Shorouk Express
Kyiv, February 2025. Andrii has arranged to meet me in a bar in Pozniaky, a district of Kyiv on the so-called “Left Bank” of the Dnieper, the river that flows through the Ukrainian capital. The “Right Bank” is home to the historical and political centre, the most chic and fashionable neighbourhoods, and the seat of government.
Andrii is a 30 year old web developer and a member of Sotsialnyi Rukh (“Social Movement”, SR), a left-wing political movement.
Before the war, the group, which is not a party, was primarily involved in street activism, focusing on labour and rights. Today, the situation is complicated by war, and martial law prohibiting demonstrations, strikes and protests.
“The main problem in Ukraine is that we have no social democratic tradition: social democracy in Ukraine was destroyed by the Bolsheviks and the Russians. The left was traditionally linked to the Communist Party and its satellite parties. After Euromaidan, those who wanted no ties with the communist past, nor with Russia, created SR”, Andrii tells me in English, sipping his chai.
“The situation is complicated. We are in danger, and there is a limitation on civil rights, which is understandable in times of war”. At the same time, the war “has pushed civil society into action: today we have a large number of civic initiatives. And these movements are in constant dialogue with those in power, and this is what saves us, because without this feedback I think the government simply wouldn’t do the right thing”. SR, which supports the soldiers on the front line and the civilian population affected by the war, has for example campaigned for the municipality of Kyiv to contribute more to financing the army.
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“We are well aware that Westerners don’t understand Ukraine. because it is a small, unimportant country and people often think in stereotypes”, but today a greater understanding “can have an impact on lives in Ukraine”.
An effort that has to be “just”
The Sotsialnyi Rukh office is in Podil, a central district of Kyiv, on the Right Bank, where there are numerous restaurants, cafes and bookshops. The space is shared with Pryama Diya (PD, Direct Action), a student union that campaigns for completely free education without discrimination.
Vitaliy Dudin, Dionysii Vynohradiv and Vova Hesfer were waiting for me in the courtyard.
I already knew Dudin indirectly from reading some of his articles in Commons, a magazine of the Ukrainian left. Dudin is a lawyer specialising in labour law and co-founder of SR. Vynohradiv is a philology student member of SR, and a representative of Prima Dia.
Hesfer is an environmental activist. Already at the beginning of February he was particularly concerned about the agreement on the exploitation of Ukrainian rare earths, to which the Trump administration is making the continuation of US military aid conditional. Vova is also active in projects to support those who have lost their homes in the Kharkiv region in the north, where the Russian army is advancing, albeit slowly.
Today, the question of resistance is central, Dudin tells me: “We have received a lot of help from the United States and other Western countries in the name of supporting democracy and fighting authoritarianism. Today this aid seems much more conditional on profit and benefit for the West, and this affects the situation in Ukraine. These conditions prevent us from building for the long term, from developing democracy and pluralistic competition in political life. They also prevent us from establishing solid cooperation with other countries, because everything can change. So the only thing we believe in is that the Ukrainian people should stand united and fight.”
To date, SR has been able to establish a series of political links with progressive and socialist parties and organisations in Europe, including the Nordic Green Alliance, and the Green Left Alliance of Central and Eastern Europe (CEEGLA). As Dudin tells me, the office that we meet in is funded by the Danish Institute for Parties and Democracy with help from Enhedslisten (Red-Green Alliance, Danish eco-socialist party) and the Danish party Alternativet (The Alternative).
The initial groundswell of resistance that the country witnessed following the Russian invasion of 2022 is now at risk: not from the idea that the fighting should be abandoned — none of the many people I spoke to in Ukraine raised this possibility — but from the question of the war effort, which must be “just”.
What does this mean? “In 2024 a new deduction was introduced on workers’ salaries to finance the war effort. It was 1.5 per cent, today it’s 5 per cent”, Dudin explains. “For businesses, everything is almost the same as before. The only segment that has suffered a little are individual entrepreneurs”, independent workers and small-scale self-employed people.
“Workers, farmers, labourers and the working classes are paying a disproportionate price in this conflict. The reforms that have been carried out, such as the deregulation of labour law, have further weakened workers’ rights, obviously destroying what little confidence they still had in the state. Recent laws have reduced social protections and made it easier to fire people, even in times of war. While Ukraine’s existence depends on the resilience and collective effort of its citizens, the government is working to weaken the very foundations of this solidarity.” The speaker is Hanna Perekhoda, historian and member of SR, with whom I spoke before arriving in Kyiv.
“The reality is that the Ukrainian government, by maintaining its neoliberal logic, not only undermines the country’s economic sovereignty, but also jeopardises its social cohesion, a crucial condition for the survival of a society at war. The government is at a dead end. It is trying to wage total war against an imperialist power while clinging to the fantasy of a neoliberal economy. Founded on deeply individualistic social imaginaries and deregulated economies, it is simply not suited to defence needs that require united efforts at all levels of society,” argues Perekhoda.
“This form of inequality is simply terrible”, adds Vynohradiv in Ukrainian, translated by Dudin: “The elite, the politicians, the big businessmen, can leave the country if they want to, and start a new business. And the rest of the population only has obligations. There is a kind of breach of the social contract”.
Today, of course, the pressure on public finances is much greater than it was before the full-scale invasion, Dudin adds: “We have to feed the army. We have to buy weapons. We have to build defence in the south and east. We have to maintain our electricity. We have to rebuild our houses, schools, universities, and hospitals. Where will we get the money? I think this model of, I don’t know, international subsidisation of Ukrainian needs imposed by Zelensky has run its course and is coming to an end”.
An anti-authoritarian movement
The next day I returned to Pozniaky to meet with Solidarity Collectives (SC, Колективи Солідарності), a group of activists that was formed after the large-scale invasion in 2022 to help some of the soldiers on the front and the civilian population. SC identifies itself as “anti-authoritarian”.
Kseniia explains what this means: “Some of us are anarchists; there are militant feminists, progressives, ecologists, left-wingers. Some don’t identify politically, but share progressive ideas in general (LGBT rights, women’s rights, environmentalism, etc.)”. Before the large-scale invasion, “our movement was divided – the typical drama of people on the left, you know?” she tells me with a smile in the local KFC.
It’s 9:20 in the morning, and it’s minus 8 degrees outside. The only place where you can find a coffee is in the fast food chain. The cashier greets me with a big smile, surprised that I don’t speak Ukrainian.
High-rise buildings, mostly built in the nineties, alternate with busy roads. On our second meeting here, I ask about Pozniaky. Kseniia explains that Pozniaky is a working class neighbourhood, whose residents often work on the city’s “Right Bank”.
Here the rents are lower than in the centre of Kyiv (better served by public transport), where the price of houses has exploded over the last three years, reaching peaks that are reminiscent of the most expensive capitals of Western Europe.
When the air raid alarm sounds – several times at night, and sometimes during the day – the public transport to the Left Bank shuts down, forcing those who live there to either sleep in the metro or return home by taxi, at prices that are impossible for Ukrainian salaries. The minimum wage in Ukraine is 8,000 hryvnia, and the average wage is 20,000, which is about 180 and 450 euro respectively.
After the full-scale invasion, part of the Solidarity Collective decided to enlist, while another part of the Collective is dedicated to helping civilians, regularly going to the front lines to support local communities and those fleeing the occupied territories. Another segment of the group is busy learning how to construct drones, programming, flying and delivering them to anti-authoritarian or left-wing soldiers in the various battalions.
SC’s commitment to collecting military equipment is an example of the immense work carried out by Ukrainian civil society to support, in a very practical way, the armed forces when the state is unable to meet their needs.
There are dozens of foundations and hundreds of initiatives to send money to the various battalions (or to the army in general) or to purchase weapons and equipment, to train soldiers…. For example, the Come Back Alive Foundation, one of the best known even abroad, has raised over 14 billion hryvnia (about 320 million euro) since 2022.
SC considers communication to be central to its activity: “For us it was important to show the perspectives of the left, the activities and the stories of anti-authoritarian militants on the front line”. And this for two reasons: to support the country’s resistance efforts, but also to make their voice and their story heard, because war is a particularly and understandably complex issue for those who are active in left-wing groups: “Many anti-militarists in the past, such as the people who accused others of the militarisation of society here in Ukraine, for example, ended up taking up arms, and we try to explain why”.
Historical developments and the current context have created a gap in understanding between Ukrainian left-wing activists and their Western counterparts (though the same could be said for other countries of the former Soviet bloc).
As Perekhoda explained, “for many left-wing activists outside of war zones and dictatorial states, these fundamental conditions – physical survival and basic freedom – are taken for granted. This creates a dangerous blind spot, which regimes like Russia exploit with formidable effectiveness. The Ukrainian left must therefore navigate this environment: committing to the defence of justice and equality, while at the same time participating in the immediate struggle for the physical survival of their society. The challenge is to remain true to one’s values while conducting this dual struggle: resisting an external aggressor and working for a more just and equitable society within Ukraine”.
‘Ukraine isn’t perfect, but it’s the most democratic project that exists in the post-USSR territories. We have rights. We have always fought for these rights. And it was important for us to defend what we have, and to be able to continue to grow this project’ – Kseniia
Today, Perekhoda added, “the conflict has obviously disrupted everything, including the very concept of politics. It is now clear that any political life requires at least two fundamental conditions: staying alive and preserving a certain degree of freedom”.
I finish my coffee before Kseniia can finish hers, but she doesn’t mind. “Why are we in this situation? Because some authoritarian regime decided that we deserved to be occupied? Because we are ‘fascists’ or whatever other excuse they came up with… The motivations were the same for everyone, along with the deeply personal concern for relatives and friends, for the places where we grew up, and for the rights that we have, which have to be defended. These are the things that make the motivation to fight so great. Because we either die, or worse, or we fight”.
“Ukraine isn’t perfect, but it’s the most democratic project that exists in the post-USSR territories. We have rights. We have always fought for these rights. And it was important for us to defend what we have, and to be able to continue to grow this project”, she tells me as she accompanies me to the metro.
Is Europe on the horizon?
The European Union is seen by my interviewees as the only possible way forward for the country, but not without some “buts”: “I believe that before the war Ukrainians had a somewhat fairy-tale idea of Europe, as if everything there was fantastic, without social contradictions. The situation has changed, many are in Europe, and not for tourism. And they see that it is better for many things, but not for others. I also notice that many Western countries are taking a political direction that increasingly resembles what we know here: extreme personalisation and distance from the base, a politics that doesn’t really talk about politics; a politics that has no organisation behind it, but excellent electoral support,” Andrii tells me.
But this doesn’t prevent us from seeing a common horizon: “We need the European Union. We need a greater application of the rule of law, Europe has common institutions and common laws. I don’t believe that Europe is the answer to all our questions, just look at Hungary. But I believe there is a common problem and that we should solve it together”.
For Vynohradiv it’s the same, and he has no illusions. Of course, “it’s a neoliberal Union. But there is still hope that, through greater integration of the states into one, it will be possible to fight on a broader level for the implementation of some humanistic initiatives for the benefit of all. In any case, it is not up to Mr Putin to decide whether Ukraine wants to join the EU or not. It must be decided solely by the Ukrainians and the Ukrainian people”.
Dudin concludes: “The EU is a very complex institution. I don’t know if Ukraine will have any kind of impact on the European agenda. But I think our politicians have already destroyed our welfare system, and they won’t stop there, because the corporations are still not satisfied with the level of destruction of our social rights. So maybe joining the EU will save us from the worst-case scenario, and we will have a kind of red line below which we won’t fall in terms of social, economic and human rights. It could be a tool that protects us”.
When I leave the SR office in Podil, Dudin and Vova accompany me to my hotel, making sure I’m safe on the ice that covers the snowy pavements of Kyiv. As we walked, Dudin told me something that I had to quickly write down on my phone so as not to forget it, as it tells an important part of the story: “The wide popular support and mass solidarity that emerged during the war have shown that participation in political life is no longer a privilege of the upper classes”.
🤝 This article was written as part of the n-ost study visit to Kyiv in February 2025 and published within the Come Together collaborative project
