Voices from Ukraine & Russia

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, members of the Tempest Collective have been actively working to build solidarity with the Left, trade unionist, and other progressive Ukrainian forces to defeat Russian imperialism. The effort to build internationalist networks from below, is premised on the democratic right of the Ukrainian people to defend themselves, and to obtain the arms needed to do so, wherever they can get them, while retaining an unconditional hostility to imperialism of all stripes, including the western variety. Our ability to fight for a world free of the binds of the imperialist system will require precisely this type of solidaristic internationalism, and networks and organizations in every country in the world. 

Following a meeting with Yuliya Yurchenko at the 2022 Socialism Conference in Chicago in September, a group of U.S. based leftists, including members of Tempest, decided to work together with Ukrainian leftists (including members of Social Movement / Sotsialnyi Rukh) to build a U.S-based Ukraine Solidarity Network. This video panel event, co-hosted by The Real News Network and Haymarket Books and led by Bill Fletcher, is an early initiative of this Network. Tempest encourages comrades to share this as widely as possible. The event was originally made available on The Real News Network on November 9, 2022.

The Real News Network board member Bill Fletcher, in partnership with Haymarket Books, hosts a panel with Ukrainian and Russian academics.

Yuliya Yurchenko is a senior lecturer and researcher in political economy at the Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability Institute and the Economics and International Business Department, the University of Greenwich (UK). She is the author of Ukraine and the Empire of Capital: From Marketisation to Armed Conflict (London: Pluto Press, 2018) and many other publications, including in Capital and Class and New Political Economy. She is vice-chair of the Critical Political Economy Research Network Board (European Sociological Association), co-coordinator of the World Economy working group, IIPPE, and an editor for Capital and Class.

Alona Liasheva is a PhD candidate in Urban Studies (URBEUR) at University of Milan-Bicocca focusing on housing in Eastern Europe. She is a co-editor of Commons: Journal for Social Criticism.

Ilya Budraitskis writes regularly on politics, art, film and philosophy for e-flux journal, openDemocracy, LeftEast, Colta.ru and other outlets, and teaches at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences and the Institute of Contemporary Art Moscow. The Russian edition of his essay collection Dissidents among Dissidents was awarded the prestigious Andrei Bely prize in 2017.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by manhhai. Image modified by Tempest.