Chaired by Theo Russell, the key speakers were: Chris Williamson, former Labour MP; Alexey Albu from Borotba (Struggle), a survivor of the 2014 Odessa Trade Union House Fire massacre; Steve Sweeney, Moscow-based investigative journalist and former Morning Star international editor; John Parker from Solidarity with Donbass and Antifascists in Ukraine (joining from Los Angeles); Phil Wilayto, Odessa Solidarity Campaign (Virginia USA); and members of the Young Communist League of the Russian Federation and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.Speakers from Ukraine and the Donbas were unable to participate due to interrupted internet connections. We reproduce here the contributions of some of the key speakers which can be viewed on the new IUAFS YouTube Channel LAFS2022
Alexy Albu, Borotba
“Dear comrades, thank you for this opportunity to talk about the situation in Ukraine, this is very important not just for me but for the entire anti fascist movement in Ukraine. You should know that in Ukraine elites, thieves and gangsters, hiding behind the war, have continued to make big money from humanitarian aid, trading in arms and Ukrainian land.
“Official information shows that over 41,000 pieces of land and 145,000 hectares, but according to unofficial data published in the Australian National Review US companies including Cargill, Dupont and Monsanto have bought 28 per cent of all Ukrainian agricultural land.
“At the same time there is continual growth of unemployment and poverty, and the Ukrainian parliament passes laws making conditions for the working class much worse. Since the start of the special military operation the national currency has collapsed by 150 per cent.
“Against this background the persecution of dissidents continues. Tens of thousands of dissidents have been arrested by the SBU.
“We know about famous people like the Kononovich brothers, the anti fascist Alexander Matyushenko, leader of the Livitstya (New Dnieper Left) movement, who was kidnapped and beaten very badly. We have many vidoes of him being tortured. We know about Ukrainian poet Jan Taksur, human rights defenders Vladimir Chimeris, or the leader of the Union of Left Forces of Ukraine, Vasily Volga.
“But we don't know about the situation of thousands of others who have been arrested or disappeared, all of whom have been beaten and tortured by Nazis, people who opposed the regime legally, such as posting on social media. If they are unknown their situation is much more dangerous.
“We know that since 2014 the neo-Nazis could shoot ot beat up people without any trial or judge if they didn't like them. Even now, in newly liberated areas the graves of those murdered by Nazis in 2014-15 are being exhumed, and we are receiving new information about the victims of Ukrainian neo-Nazism all the time.
“Comrades, I want to say that this nightmare must end as soon as possible, but this it can be finished only if Western governments stop helping the Ukrainian neo-Nazi government, stop sending them weapons, ammunition and money for this war.
“There is only one way we can finish the resistance of these neo-Nazis in Ukraine. We see that the struggle by the Russian Federation and the Ukrainian anti-fascists is a just struggle. We can see that the sanctions imposed on Russia have had a catastrophic effect on many European countries, including Great Britain.
“The only way we can influence this process is through our united resistance and our united struggle, by explaining to Western society what is really happening in Ukraine. I want to ask you comrades to be more active in sharing information about events in Ukraine, about anti-fascist resistance and the crimes of the Ukrainian state. I believe that if we are more active we can have an influence on Western society to change their foreign policy.
“We only have one way, which is that of the anti-fascists and international solidarity in this struggle. I believe that we will win and that fascism will be defeated, but I would be very happy if you comrades could help us in this process. No Pasaran!"
Chris Williamson, Resist Movement for a People's Party and former Labour MP:
Clearly the case of the Kononovich brothers is an international outrage, in my opinion the imprisonment of the Kononovich brothers should have caused an outcry by the left across the globe, but certainly in the UK but it's been met with silence and I suspect that many people on the left in Britain are unaware of what's happened. People have been subjected to relentless propaganda about the situation in Ukraine, and consequently this case has not surfaced except very much at the fringes.
So it's important at this meeting tonight to try to draw attention to what's happened, and hopefully people who watch this will try to take the message out and bring some pressure to bear about this case to the wider attention of the public, and of course to the policymakers.
Of course we know that the Zelensky regime is an authoritarian regime, a corrupt regime that came to power in a US and EU backed coup - again a situation which most people in the UK are blissfully unaware of.
It’s important that those of us on the left and the Morning Star do a great job in trying to put an alternative narrative out, and it’s really important to all of us to stand up, because I and many others who speak out against the prevailing view are demonised, smeared and referred to as Putin apologists, but we have a situation in Britain where the ruling class is not fit for purpose.
The main political parties in the UK and elsewhere are essentially corporate, war machine political parties. We tried to move the dial when Jeremy Corbyn became leader, but unfortunately that ended in disaster and Corbyn was forced out. Now we’re faced with a situation where a party which is not only on the left in Britain, the Labour Party, is very little different to the Conservative Party, a party which supports the military-industrial complex and neo-liberal economics, so it’s unlikely we’re going to be hearing any dissenting voices from them.
But we’re facing a situation where the British government is spending public money to prolong this war, in spite of the fact that the Zelensky regime is the most corrupt in Europe, in spite of the fact that it’s an incredibly authoritarian regime and opposition parties there have been banned and opposition leaders imprisoned. And the case of the Kononovich brothers is just the tip of the iceberg.
So I think it’s really incumbent on those of us in the labour movement to speak out, and to push not just the political leadership but also those on the trade union side, the trade union leadership and the TUC - where are they on this issue?
They should be speaking out on the Kononovich brothers’ case and the wider issues of this conflict in Ukraine, which should never have started in the first place, which could have very easily been avoided, and could be stopped very easily now. The pressure should be being brought to bear by the wider trade union movement to draw attention to this case and get the message out to the broader public.
We have this cost of living catastrophe that has befallen many people, but the media coverage is like a conspiracy of silence, people aren't making the connections between the sanctions against Russia and the ballooning prices of energy. Of course we know the energy companies are profiteering.
We need to be speaking out about all these issues despite all the abuse we are getting, because if we are not doing it nobody else will, and this situation is only going to get worse. People like the Kononovich brothers are essentially relying on voices like ours to draw attention to their case, to shame the Zelensky regime, because this is a complete travesty of justice.
So people listening to this, members of trade unions and the Labour Party, I would be urging anyone listening to this, certainly trade union activists involved with the labour movement, and members of the Labour Party, if anybody's still a member of the Labour Party - because it's frankly lost any of it earlier commitment to speak up for the working class and the labour movement, but people who are still members of it - it's really incumbent on you on all of us to use your position in the Labour movement and the political movement to bring this case to the fore, so it can hopefully benefit from the oxygen of publicity.
I just want to say it's been a really inspiring meeting this evening, to have such an acclaimed international panel of speakers was wonderful, and it actually merits a much bigger audience.
I host, together with some others, a sort of podcast channel and it would be great if possible to share the contact details for some of those speakers from Russia and from the States, to come on and speak on our Resistance TV at some point.
As I was saying earlier, it's actually incumbent upon us to take an anti-imperialist position - I'm not everybody in the Labour movement does take an anti-imperialist stance - to use our position to raise this issue, to raise political consciousness frankly within the labour movement.
I was appalled, as I'm sure others were who are aware of the march earlier this year, notionally organised by the trade unions, which Paul Mason - who has since been exposed as an asset 0f MI6 - which was supported by a range of trade union activists and branches. We got banners from Unite the Union, we got banners from PCS, banners from Unison, from GMB etc, you got people claiming to be trade union activists walking down the street chanting "Bring an end to Putin's reign, arm, arm, arm, Ukraine".
It was a shocking spectacle, and Paul Mason was quoted as saying he wouldn't rest until he saw Vladimir Putin swinging from a meat-hook in the same way that Mussolini did at the end of the Second World War.
We've got to be raising our voices in the trade union movement, and actually making that connection between what the speakers tonight were saying about working class people struggling simply to put food on the table or to heat their homes, and what will happen this winter.
I think making that connection between these international developments, these imperialist actions by the US empire and Britain and Europe, and this cost of living catastrophe which is befalling millions of people in this country and across Europe gives us a real opportunity to turn the dial in the direction of a much wider anti-imperialist stance.
I think that if people can make that link between some of these international developments and what's actually happening to them, then things could move very quickly in favour of a more progressive and a more socialistic outlook.
So I think to get this message out more widely is really important, and I'd certainly be keen if some of the other speakers would be willing to come onto our Resistance TV channel, and I think we should also be urging other left wing and progressive Media outlets to be talking about this topic more frequently and to bring on some of these international guests.
Because I think it's really interesting to hear from people actually on the ground, who have experience of what's actually been happening in the Donbas and so on, and to have these eyewitness accounts about the actual reality on the ground, because as we know people are being fed a diet of total garbage and propaganda, and we certainly can't rely on the corporate media to give us the reality of the situation.
So just to conclude, it's interesting to note that some of the corporate media are beginning to turn on Zelensky - I don't know if you've seen the Washington Post recently - quite ferocious criticism of Zelensky creeping into the coverage, and maybe the war machine and the NATO establishment have had their fill of Zelensky are looking for a replacement, I don't know, or moving their attention somewhere else.
I think that message of international solidarity is really important, and thanks again to everybody who's spoken this evening, and I think that it's really important that we collaborate like this internationally and to build these links and that international struggle, because that's the only way in my opinion that we will ultimately prevail, and I believe that we can and we will prevail.
Steve Sweeney, Moscow based investigative journalist and former international editor of the Morning Star:
“Moscow is a city still reeling from the cowardly assassination of journalist Darya Dugina. The sensational response to the attack on Salman Rushdie in the Western media, and calls for attacks on Iran, is in sharp contrast with their gloating over Dugina and suggestions that she deserved to die, that her father is a fascist and ‘Putin's brain’, yet another example of the rampant Russophobia across the liberal mainstream media, and even in some left organisations in Britain.
“Dugina had reported from the Donbas, Mariupol and the Azovstal steel plant, and was well known and well loved in Russia, and this is an attempt to silence all of those voices.
“We can compare this to the arrest of Ukrainian journalist and opposition leader Anatoly Shari in Spain - in the EU - where he should have felt safe, and the threat to deport him to Kiev where he could face execution as a ‘traitor’, and with the Canadian journalist Eva Bartlett, whose was lucky to escape a Ukrainian attack on the hotel where she and other journalists were staying. The hotel was then attacked again the next day. This was of course a war crime, it is a war crime to target journalists under the Geneva Convention.
“All these people were on the list of the Ukrainian Mitroverets (Peacemaker) website, which lists hundreds of thousands of people, and is hosted by NATO. People who appear on this list are targeted for execution, we saw this with Darya Dugina, and with Italian journalist Andreo Rochelli, who was killed recently by Ukrainian forces. After history murder Rocheli's photo on the Mitroverets website appeared crossed out and with the word ‘neutralised’ ".
“Added to this is another list based in London, called Molfar, a similar list to Mitroverets, which is directly connected to the Ukrainian government and to USAID, and the notoriously anti-trade union American company Pinkerton. Molfar's website says that ‘enemies of Ukraine will be punished’, and publishes photos, names and addresses of ‘enemy’ individuals, including even children.
“The Communist Party of Ukraine was recently banned and all its assets handed to the government, other political parties and many news organisations have been shut down, and the Kononovich Brothers are very much part of this story.
“They were detained in March, soon after the special military operation started, they disappeared, nobody heard from them for months, and there were fears that they had been killed, we know that they were tortured, threatened and pressure put on them to accept a ten year sentence or face life in prison.
“The evidence against them is incredibly flimsy, this is essentially a Zelensky show trial. They've appealed to MEPs and western journalists to attend the trial and to show the true nature of Ukraine, but of course their calls have been ignored, not a single western media outlet has reported on them.”
“I’d also like to recall the European Parliament motion on totalitarianism, which equated fascism and communism, and triggered an orgy of anti-communism across the Baltic states and Ukraine, such as the Soviet monument torn down this week in Riga.
"Earlier this week the Zelensky government criminalised humanitarian aid, with anyone receiving aid from Russia deemed a traitor with a 15 year sentence, while the Communist Party of the Russian sent its 100th humanitarian aid convoy to the Donbas.
“What’s actually happening is that the Ukrainian forces are escalating their attacks on the civilian population the Donbas republics, including using petal bombs .” ( These are small mines which have been scattered in large numbers in cities such as Donetsk, and have caused numerous serious injuries and civilian deaths).
“We've also heard about the scrapping of union collective bargaining rights in Ukraine, with strong backing from the British government.
“The Kononovich Brothers know that people are supporting them, and are very very grateful for the support from around the world. Their lawyers are passing on all the messages of support to them, but they are part of a much bigger story.
“Thousands upon thousands of people have disappeared, rounded up and tried as traitors. I keep being told by liberal organisations in Britain you should speak to the left in Ukraine, I have done, they're either in prison, they've been killed or they are underground and in hiding, in fear of their lives.
“That's the reality, I've been inside Ukraine and I can tell you thate the people inside those regions are welcoming Russian forces as liberators, that they're not afraid of Russian troops who have brought them food and water, that they're afraid of ukr troops who have threatended them, and of the neo-nazi forces who have destroyed their homes and held them as hostages. The important thing is what do we do about it.
“Back in Britain, class struggle is back on the agenda, largely thanks to Mick Lynch and the RMT, a huge wave of strike action, but to support the Kononovych Brothers we need to politicise those strikes and demonstrations, because we can't just keep doing more of the same, we can't just keep saying that ‘Britain demands better’ or whatever the latest terrible, dreadful slogan from the trade union bureaucracy, we need to take our inspiration from countries like Italy and Greece where they've had national strike action on pay and conditions, but they've linked them to their countries' support for arms flowing into Ukraine, with slogans like ‘lower your guns, raise our wages’.
“We need to be taking resolutions to our trade union branches and making sure that those slogans are the same, we need to make sure that they are linking the economic situation in Britain with the support for Ukraine and the increase in defence spending, with talk now of increasing this to 3% of GDP.
“We need to put pressure on the new Tory leader and Keir Starmer, saying no to militarisation, no arms to Ukraine, and scrap NATO. We need to be taking the Kononovych Brothers struggle from inside Kiev's dungeons onto the streets in Britain, in the US, and across Europe.
“The class struggle is global, we don't work in isolation which is why we have speakers from Moscow, Britain, the US and inside Ukraine. We need to stop the arms to Ukraine, there was a road to peace and there was a road to war. It was NATO, the western imperialist forces which refused to adhere to Minsk 1 and Minsk 2, and the agreements of the early 1990s not to move one more inch eastwards. So we must resist, and we must politicise the struggle.”
Phil Wilayto, Odessa Solidarity Campaign (Virginia USA):
“The central issue here is the Kononovich brothers in the context of the general repression in Ukraine. We've been struggling here in Richmond Virginia with how to reach the general public with the reality of what is going on in Ukraine. Wilayto has been campaigning against wars since 1967 but says "I've never seen a situation in which the media has so completely closed ranks around the official government narrative.
“There are two ways to challenge the media version: one, to point out the cost to working people of billions in aid to Ukraine.
“We are faced with a tsunami of heart-rending humanitarian tragedies in Ukraine, which we never hear about Yemen - the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world - or about the six million facing starvation in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Since 24 February 15 political parties have been banned in Ukraine, and every TV station consolidated into one government controlled station. As of July 2022, 15,000 people have been arrested for challenging the government line, often just on social media. Yuri Tkachev, chief editor of the opposition news website Timer, a mainstream news website based in Odessa, was arrested in March and charged with terrorism. He is not even a leftist, just an ordinary journalist.
“In the US the socialist, left and especially the anti-war movement are in decline, party because people wanted to defend Obama against racist attacks, and failed to challenge the bombing of Libya and Syria or the coup in Ukraine. We also have the rise of non-profit organisations, financed by foundations linked to the Democrat Party, who don't want foreign policy issues raised.
“There is also an offensive by the Justice Department against questioning the official line on Ukraine, such as the 40 year-old anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist African People's Socialist Party. The FBI carried out violent raids on properties in Missouri and Florida using flash grenades and drones at 5 in the morning, including the home of Omali Yeshitela, chair of the party, who was zip-tied while his home was raided. The FBI has accused Yeshitela of "taking orders from the Russians".
“It's a real honour to be included in this programme today, and we commit ourselves to working with you to campaign for the Kononovych Brothers and all the others who have been arrested, and to try to tear away the veil over the reality of what is happening in Ukraine, that it's not a democracy, and that it relies upon neo-Nazis for its operation.
“We will be in the trenches with you, and thank you so much for inviting me to be with you today.”
John Parker, Solidarity with Donbass and Antifascists in Ukraine (Los Angeles). John visited the Donbas region in May and sent several video reports which can be seen on the IUAFS Facebook group.
“Here in LA we're in complete solidarity with the KB. On 25 July Mikhail Kononovich sent a message to the opposition in Belarus, which talks about political prisoners in Belarus but says nothing about political prisoners in Ukraine, including Belarusians like the KBs. That hypocrisy is similar to human rights advocates who allege atrocities by any enemy of US imperialism, but never mention Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people, the US bombing of Somalia, or political prisoners iin the US such as Leonard Peltier or Mumia Abou Jamal.
“In the US almost 50 thousand prisoners are kept in prolonged solitary confinement in cells the size of parking spaces, some for a decade or more. The human rights advocates talk about the lack of democracy in Russia and China, at the same time as the US is using Ukraine and Taiwan as proxies. How many are imprisoned in Ukraine for being socialist or communist?
“The human rights advocates never mention that the percentage of prisoners in the US is five times that in China, and double that in Russia, the highest proportion in the world. While Congress was debating sending $20 billion in military aid to Ukraine, the arms company Lockheed Martin made over £200 thousand in donations to 150 members, while the US government has a debt of $3 trillion. The recent aid to Ukraine is larger than several US government departments, including the Justice Department.
“While the SBU and the Azov Battalion kidnap and assault leftists in Ukraine, in the US agencies like the FBI work hand in hand with white supremacist groups, and many government departments contain white supremacist gangs.
“The working people of Europe are also frustrated at collapsing economic conditions due to their governments' allegiance to US imperialism. We all have the same basic enemy - US imperialism and its puppets in Europe and Ukraine.
“We as a class, the working class, must come together and fight that enemy, and a big part of that battle is to build working class solidarity with our brothers, the KBs. Every Ukrainian embassy in every country should be protected until our brothers are released from the nazi hell that is Ukraine.
Valentin Panferov, Young Communist League of the Russian Federation, CPRF
“You have said many positive things today, not just about the Kononovich Brothers and other comrades but about the situation in Ukraine, the far right oligarchs, bandits and neo Nazis.
“Dear comrades, I represent the CPRF and the Komsomol. YCF of Russia. The persecution of the Kononovych Brothers by the Ukrainian authorities is terrible, but unfortunately not an isolated example. The forces which took power in Ukraine in February 2014 have never hidden that communism and communists are their main enemies.
“During the Maidan takeover in Kiev far right activists beat not only communists but also trade union activists who tried to conduct trade union propaganda on the Maidan Square in Kiev. At the same time these militants attacked the headquarters of the Communist Party of Ukraine, of their own country.
“The current Ukrainian government is a toy in the hands of oligarchs who benefited from a system of reactionary and repressive dictatorship, in which under the guise of the triumph of democracy and the unity of the nation, fascism is being established and strengthened, with communists as their blood enemies.
“We demand the release of the Kononovich Brothers, but will the criminal fascist oligarch regime free them? No. Freedom for them and for the country from fascism and oligarchy can only be given with the collapse of the regime and the establishment of socialism, that's my opinion.
“I also want to mention the despatch of the 100th convoy of aid to the Donbas by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), for which the CPRF received no recognition in the Russian Federation.
“And not long ago we received news that one of our comrades from Pskov, Danilo Vershinin who was an airborne soldier, was killed by Ukrainian forces during the special military operation”.
Tatiana Desiatova, Russian Federation Moscow, and coordinator of the Moscow Communist Interbrigade:
“I wanted to give greetings from the Communist Party of the Donetsk People's Republic (CPDPR) and from Comrade Boris Litvinov(general secretary of the CPDPR), who very much wanted to participate but couldn't because of the situation there. Things are very bad there, there's lots of shelling.
“If any of you comrades go there or who come to Moscow, please get in touch with us, we would be very happy to meet you, to take interviews, to spread information in our mass media. So you are most welcome in Moscow, our comrade Andy Brooks has our contact details, let us meet, this is the only way to overcome our differences and show our solidarity. Thank you very much.”
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