Special to Workers World
The following is a press release issued on April 24, 2025, by the International Campaign for the Release of the Kononovich Brothers, headquartered in Paris, France.
Freedom for Mikail and Alexander Kononovich!
Renewed provocation by the Kiev regime!
Conference of the Socialist Youth Union in Brazil. Credit: WFDY
For more than three years now, Ukrainian communist militants Mikhaïl and Alexandr Kononovich have been persecuted, imprisoned and harassed and for over two and a half years placed under house-arrest, not for any crime, but for their ideas. Their sole “crime?” Being communists, anti-fascists and campaigning for peace in Ukraine.
This is how progressives are treated today under the Zelensky regime, nostalgic for the war criminal Stepan Bandera, head of the Ukrainian SS Galicia division guilty of the mass murder of Jews, Poles and Soviets during the Second World War.
Accused without evidence, theirs is the daily hell of an open-air prison: GPS bracelets on their ankles, physical injuries, humiliation, police control at all hours, night raids at 3 a.m. … Their lives have become an agony, the risk of being arrested on the street and sent to the front hangs over their heads like the Damocles sword.
Today, April 24, after a visit to the police station for a control [check-in during house arrest], the Kononovich brothers were intercepted on the street by a police patrol and commissioners from the TCC (military recruitment center). The reason? Supposedly for refusing military service.
After a tense hour, during which the soldiers threatened them with their weapons, it took the intervention of a lawyer to secure their release. But until when? Until the next intimidation? Until the next arrest?
We shall not be silenced!
As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the victory over Nazism, the criminalisation of communists and anti-fascists in Ukraine is a reality concealed by the media. It tramples on fundamental rights, and it tramples on the memory of all those who fought fascism, then as now.
Freedom for Mikhail and Alexandr Kononovich!
Freedom for all other imprisoned anti-fascists!
We shall not abandon them!
Down with the fascist regime in Kiev!