion of Ukraine. Among his many investments is a Georgian mineral water company known as “Borjomi” - which is the spa town where the local water has been bottled for more than a century. The sulphurous taste of the water is not to everyone’s liking, but for decades the company has profited from the perception that Borjomi water has certain healing properties. After the collapse of...

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