ARTICLE:
“Russian saboteurs seek to hamper Putin’s war machine:
Anti-Putin activists try to slow down Russia’s war in Ukraine and say they are willing to step up their violence.”
By Niko Vorobyov
25 Jan 2023
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/25/russian-saboteurs-seek-to-hamper-putins-war-machine
On the night of January 4, a section of tracks along the Trans-Siberian Railway in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk region was blown up. The rail line was used by the Russian army to transport supplies to Ukraine.
A photo and video clip of an explosion ripping through a railway bridge were posted on Telegram by an organisation calling itself BOAK, the Combat Organisation of Anarcho-Communists.
According to Ukrainian intelligence, this was the sixth such incident this year after 40 during all of 2022, suggesting that anti-war resistance in Russia is growing bolder.
Since the invasion of Ukraine in February, Russian-occupied territories there have experienced regular sabotage from the Ukrainian resistance. But in Russia and Belarus, a secret network of activists is also doing its best to slow down the Russian war machine.
“We are not only against Putin and the war but also against Russian imperialism and against the existing capitalist system of oppression in general,” a BOAK representative told Al Jazeera by email.
BOAK describes itself as anarcho-communist, meaning it seeks a decentralised society in harmony with nature with a focus shifted away from profit and onto the needs of the people. It rejects all forms of inequality and oppression.
This puts it at odds with Russia’s Communist Party, which embraces Stalinism and enthusiastically rallies behind President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We are disgusted by this fratricidal bloodbath, and we believe only by halting Putin’s aggression we can hope for this to stop and to never happen again,” the BOAK representative continued.
“The government’s defeat in this imperialist war opens up opportunities for the revolutionary movement, giving people the chance to realise how oppressed they were, and what needs to change. We understand that these goals can only be achieved through revolutionary change, and in order to be implemented effectively, it is necessary to have an underground organisation operating using partisan and guerrilla methods.”
Partisans
BOAK and other Russian anti-war groups such as Stop the Trains call themselves partisans after the resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II when fighters hid in the forests of Belarus, Ukraine and western Russia and launched attacks on German forces.
BOAK claims to have been in existence for 10 years, but it said that before the war in Ukraine, it largely spent its time building its network and gathering resources. In 2019, BOAK claimed responsibility for burning down a cellphone tower owned by a Turkish company in Kyiv over Ankara’s incursion into northern Syria.
BOAK says it consists of several dozen cells of various sizes that operate independently, but the central network may help coordinate or publicise their actions. The central organisation follows a horizontal command structure, meaning that decisions that affect everyone in the organisation are made by consensus.
The group locates their targets through open-source websites such as Wikimapia, and posts the results of its work on Telegram along with detailed instructions for other would-be saboteurs. In August, Telegram was fined by Russian authorities for refusing to take down the anarchists’ material.
A favourite target of BOAK is railroads, which the army uses to move supplies to the front line.
“They are the blood vessels that feed Russian aggression,” the representative explained. “It is along them that soldiers, equipment and ammunition are delivered. Stop them, and the Russian army will choke without resources.”
At first, Russian authorities tried to play down the partisans’ activities, blaming derailments on faulty train lines, until Russian citizens started being arrested for committing acts of sabotage.
Other targets have included army recruitment centres, police stations, national guard buildings and the ruling United Russia party’s offices. Since the start of the war, scores of draft offices and government buildings have been set alight, usually with Molotov cocktails, according to the independent Russian media outlet MediaZona.
It’s not clear how many of these fires were directly orchestrated or inspired by BOAK. Some were caused by arsonists of various political persuasions and unaffiliated individuals on their own initiative.
“While we can always be sceptical of claims, what we do know is claims of attacks and proof of those attacks, including photos and videos, are frequent enough that certainly attacks are occurring quite frequently, perhaps several per week,” Jeff Hawn, a non-resident fellow at the New Lines Institute think tank, told Al Jazeera.
“Most, however, have very minimal impact: delaying but not stopping mobilisation of reservists from certain regions and hampering the movement of supplies to the front,” Hawn said “However, from a moral perspective, the impact is much larger. The regime knows the war is making people more willing to fight them directly, and Russian soldiers at the front know people behind the lines are against them.”
Lethal force
Although the group has not yet carried out any assassinations, it is not against the use of lethal force and said it would only target state security officials. It said it takes care to minimise the risk to passers-by by targeting railways near military targets where civilian trains are unlikely to travel.
“We consider the destruction of the oppressors of the people quite acceptable,” the spokesperson said.
Serious doubt has been cast on reports of assassination plots by other groups.
In August, Darya Dugina, a journalist and daughter of ultra-nationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin, died in a Moscow car bombing likely meant for her father. The Kremlin accused Kyiv of being behind her death, but Ilya Ponomarev, an exiled former member of Russia’s parliament now based in Kyiv, claimed it was the work of the National Republican Army (NRA), a secret organisation dedicated to the overthrow of Putin.
However, historian Sergey Radchenko told Al Jazeera that the NRA does not exist.
“Persistent rumours to this effect, when they are not part of some psyop operation, merely point to people’s frustration with the seeming political stability of Putin’s regime and suggest wishful thinking, which unfortunately is not rooted in any evidence,” Radchenko said.
In April, six members of the outlawed National Socialism/White Power group were arrested by security services after allegedly plotting to assassinate TV pundit Vladimir Solovyov, a vocal cheerleader of Putin and the war.
While the neo-Nazis group has thrown Molotov cocktails at draft offices, there are doubts over the official version of events in the supposed Solovyov plot with media reports suggesting the alleged crime scene was clumsily staged.
Hawn said the groups engaged in anti-war activities have a wide range of ideologies and do not have a united vision for a post-Putin Russia, even as they unite against the president.
“It’s hard to see these actions [real or otherwise] being the beginning of something bigger,” Hawn said. “However there is room for escalation.”
“[It] is likely as time goes on, we will see tradecraft improving and a growing effectiveness in attacks,” he said.
Railroad saboteurs have also been active in Belarus. Although it is not formally taking part in the war, the country is being used by Russian forces as a logistics hub.
In Belarus, a number of railway saboteurs have been convicted of “terrorism”, which since May carries the death penalty.
In the last days of December, Putin signed legislation into law that punishes the crime of sabotage with up to a life term in prison; up to 20 years for aiding, training or organising saboteurs; and up to 10 years for being part of a sabotage group.
But BOAK said it is determined to continue its struggle for the overthrow of Putin.
“We understand that such transformations do not happen overnight,” its spokesperson wrote.
Mass detentions in occupied Crimea as Russia openly terrorizes Crimean Tatars
26.01.2023
Halya Coynash
Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group
https://khpg.org/en/1608811743
Mass detentions on 25.01.2023, Both an underage lad and quite elderly people were taken into custody without any justification Photo Crimean Solidarity
33 Crimean Tatars, including a 17-year-old lad and at least two people with serious health issues were detained by enforcement officers in occupied Crimea on 25 January because they had tried to attend a politically motivated ‘court’ hearing. There were no grounds for detaining anybody, yet all (except perhaps the 17-year-old) remain in custody, with the heavy-handed measures clearly aimed at terrorizing Crimean Tatars who refuse to look away when the Russian FSB arrests their compatriots on fabricated charges.
All of the men now in custody had simply arrived at the occupation Kievsky district court in Simferopol where the detention hearing was due to begin against six Crimean Tatars from the Dzhankoi region: 67-year-old Khalil Mambetov; Osman Abdurazakov; Aider Asanov; Ekrem Krosh; Refat Seidametov and Leman Zekeryaev.
The six men had been taken prisoner on 24 January after armed ‘searches’, at which the men’s lawyers were not allowed to be present. These found nothing illegal, expect the ‘prohibited religious literature’ which the FSB officers had brought with them and pretended to ‘find’.
25 January 2023 marks the eighth anniversary since the Russian FSB first launched its conveyor belt prosecutions of Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian Muslims on absurd ‘terrorism’ charges. All those previously arrested, including prominent civic journalists and activists, are internationally recognized as political prisoners, and there is every reason to consider the six men arrested on 24 January as the latest victims of Russian persecution.
A large number of the men arrested, including 17-year-old Amar Abdulgaziev, had every reason to understand why the charges against the six new victims were grotesque. Amar’s father, Tofik Abdulgaziev, is one of the 25 civic journalists and activists, most from the Crimean Solidarity human rights initiative, who were arrested in March 2019 or soon afterwards. Amar was just 14 years old during the arrest of his father yet one of the officers turned to him and said “Your turn will also come. We’ll return for you”.
The words were doubtless intended to intimidate the lad. They failed. In an interview to Crimean Solidarity Coordinator Lutfiye Zudiyeva, Amar explained that he had become interested in the work of civic journalists after his father’s arrest, and he began attending political ‘court’ hearings and filming the treatment of other Crimean Tatars. “I film and demonstrate the injustice being done to them. I have firmly decided to circulate and provide coverage of news so that people know about the repression in Crimea.”
By April 2022, Amar had been fined on absurd administrative charges three times, with his mother also issued a formal warning on one occasion as he was underage.
Amar was seized by Russian enforcement officers outside the ‘court’ in the morning of 25 January 2023, together with another Crimean Solidarity civic journalist, Kulamet Ibraimov. The men used force against Amar, and dragged him away with his hands behind his back. There were no grounds even for his detention, let alone the physical violence against the lad. He was seemingly released much later that evening, but is facing two administrative charges under Articles 19.3 (‘disobeying an enforcement officer’) of Russia’s code of ‘administrative offences’, and 20.2.2 “organization of the simultaneous presence or movement in public places causing a disturbance to public order”. There was no disturbance, nor any disobedience, but this means nothing in Russian-occupied Crimea, and convictions are near guaranteed.
It seems clear that the repressive measures were planned in advance with police vans, Rosgvardia and other enforcement officers at the ‘court’ at 9 a.m.. Ismet Memetov explained while in the police van that he and his companions had entered the ‘court’ building and asked if they could attend the hearing. They were told that it was a closed hearing (which it should not have been) and they left the building, and stood outside.
It was there that officers came up and demanded that they get into the police van. It was claimed that this was to check their identity and that they would then be released, however they and over 30 others were detained and, as of late on Wednesday evening, remain in custody.
In a move of particular brutality, it appears that the occupation authorities are planning to also charge Kazim Ablyalimov under Article 20.2.2 with ‘organizing the simultaneous presence or movement of citizens in public places, causing disturbance of public order.”
The only disturbance was caused by the enforcement officers detaining people, yet Kazim Ablyalimov was forced into a police van. It was there that he learned that his elderly father had died. Instead of being able to grieve and assume his duties as his father’s son in organizing the funeral, he is in detention and, almost certainly facing an unwarranted term of ‘administrative arrest’.
There is a list of all of those detained below, with this clearly including several members of the families of men arrested on 24 January. All six Crimean Tatars taken prisoner then were remanded in custody for the standard two months, with this invariably extended effectively until the ‘trial’ with its predetermined outcome. Russian-controlled ‘courts’ almost invariably do as they are told, even in the case of Crimean Tatar pensioner Khalil Mambetov who is 67 and who is needed at home to provide daily care for his wife who is suffering from cancer.
Detained for peaceful solidarity with victims of persecution
Amar Abdulgaziev (17 years old, and violently detained)
Eskender Abdulkarimov
Kazim Ablyalimov
Abdulyaziz Adzhiumerov
Amet Ametov
Muslim Asanov
Ruslan Belyalov (who has serious health issues)
Dilyaver Ibragimov
Kulamet Ibraimov, Crimean Solidarity correspondent, who was there in a professional capacity
Remzi Islyamov
Lemar Ismailov
Shevket Kiyamov
Enver Kurtnezirov
Shevket Kurtumerov
Rustem Kurzhchi
Nariman Medzhitov
Ismet Memetov
Server Memetov
Serhiy Osmanov
Reshat Paralamov
Seidamet Seitablayev
Sabri Seidametov
Seitkhalil Seidametov
Settar Temirgaziev
Arsen Umerov
Ruslan Umerov
Server Useinov
Yusup Useinov
Yagya Yagyaev
Abdumadzhit Zekeryaev
Aider Zekeryaev
Asan Zekeryaev
Midat Zhalilov