Ukrainian refugees report on the war and the fight for Bogdan Syrotiuk’s release
Last week, reporters from World Socialist Website He spoke to Ukrainian refugees in front of the “Ukraine Arrival Centre TXL” in Berlin-Tegel. They spoke about the campaign to release the socialist anti-war activist Bogdan Syrotiuk, who was imprisoned by the Zelensky regime, and the NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, which has been going on for over two years.
Over a million refugees from Ukraine live in Germany, more than in any other country except Russia. In the reception center, the refugees, most of whom are working class, live in inhumane conditions that belie NATO war propaganda about the supposed defense of “democracy” and “human rights” in Ukraine.
Most refugees are traumatized. Many women came to Germany without their husbands to give their children a life without war and are now fighting to survive here. Men over 16 are no longer allowed to leave Ukraine due to war mobilization.
The overwhelming majority of refugees want, above all, an end to the war. Many supported the WSWS campaign to free Bogdan and the call for a unification of Russian and Ukrainian workers.
Andrey* is 17 years old and comes from Zaporizhia in the south of Ukraine. He and his family live in a hotel in Tegel because they still have no accommodation. His mother works as a cleaner and his father as a delivery driver. Both of them have a hard time, says Andrej, also because they still don’t speak German.
The family came to Germany from Ukraine in 2023 to prevent him and his younger brother from being drawn into the conflict. Now even young people as young as 16 or 17 are being forced into the war.
Many of his friends are still in Ukraine, says Andrej. They survived, “but the bombings are of course heavy.” The Ukrainians, says Andrej, want the war to finally be over.
When asked by the WSWS about Bogdan’s arrest, Andrei said:
If a man is against the war, then of course I agree with him. I would also like to get involved. I don’t know how the people who see this will react. But everyone agrees that we will help the person who is against the war. We will all help and support him together and make sure that the war ends.
Although Andrei was influenced by the war propaganda of the Ukrainian government and NATO, he was impressed by the prospect that the workers of Ukraine and Russia can and must unite against the war. “That’s what I hope,” he said, “when the workers unite. When they unite, it will be good.”
Larissa* comes from Dnjepr (Dnipro) in eastern Ukraine and worked there as a beautician. She has been in Berlin with her daughter for six months. She fled Ukraine to give her child a better life after her mother had already come here. She said:
It’s hard to be there for a small child in this situation. I don’t want to put a strain on his psyche. I want him to grow up mentally healthy. And it wouldn’t hurt him to get to know and see other perspectives.
Her husband is still in Ukraine. The situation there has become very difficult. She told the WSWS:
The electricity is constantly out. In such an environment, in such a situation, it is difficult for people to work. Sirens sound every day, there are battles on the Dnieper, in Zaporizhia, in Kharkiv every day. That is the entire crisis area, something happens there every day.
There are also many refugees in Ukraine itself, reported Larissa. “Not everyone can go abroad, not everyone has the opportunity to leave. People come from neighboring cities, they try to make ends meet somehow.”
Larissa described in detail the terrible conditions under which refugees now have to live in the accommodations in Berlin:
The conditions are completely unhygienic, everyone is constantly sick, which means that the children are constantly sick too. You constantly need medication. Everyone gets the same meal, and children, the elderly or individuals with allergies are not taken into account.
For example, my child has allergies. I have already been to the doctor, brought certificates, shown that I need at least something, at least a separate container so that I can wash myself and cook for the child. I have to pay a certain amount for food every month. But my child doesn’t eat there. So I have to shoulder additional expenses. I have to go shopping.
Most people have been living here for two years and the situation is becoming increasingly desperate, says Larissa:
People like us live here, with children, whose children are learning German, who are learning German themselves in order to work later, who are looking for an apartment, gathering all the necessary documents – we sit and wait. There is a confusing queue.
Above all, she expressed her wish that the war would end. “We all live in the hope that the war will one day end,” she said. “Who wants war? Nobody. Everyone wants peace.”
Larissa agreed that the war was fought primarily in the interests of the Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs, as well as the NATO powers. She said:
Unfortunately, this has always been the case throughout history. Even if you look at what the people at the top have for their own goals, there is a lot we don’t know.
When asked about Bogdan’s arrest and the state of “democracy” in Ukraine, she said:
To put it bluntly: people who have their own opinions are always somehow forced into a mold. They are somehow judged, unfortunately something happens to such people. Nobody takes our opinions into consideration. There is only one plan of action that everything follows. We are simply victims of what happens.
Tatiana* is a seamstress from Kharkiv. She has been living in a refugee home with her small child for three months. Before that, she spent six months in the Tegel refugee camp until she lost all her belongings in a fire at the beginning of March.
“My child ran away from there with nothing,” she said, “just a pair of pants, a pair of sports shorts, a sports shirt and a hat. That was all we had left. Our passports and documents were all burned.”
She has now received new documents and new clothes from the employment office, but she still cannot find an apartment. She says:
They just don’t assign you accommodation. They tell you you’re in the queue. You ask which queue you’re in. They say the computer decides. You can look it up on the computer. But you can’t look anything up there. It’s some kind of system that decides everything.
She originally came to Berlin “because I have a small child to save. We come from a border town, we live very close to the border (to the areas claimed by Russia).”
She said that at the beginning of the war, a Russian plane dropped a bomb on a nearby kindergarten. “Our windows were blown out and all the doors were blown away. Luckily, my mother and husband were on the other side of the apartment, otherwise they would have been blown up.”
She then fled with her child.
Tatjana reported that she had worked as a seamstress in Ukraine. Her husband, who is still in Ukraine, worked as a door maker before the war, but now has to commute from job to job. “Fortunately,” she said, he has not yet been drafted.
She described in detail how the Zelensky regime is forcing Ukrainian men to go to war:
It’s terrible. They’re just taken away by force from the streets. And why? Because there are people who consciously want to go to war, while others may not be ready. Besides, there is already a lot of information about what it’s like at the front. There aren’t enough weapons. They have to buy everything themselves. Soldiers say they need 200,000, 300,000 or 400,000 hryvnia (4,600 to 9,200 euros). They have to buy everything themselves. Nobody here has that much money.
She agreed that there is no democracy in Ukraine:
That’s how it is at the moment. Of course, everything used to be different, even if not 100 percent, but now there is no democracy at all and no one has any rights.
Men are simply picked up on the streets. They are forced into cars and minibuses to fight. Workers of all trades are fighting, but the military police are on the streets intercepting people. Why is that? Shouldn’t everyone be fighting? … And of course the rich are not fighting on the front lines.
When WSWS reporters asked her about the perspective of the unification of Ukrainian and Russian workers for which Bogdan is fighting, and explained to her that the war is being fought in the interests of the Russian and Ukrainian oligarchy and the imperialist powers, but not in the interests of the workers of both countries, Tatyana replied:
There is some truth in what you say, but it is also the case that people in Russia go to war even though they don’t have to. I understand that some of them are forced to do so. But because they say they are our brothers. We woke up at 4:30 in the morning and they started bombing us. Why did they come to us to fight? I can’t understand this. They (the workers of both countries) were not enemies. But now it will take a long time before Ukraine maybe somehow gets back on its feet, because so many children, husbands and sons were killed. It is difficult to forget, to understand, to forgive.
At the end of the discussion, WSWS reporters stressed that the current war was ultimately a consequence of the destruction of the Soviet Union by Stalinism and that the socialist traditions of the working class, which have a very long history in both Russia and Ukraine, must be revived. There is also resistance to the war in the Russian working class and the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists led by Bogdan Syrotiuk has members in Ukraine, Russia and other successor states of the Soviet Union who are fighting to unite workers against the war.
Tatjana was very open to further discussion of this perspective and thanked us warmly for the discussion.
Finally, when asked about the genocide in the Gaza Strip and the preparations for war against China, she stressed:
Of course I am against any war. Absolutely against any war. And against any oligarchic president who supports a proxy war like the one we are currently waging.
The discussions with the refugees make it clear that resistance to the war and the Zelensky regime is growing rapidly in the Ukrainian working class, but that it lacks a socialist perspective. This is precisely why Bogdan Syrotiuk, who is fighting for this perspective, was arrested. This makes it all the more important to make the campaign for his release as widely known as possible and to build a socialist anti-war movement in the working class.
Sign the petition and demand his release! Share the information about his case on all social networks and discuss with friends and colleagues! Contact us and support the fight for Bogdan’s freedom! For more information, visit: wsws.org/freebogdan.
* Name changed by the editors.
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