On April 19, 2023, Russian citizen Dmitry Petrov and his Irish colleague, Vinbar Kaferkey, who fought alongside Ukraine, died in the fighting near Bakhmut. Greek director Alexis Daloumis spoke of their deaths on social media. The Avtonom telegram channel published an appeal on behalf of Petrov, which he bequeathed for publication after his death. In it, the Russian admits that he is behind the Militant Organization of Anarcho-Communists (BOAK), which has engaged in sabotage and direct action in Russia, Sweden and Ukraine.
Before the special operation
Dmitry PetrovCommittee opposite / Telegram
Candidate of Historical Sciences Dmitry Petrov is a well-known activist in anti-fascist and anarchist circles (pseudonyms Ilya Leshiy, Seva, Lev, Phil Kuznetsov, ecologist), worked as a researcher at the Institute of African Studies of the Russian Academy of sciences, participated in dozens of ethnographic expeditions. During the war in Syria, he took part in the conflict within the Kurdish self-defense units. There he met an Irish fighter Vinbar Kaferkey. Coming home writing co-author with journalist Dmitry Okrest of several books on Kurdistan.
After the anarchist Mikhail Zhlobitsky blew himself up on October 31, 2018 in the building of the Arkhangelsk department of the FSB, Petrov was forced to emigrate due to the interest of law enforcement officials in those who spoke online in support of Zhlobitsky’s actions. Petrov moves to Kiev.
This is where in 2019-2020 a series of BOAK actions take place, which are reported on the website of the Anarchist Fighter organization: arson of a bulldozer in a controversial building, mobile phone towers of a Turkish company (in solidarity with the Kurdish movement), police cars and buildings, including building of the Main Investigation Department of the National Police in Kiev. The action was an anarchist response to the police rape of a woman in the town of Kaharlyk. In the summer of 2020, Ukrainian security forces searched employees of a company that provided anonymous virtual phone numbers to which BOAK accounts were registered, but did not hold the administrator of the Anarchist Fighter.
Dmitry Petrov (right) Opposite Committee / Telegram
As of July 2020, the Fighter Anarchist organization actively covers protests in Belarus from the same moment actions began in Sweden, where they threw paint and burned down the offices of various companies that operated in Belarus and therefore, according to BOAC, supported Alexander Lukashenko.
On May 20, 2021, Petrov’s Moscow home was raided in connection with the Network case (recognized as a terrorist organization in Russia). According to protocol, he came as a witness.
With the start of the special operation, BOAC supporters in Russia sabotaged the railroad and burned the buildings of the military registration and enlistment offices, as reported on their public page.
During a special operation
Soldiers of the 135th brigade of the TRO of Ukraine during joint exercises with the “Right Sector” banned in Russia *Social networks of the 135th brigade
Until February 2022 Dmitry Petrov and associates organized combat group, which was formed in the Kiev region. After the start of a full-scale conflict, the group became part of the 135th territorial defense battalion of the Obukhov region as an “anti-authoritarian platoon”. The backbone of the group was made up of Ukrainian and Russian anarchists, leftist activists and football thugs. One of them was, for example, the former National Bolshevik and now anarchist Alexei Makarov, who had previously lived in Sweden and actively participated in the local anarchist movement.
The unit was commanded by Senior Lieutenant of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Yuriy Samoylenko, a former participant in the anti-fascist movement in Ukraine, a veteran of the conflict in the Donbass (he fought as part of the Golden Gate National Police Battalion).
For four months, the members of the “anti-authoritarian platoon” vegetated in the rear and tried to reach the front, but, as Petrov himself wrote, because of bureaucracy they continued to be kept in back. Thanks to Samoilenko’s connections to the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, he managed to agree on the transfer of the “anti-authoritarian platoon” to the 6th Battalion of the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps “Right Sector” (banned in Russia), which at this time was involved in the front line.
Antifascists are formed on the basis of the “right sector” * in Desneanarchistnews.org
In the autumn, the Samoylenko-Petrov group took part in the counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region. On September 9, the “right sector” carried out a “mopping up operation” in the town of Balakliya, occupied by Ukrainian armed forces, during which a battle ensued. Samoilenko was seriously injured in the stomach and died a day later in hospital.
Members of the ‘anti-authoritarian platoon’ have given numerous media interviews, but have not disclosed their service in the ‘right sector’, which is associated outside Ukraine with far-right radicals . On the contrary, they emphasized their anti-fascism in every possible way – for example, on the day of memory of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova, killed by the Nazis in Moscow, platoon members painted the shells with the inscriptions “For Stas and Nastya!”. Although the same Petrov in his article “Four months in an anti-authoritarian platoon in Ukraine”, shortly before joining the “Right Sector”, praised the organization for its autonomy within the Armed Forces of Ukraine. “Interestingly, after 2014 some far-right groups formed partially autonomous military units. It was the “Ukrainian Volunteer Corps – Right Sector” and the “Ukrainian Volunteer Army” that broke away. Unlike state armed forces, these structures have a certain internal autonomy, a clear political ideology, and are also less bound by bureaucracy when it comes to recruitment,” he writes.
Platoonlibcom.org anti-authoritarian
Judging by the photographs in the networks of the “anti-authoritarian platoon”, Dmitry Petrov and his associates, they fought in the direction of Kupyansk, and then near Kremennaya, from where they were hastily transferred to strengthen the flanks near Bakhmut. There, on April 19, as a result of artillery shelling, Dmitry Petrov (call sign Leshy) and his former comrade in arms, 40-year-old Vinbar Kaferkey, were killed.
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