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# Response To An Open Letter From Ukrainian Comrades
- URL: https://aontachtmedia.ie/response-to-an-open-letter-from-ukrainian-comrades/
- Published: 2026-10-19T11:23:42.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-19T12:41:55.000Z
- Description: Fundamentally, the reason for our failures in this regard is due to occasional overcorrection from the fervently militarist outlook of many pro-Ukraine forces in Ireland.
- Author: Alexander Rakhmetov
- Tags: Critical Analysis

Aontacht has recently received an open letter \[1\] from comrades in Sotisalnyi Rukh, a socialist organisation in Ukraine that has resisted Zelensky’s neoliberal domestic policies while continuing to support the struggle against Russian imperialism. The letter accuses the paper of systemically amplifying Russian propagandist narratives about the invasion of Ukraine and platforming people propped up by the Muscovite state security apparatus. It bases this on our coverage of protests by Ukrainian refugees and by us having published Ilya Ulyanov in the past. We will attempt to respond to this letter as two members of the collective.

Given that a very good rebuttal against him was published in Aontacht, we will not dwell on him. Our coverage of Ukrainian protests has, in truth, been dodgy at times. The first example given in the letter is of an interview conducted by Rakhmetov with a small stand in Dublin protesting conscription. No effort was made in this video to portray Russia as innocent, indeed the interviewee was needled about the matter. His responses were unideal and his description of having to live in Ukraine were hyperbolic, but to dress them up as ideal leftist analysis would have been journalistically dishonest. The caption was made by someone else on staff who uploaded it with said caption without consulting with us and really is disappointing in its phrasing even as its core point of opposing conscription is a value shared by all of our contributors.

Fundamentally, the reason for our failures in this regard is due to occasional overcorrection from the fervently militarist outlook of many pro-Ukraine forces in Ireland. In Ireland, the Ukrainians one interacts with on a daily basis are refugees fleeing the war and humanitarian crisis. Many of these refugees are young men eligible for the draft. The prospect of being forced to fight in the war eternally hangs over their heads. Though the struggle to defend one’s motherland from imperialists is just, it is not up to us to decide for someone else that they must spill the blood of themselves and others in such a war. Thus, along lines of [*Autonomous Action*](https://avtonom.org/en/news/anti-war-leaflets-dsitribute?ref=aontachtmedia.ie), we would be sympathetic to all who choose to fight but also to everyone who wants to leave and avoid conscription. As EU bureaucrats [push ever more fervently](https://aontachtmedia.ie/ffg-to-turn-back-ukrainian-men-and-women-fleeing-conscription-at-irish-border/) to send such people back to Ukraine to fight, we feel that to not stand for the refugees and the draft-dodgers would be to put the nation of Ukraine above the Ukrainians themselves. The (horrifically ill-timed) heckling by our colleague László Molnárfi of Mikhailo Baskin and Garrett Mullan, who evaded questions about the draft, at a demonstration about the apocalyptic conditions in Oleshky stems from such a rift.

The unfortunate consequence of this is that in the search for alternative perspectives, one can find some truly dodgy fuckers. The letter accuses the paper of systemically pushing aside the positions of *the* organised Ukrainian left, who oppose Russian imperialism and Ukrainian oligarchy. The trouble is that there is no such thing as unified opinion. Every movement has its cranks and contrarians. “[The concept ‘needing to listen to voices from the region’ does not work in cases of ideological dogmatism](https://freedompress.org.uk/2025/09/02/the-anti-militarism-of-fools/?ref=aontachtmedia.ie),” Nikita Ivansky said. Western leftists often like to hallucinate that it is still 1917 outside and the wars in the region are World War 1\. What this means is that approximations of such an analysis by local cranks in Ukraine provide a certain interest to such individuals. It is not always blatantly obvious. None of us had any idea that any of the actions we covered were connected to Other Ukraine, for example.

The letter ends with three questions:

1. Why do we, supposedly, systemically provide a platform to FSB plants?
2. Why is the mainstream Ukrainian leftist position sidelined in the paper?
3. Are we prepared to correct the record?

The first, as mentioned previously, is answered primarily by us worrying about the plight of the refugees and at times dealing with dodgy opportunists as a result. The second question’s answer is much more banal: not many Ukrainians in Ireland write in leftist newspapers. When they offer up an article we would generally accept it. We were more than happy to publish Olexander Yurov’s scathing critique of Ulyanov’s analysis of Maidan. We were also willing to publish his article about Bohdan Syrotiuk if he agreed to us attaching a disclaimer saying we are against imprisoning draft dodgers. He refused to publish with such a disclaimer and thus the article [never got published](https://aontachtmedia.ie/we-will-not-justify-imprisoning-socialists/), as described in a previous article by April.

So far no other Ukrainian has reached out to publish with us, though we would be more than happy if you change this. Lastly, we hope that this response acknowledges where we have legitimately fucked up and clarifies our positions. We do have internal conflict and differing opinions on these various issues, but there is not a single contributor on our staff who is actually explicitly pro-Russian or sympathetic to Putin.

*\[1\] Sotsialnyi Rukh's open letter to Aontacht below was linked until a few hours ago, until we noticed that the PDF contains leaked personal and passport data of Ukrainians who dared to protest busification in a foreign country from the Myrotvorets website, often described as database of State traitors, linked to Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. This practice is used by the Ukrainian State against dissident citizens, often leading to their subsequent repressions or even murders as in the case of pro-Minsk journalists Oles Buzina in 2015, killed by far-right in 2015 shortly after his home address was published on Myrotvorets. We are also shocked that self-declared Ukrainian leftists did not hesitate to refer to OSINT software used the State-linked actors against their own citizens with different political views for the purpose of deanonimisation and threatening. They made accusations of dissident Ukrainians based on their criticism of decommunisation policy in Ukraine and quoted State security service SBU, which carry out most of the repressions of the Left in Ukraine, which they used as a legitimate source. There is something inherently suspicious about “left”, blaming people for criticism of busification and decommunisation in the foreign state, referring to security service and reinforcing and reproducing intimidation and repression state practices against dissident Ukrainian citizens abroad.*