Picture: ABC Dresden

Last year, we interviewed the Anarchist Black Cross Dresden. While ABC Dresden is also involved with traditional prison solidarity work, as of recently a major focus for their solidarity work has been Ukraine. We sent them a few questions to ask a bit about why and how. Here are their answers!

1. Can you tell us a little bit about yourselves, how long have you been around and what kind of work have you been doing? What kind of campaigns and what kind of results? How have you been specifically been involved with the issue of Ukraine?

Anarchist Black Cross Dresden exists already for over 10 years. The group was created by a small part of anarchist movement in the city as alternative solidarity structures based from anarchists. We wanted to emphasis the question of prison abolition and alternative concepts towards punishment. We also consider us a group engaged in solidarity work in a broader sense and try to discuss what that could mean in practice. In Germany different anti-repression groups are existing and even though communists and anarchists can be allies in certain struggles, our solidarity work needed to be organized according to anarchist principles with as little influence from authoritarian groups as possible.

From the very beginning apart from taking in consideration repressions in Germany and developing solidarity structures within anarchist movement, we’ve decide to dedicate part of our work to international solidarity work. Because of our location in the east of Germany one of our main focus was solidarity with groups from Eastern Europe. A lot of resources are obviously located in the west and we wanted to support with sharing those. One of the first public events we did was letter writing to the anarchists sentenced to prison in Russia after Bolotnaya protests. In 2014-2015 we also organized several talks with anarchist comrades from Ukraine and Russia presenting the political situation in those countries and trying to fight back increasingly dominating narrative of Russian propaganda within general left circles.

For the past 10 years we’ve participated in multiple campaigns of solidarity with antifascists and anarchists in Germany, collecting money, making info events and organizing demonstrations in solidarity with those repressed. We’ve cooperated with local groups fighting against deportations of refugees by the German state and together we organized multiple demonstrations. Every year together with other anti-authoritarian groups we organize a new year’s rally at the prison in Dresden. We emphasized at the topic of feminist criticism on prisons and organized a annual rally at the women’s prison in the neighboring city. We also participated in multiple international campaigns of solidarity. Our international work allowed us to get in touch with activists from different parts of the world. We’ve cooperated for example on multiple occasions with Anarchist Black Cross Kyiv. That’s why at the time of the full scale invasion of Ukraine we already had a lot of contacts in the country. In February 2022 our work became more visible, but it was a continuation of our internationalist solidarity work.  

2. What is the anarchist movement like in Dresden? You also had the Anarchist Days last year with strong participation from the Eastern Europe and war-affected areas. How did it go?

The Anarchist movement in Dresden has existed even before collapse of GDR, so local community has a long history of anti-state organizing. In 2016 the Anarchist Network Dresden was founded. There we are organizing together with different groups in the city. In the post-COVID years anarchist movement continued to grow in the city with several major events attracting a lot of people from different leftist groups/organizations. Apart from Anarchist Days, 1 of May demonstration organized by anarchist in 2025 attracted around 800 people (together with over 2000 at the anarchist demonstration in Leipzig). 

Anarchist Days was in the last years a week long event in September attended not only by people from the city but also from the region and guests from other cities in Germany. This one week of events is bringing the possibility for people to connect and meet on several occasions again and follow discussions together. Last 4 years we had a weekend cooperation with the local hackerspace. Unfortunataly this cooperation didn´t happen last time. 

But anyway most of the events were attended by a lot of people. And – indeed it had a lot of different internationalist talks including those about situation in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe. This is part of a long lasting tradition of internationalist struggle in Dresden in the anarchist circles. Partly connected with work of our collective, but also partly connected with work of other organizations from the city. The people really appreciate the mix of international topics and practical approaches. For us it was important to bring up the discussion about anti-militarism and war in Ukraine. Because of the loss of interest and the shift inside the movement in Germany towards the German politics of military service and armament, which often excludes the international perspective. But people were interested in the situation and are eager to continue participating in the discussion. We also managed to collect 1200 euro during the event to support anarchists in Ukraine fighting against Russian invasion in different forms. So we believe that the event went very well.

3. ABC in Dresden has had a strong focus on Ukraine and has been a visible actor in Ukrainian solidarity. What has led to this focus for you?

As described above we had connections to the region for a really long time and followed the situation quite closely. When we started to organize in 2014 we faced the situation that some of the biggest leftist organizations in German movement like Rote Hilfe solidarity organization was supporting the war in Ukraine including support of pro-russian forces. They even brought some “antifascists” from Donbass for info events to Germany. An other example is the collective left vision, that produced a movie about the tragic incidents at the union house in Odessa. They were reproducing Russian propaganda, even quoting Russian state TV. So for us it was really important to counter those Russian propaganda. We started to organize events around the topic. 

After the uprising in Belarus failed and repression there increased, it also became clear, that Ukraine was the last space for anarchists from the region to gather. A lot of political refugees from Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan went to Ukraine. And anarchist in the region already discussed for longer how to organize also in a militant way. 

Some weeks before the full scale invasion we met with comrades from Ukraine and discussed what we could do, when the Russians would expand the fighting from the east further. We agreed on support for people who want to leave and for the people who will stay and defend against Russian fascism. 

We did a solidarity banner on 22 February with the slogan “Putin fuck off” in the city center, because Russian military was already gathering next to the Ukrainian border. Then came the morning of February 24, and as we got up, we realized it had become reality. Luckily we were prepared, started the donation campaign, tried to reach out to our comrades, started publishing information and called for demonstrations. We’ve been doing solidarity work until today.

Last October we did a delegation trip together with other people from different anarchist groups to Ukraine. We met a lot of different people and went also to the east of Ukraine to support people direclty affected by the war. (https://a-dresden.org/en/2025/12/23/meeting-anarchists-at-war-a-fairly-long-report-on-our-solidarity-trip-to-ukraine/)

4. What is your outlook on the war more broadly? What would you consider to be implications of a loss or victory not only for Ukraine but even Germany and Europe?

From the very first day of full scale invasion, we made very clear that we are against this war. In modern context being against the war doesn’t mean we support any type of peace that can be enforced onto Ukraine by the western world or Russian empire. Ambitions of Putin to become a Peter the Great of the 21st century is among the main reasons why this war was started in the first place. Attempts of Russian state to wrap their war into ideology of anti-fascism is a clear disinformation campaign to prevent leftist solidarity with people not only fighting but also finding themselves in war destroyed regions. The genocidal approach to the occupation is also showing that the only thing, that stops even further genocidal policies on Ukrainian territories is an armed resistance against Russian army. Putin doesn’t follow any rules. Latest withdrawal of Russian state from conventions against torture is yet another example of cruelty of “russian world”. In this war Ukrainians were lucky to get support from the western states. With different setup of ruling governments Ukrainian people might have been left completely on their own. We also see attempts to present this war as one between NATO and Russia as part of informational warfare to discredit resistance against Russian imperialism in the region and make Ukrainians look like puppets without political believes.

Any type of victory for Russia in this war will have a long lasting effect not only on Europe, but on the rest of the world. First of all the message will be very clear to the other countries with imperial ambitions – you can in fact start expansion wars and get results from those in 21-st century with very limited consequences (political and economical isolation from Western World is very well balanced with closer work with other economical centers such as Beijing). As for ideological victory – Russian victory will give a huge boost to extreme right pro-russian forces all around Europe. And in the places such as Poland or Lithuania the extreme right with anti-russian sentiment will also grow as the war with Russia becomes more realistic. Unlike most of the leftists who believe in consolidate power of NATO, there is a lot of skepticism from the Eastern European activists on the question if western NATO allies will join the war against possible invasion. This again heavily depends on the moment in history. If pro-russian AFD starts to fully dominate German politics, then support of Poland or Baltic countries can be under serious threat. The same goes to other parts of NATO block.

Another side of Russian victory – is further militarization of the western world. As more and more countries will be preparing for possible war with Russia. This militarization can very fast transform from “we need to defend our land” into “we need to show our military might to the rest of the world”, especially with continuation of growth of different types of neo-fascists movements all around the Europe and US. We believe the only successful way of stopping militarization of Germany is actually the end of Russian military ideology. Unless Putin and his surrounding are destroyed, we will continue to drown in further pushes of growing murder industries.

As for what is going to happen in Ukraine – this is hard to say, but for sure even small victory for Russian and continuation of growth of Russian war machine will lead to further militarization of Ukrainian society with reactionary political ideologies taking more place in the society. The failure of anarchists and anti-authoritarian left to create a common front of solidarity with Ukrainian antifascists and anarchists have left the movement at the stage of survival against the Russian extermination machine. So the part loss in the war with more territories passed to Russia will for sure not give a lot of ground for development of progressive political ideas from our point of view.

5. In Germany, the war has clearly not been a simple topic, with Ukrainian and other Eastern European anarchists facing even backslash for their work. Have you had any issues in the broader German anarchist scene?

Unfortunately German anarchist movement apart from couple of organizations failed to create strong connections with Ukrainian and Russian anarchist movement to have an adequate understanding of local political processes. This failure has led to steady decline in support of Ukrainian people in favor of “no war but class war” among many activists. And a discourse that lacks certain perspectives. With the militarization push of the German government and the debate about mandatory military service we see even further decline in any support and a strong shift inside the discussion. Even though we have a complex political situation in our days, people tend to look for easy theoretical solutions based on old anti-militarist stances. In these so-called anti-militarist positions, international solidarity is nowhere to be found. People basically ignore that there is a war going on in Ukraine and a hybrid warfare inside of Europe from Russia already for years and the situation is growing more and more tense.

This ignorant and arrogant attitude result in different strategies: Some have a very clear stance of not supporting any anarchists or antifascists and don’t bother to put any efforts in understanding the situation. Others adopt a top down attitude presuming they know better what Ukrainians should do – like laying down weapons or trying to bring down the regime of Zelensky in Kyiv. 

With that we are facing more and more issues in cooperating with different anarchist collectives and individuals inside Germany. And we are dealing with different problems. One problem is the isolation of perspectives from Eastern Europe and Ukraine solidarity groups. As it happened once again at the bookfair in Berlin last year where all groups, including us were disinvited who are supporting anarchists in Ukraine and this happened actually on several occasions in recent years. So people are creating a space to discuss among themselves avoiding opposing or critical positions.

But it is not only the case that groups are disinvited, there are German activist that spread false information about groups to actively boycott the solidarity work and discredit others. In the past we have been also called militarists for our support of those fighting in the military or volunteer battalions. 

Our attempts to create dialog with those groups have failed on multiple occasions. The last example was an attempt to make a podium discussion with local anti-militarist leftist group that declined invitation to the public debate. We’ve lost long lasting connections with different anarchists groups around Germany. So there is more isolation strategy from those not supporting Ukraine. You could say it’s their choice and problem. But the problem is not only that people don´t care, isolate us and create their “pure anarchist” ideological world. What we are lacking is a serious discussion on how to approach the reality right now. Because there is a war! What are anarchist and anti-authoritarian strategies to deal with war and militant conflict situations? We actually have to discuss this right now before it is too late. It is good to read historical texts and learn from the past, but we also have to adapt them to the present and future. And we are pretty lost if we have supposedly pure theoretical values but can´t act according to reality. We have to accept the fact, that the world is complex our answers need to be complex as well and that also includes endure contradictions.

On the other side we also managed to create more connections with other groups. For example those who are doing explicitly solidarity work with Ukraine as their main political activism. And we are happy to know that there are still a lot of different groups and organizations that are eager to support people in Ukraine in one way or another.

6. Do you have any other greetings for our readers in Finland?

Sure, shoutouts to all our comrades across the river. Our struggle against fascism, state and capitalism is global and believe that only together we can win! Keep up the revolutionary work.