Vol. 79/No. 8      March 9, 2015

BY NAOMI CRAINE
AND JOHN STUDER
One year after the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych amid sustained mass popular protests against his corrupt, pro-Moscow regime, “people have changed but the system hasn’t,” Alexei Simvolokov, a leader of the Independent Trade Union of Miners in Dnepropetrovsk, told the Militant in a Feb. 23 phone interview.

Simvolokov gave a glimpse of some of the challenges facing working people in Ukraine today as they confront the effects of a deepening economic crisis and attacks on their livelihoods, the spreading separatist war, and attacks on democratic rights. But the confidence and self-worth gained during the anti-Yanukovych protests at the Maidan in Kiev and around the country has strengthened the working class.

“There are more and more problems of workers not being paid, declining production and a lack of jobs, exacerbated by the influx of workers who’ve fled to other parts of Ukraine from the fighting in Donetsk and Luhansk,” Simvolokov said. “Despite the difficult situation, protests are increasing.”

At the large rocket plant that employs 7,000 people, one of the major factories in Dnepropetrovsk that used to produce missiles for the Soviet Union, workers formed a new Independent Trade Union of Labor Protection in January, said Evgenyi Derkach, one of its leaders, in the same interview. “We’ve had four protests so far, of about 500 workers each, fighting for seven months’ back pay.” One of their banners reads, “Don’t reawaken the Maidan — pay our wages.”

After a union meeting Feb. 18, Derkach was lured out of his home and assaulted on the street by thugs who jumped out of a car, beat him and took off. One year after the Maidan protests, “normal people can still be beaten in the street; the same tetushka are still there,” Simvolokov said, referring to the anti-labor thugs that served the interests of the bosses and Ukraine’s pro-Moscow rulers for years. Rocket plant workers are planning another protest for Feb. 25, Derkach said.

The Ukrainian currency has plunged to a record low, which means now “the average pay is only worth $50 a month,” Simvolokov said. “You can’t live on that.”

He said he has less contact with union members in the separatist-held areas, where conditions are even worse. “Those who are working are not getting any pay,” he said. “There are power cuts that leave miners trapped underground without ventilation. It’s very hard there now. I don’t know how they survive.”

Pro-Moscow authorities refuse to allow miners to organize into the independent union there, he said.

Rally bombed in Kharkiv

Other actions were organized by groups that spearheaded the Maidan protests and have remained active since.

At a Feb. 22 rally in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, a large bomb was set off as marchers approached. At least three people were killed, including a leader of the Maidan protests.

There have been about a dozen bombings by pro-Moscow forces in Kharkiv in recent months, but this “was the most brazen and brutal attack yet, the first on a peaceful protest,” Oleksandr Shevchenko, an activist with the Maidan Monitoring Information Center who was at the rally of about 2,000, said in a phone interview Feb. 23.

The cease-fire between the government and separatists in eastern Ukraine, which was supposed to take effect Feb. 15, has substantial gaps. Since separatist forces took the town of Debaltseve Feb. 18 with the help of Russian troops and heavy weapons, the focus of fighting has shifted to the area near Mariupol. A port city of half a million on the Sea of Azov, Mariupol is a center of steel production and also the main Ukrainian city between the Russian border and the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow occupied and then annexed last year.

Ukrainian officials say they have seen 26 Grad missile systems and 36 tanks and armored personnel carriers cross into Ukrainian territory from Russia in recent days. The town of Shyrokyne, just a few miles east of the city, has come under heavy shelling. And tens of thousands of regular Russian troops have gathered near the border.

The cease-fire agreement called for an exchange of all prisoners by both sides. One prisoner exchange, of 139 Ukrainian soldiers and 52 separatists, did take place Feb. 21. Poroshenko had said helicopter pilot Nadiya Savchenko, who is imprisoned in Russia, would be included, but Russian officials insist they will not release her.

Savchenko was captured by separatists in June and kidnapped to Russia, where authorities seek to frame her up on false charges of abetting the killing of two Russian journalists. They claim she provided targeting information to Ukrainian forces after she had already been seized by pro-Moscow forces. While in prison, Savchenko was elected to the Ukrainian parliament.

She has refused food since December 13, protesting her treatment including forced placement in a notorious Moscow psychiatric facility and lack of medical care. She has won widespread support in Ukraine and beyond.

In the name of war necessity, Kiev is taking anti-working-class measures that undermine democratic rights. In Dnepropetrovsk, the government closed a TV station they said was pro-Russian.

“How can they say the government respects rule of law and democracy when it does this?” said Simvolokov. “Freedom of speech is very important. In our protests we have a sign that says, ‘It’s impossible to prohibit freedom of speech.’”
 
 
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