A critique of the political strategies of the 'Union of the Post-Soviet Left' (PSL) and the coalition 'Peace from Below', as well as their allies among the the Meninist movement/Manosphere, by an anarchist, poet and feminist living in Ukraine.


Текст доступен на русском языке по ссылке.


My name is Galina Rymbu. I am a poet, translator, feminist and anarchist of Moldovan-Romanian and Ukrainian origin. I was born and raised in Western Siberia, in the company town of Chkalovsky in the city of Omsk. My father is a former locksmith, for the last 17 years he has worked as a loader in a grocery warehouse; my mother is a former high-school biology teacher, who has recently switched to selling jewelry and hair clips. Between 2009-2017, I lived and studied in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where I read literature and political philosophy, created independent projects of poetry and culture, and engaged in left-wing student and feminist activism. In 2018, my son and I moved to Ukraine, to Lviv, where I still live, and I am a precarious teacher of writing and literature.

Most of my life has involved my transnational family and I being simultaneously exposed to discriminatory and xenophobic discourse and Russian propaganda narratives. I am still learning to think differently, and trying to form an internal defense against the disinformation that often comes from my former home, the disinformation that people living in Ukraine can encounter in the most unexpected places and forms. Therefore, I study language and ways of thinking, and continue to write poetry. I criticise myself. And I learn to trust myself and my cultures again.

On the night of October 4-5, Russia launched another large-scale missile and drone attack on the peaceful, sleeping cities of Ukraine, and one of its largest attacks to date on Lviv. Me, my son and our relatives took refuge in the basement of my building. The explosions didn’t abate for 5 hours. For all of those 5 hours, my son and I stood, huddled together, under the “bearing beam” of the basement ceiling. Lately, we’ve decided we’re more likely to survive standing there if a drone and a rocket hit our house and the upper floors collapse. We listened as the drones buzzed continuously over our heads, and our air defenses tried to shoot them down with regular machine guns.

After a night like that, I could certainly cosign the demands for “peace” made by Ukrainians and Russians that spoke at a large anti-war left congress on October 5 in Paris, as well as by Liza Smirnova (Russia, the “Peace from below” Coalition) and Andrei Konovalov (Ukraine, “Union of the Post-Soviet Left”/PSL), at a thousands-strong rally. Their speeches were accompanied by rapturous standing ovations, and received the support of representatives of leftist parties and movements from 19 different countries. On social media, however, the speeches sparked discussion, because they were based around calls to limit military support for Ukraine, as well as using recognizable, strongly emotive theses that largely overlapped with the narratives of the Russian regime. I watched videos of Konovalov and Smirnova’s speeches the day after the missile attack and realized that it wasn’t just a matter of disagreeing with their demands on Ukraine’s allies — I also felt their words as a continuation of the same missile attack through other means.

I do not know Andrei Konovalov, but I know Liza Smirnova well; we studied together, were active in the same literary communities, belonged to the same left-wing organizations and activist circles, and fought for and held dearly the same values and ideas. I appreciate her poetic work, and the effort she takes to protect and give voice to oppressed groups — women, low-income people, social and service workers. But I can see for myself, defining myself as a left-wing and political poet, that woven into Liza’s speech is something that could have concrete, material consequences for the lives and worlds that I hold dear. That’s why I found it particularly difficult to listen to these speeches. That’s also why I felt that the main outcome of paying attention to the positions of “Peace from Below” and PSL, and the result of expressing my personal political agency when confronted with it, would be to express my disagreement.

My position

In many ways my views are close to those of left-wing anti-authoritarians and anti-fascists who fight for Ukraine’s freedom, and against the Russian regime. They are not close to the idea that an immediate reduction in any arms supplies to Ukraine or political support for the country (in the absence of any clear prospects of negotiations or suspending hostilities) could lead us to a speedy peace.

I also think that even the most extreme position of “appeasing the aggressor” (which is close to what some Russian and European leftists believe) cannot exclude the need to distinguish between offensive and defensive arms. I think that, even if you hold this position, it is impossible — upon witnessing the scale of massive drone and missile attacks that Russia is carrying out on peaceful Ukrainian cities, hitting energy infrastructure on the eve of a cold winter — to say that we are brought closer to peace by reducing the supply of air defense missiles and other means of combating Russian missiles and drones, on which the lives of peaceful Ukrainian residents still heavily depend.

I do not think that the Russian armed forces, which are now storming Ukrainian cities and villages, can lead a revolutionary transformation in the Russian Federation if they receive the support of the EU (Liza’s speech emphasized this idea in particular). It seems to me that when talking about possible transformations and strategies of resistance inside Russia, it is important to look at the personal and political choices not only of those people from the poor classes who became combatants in order to “aid their material situation.” In fact, I would say it is extremely dangerous to shift our political focus to only that choice.

Institutions of violence, coercion, and propaganda in authoritarian regimes are usually arranged in such a way that at some point it becomes critical to talk not so much about the forced participation of the vulnerable classes in their reproduction, but also about non-participation as one of the possible strategies of political resistance. As my friend, poet Nikita Sungatov, rightly pointed out in an online discussion, it is important for the Russian left today to notice not only those Russians who go to kill Ukrainians “due to poverty”, but also the political choices of those who choose not to, despite poverty and the active promotion of contract service among destitute layers of the population. I think about my father, who chooses not to do this. Of course, there are also those Russians who also choose grassroots and underground methods of resistance, like Ruslan Siddiqui. Or join the struggle of Ukrainian anti-authoritarians, like Dmitri Petrov, Aleksey Makarov and other Russian leftists and anarchists. Or they work as allies and volunteers in a number of different networks of grassroots solidarity with the Ukrainian resistance. Or they create their own alternative networks of solidarity and support for political prisoners, for the exchange of political opinions and reflections on forms of disagreement with what the regime is doing, and so on.

Every day I see Ukrainians of various political views resist Russian military aggression, defend their right to independence, their right to a voice and to visibility; I see them critically reviewing their history, their cultures, their political institutions; I see them organising social movements, protests, grassroots mutual aid networks, despite the extreme conditions that war creates for everyone here (without exception).

And, of course, I was disturbed to hear how in the speeches of the leaders of 'Peace from Below' and PSL, Russia’s war against Ukraine is presented only as a war between two “imperial forces” (on the one hand — the United States, "the West", and on the other — the Russian Federation), who simply cannot agree with each other. Despite the fact that this rhetoric has been declared “anti-imperialist”, it seems to me that, in fact, it may well rhyme with the imperial ambitions of one side, since it excludes Ukraine as an equal political subject and invalidates its political agency.

Anti-colonial wars have never been dreams full of pink ponies; for many countries and peoples they were a difficult struggle, in which a ray of hope was not always visible. In a world where empires still exist, those peoples who struggle for independence from invaders are always forced to seek either situational or longer-term “strong” allies. An empire cannot be defeated alone. Suffice it to recall how the USSR, which also pursued a consistent imperialist policy, often served as an ally to those peoples in the 20th century who fought against their direct colonizers. Of course, both the USSR and the peoples leading the anti-colonial armed resistance had their own pragmatic reasons (which, obviously, did not always coincide). It’s much the same today: a country that has been waging a long, debilitating anti-imperialist struggle, having barely attained its fragile independence, may have its own strategies and tactics in a difficult game of survival.

The left-wing view of Ukraine as a “NATO vassal” seems to me more than just problematic. That view says nothing about entire networks of cultural and political contacts between Ukrainians and other countries that have experience of colonial resistance. It says nothing about left-wing internationalists from different parts of the world who are now on the front line and protecting people (perhaps not only Ukrainians) from the Russian military machine.

I also agree with Zižek (although I am still critical of most of his political statements and decisions), who for the past few years has literally called on the broad left to “wash itself in cold water” and begin to live and think strategically in the reality we live in. Perhaps that’s not the world we dreamed of. Perhaps it’s a disaster for us. But the reality is that we need to start living in the space of that disaster and learning to navigate it. That is all that could give us hope for the future. It’s difficult "gameplay".

In this “open world game” I see how alarming rhetoric can be if it creates a one-dimensional image of Ukraine as a “satellite of the West”, completely incapable of independent decisions or of fighting a liberation struggle. After all, in fact the opposite is true — Ukraine still exists precisely because at certain historical moments it made the most difficult decisions on its own. I do not think that those who defend Ukraine’s right to its own subjectivity and to armed resistance are automatically the “party of war” or “leftist pro-war liberals”, as 'Peace from Below' and PSL try to present them. These groups manipulatively ascribe a sadistic and cynical pragmatic politics to the positions of their political opponents.

No peace can be achieved by a deft reversal of the logic of victim and aggressor, or by putting pressure on the victim. I also know that many people do not like victims who fight back and resist by any means. 'Peace from Below' and PSL have given voice to the sharpest narratives of Russian institutions of influence and soft power, by fostering an image of Ukraine as a non-independent country, held hostage by “imperial forces” who want to “fight to the last Ukrainian” by taking all of the money of EU residents, while that money is needed for the construction of schools and hospitals. I understand all too well how these narratives can capture the “left imagination”, to the extent that I myself grew up and lived under their influence for a long time. This is not a view “from the outside.”

I wanted to respond to Smirnova and Konovalov, and give my own position as well.] I thought I could do it in online debates with the leaders of the 'Peace from Below' coalition and PSL, which some college students offered to arrange. But since I have not followed all of the platforms and organizations of the Russian left in exile for the past few years, I did not feel confident enough, or prepared, for such a debate. So I decided to study the 'Peace from Below' and PSL programs, and their anti-war activities and positions, in order to better prepare for our discussion.

On the "Ukrainian direction" of PSL and 'Peace from Below’s' activities

PSL is a platform that emerged in 2023 in order to unite left-wing Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians in exile. It actively cooperates with leftist organizations within the EU, with a distinct focus on the “anti-war agenda”, and has two main cells in Germany and France. The 'Peace from Below' coalition acts as a PSL-affiliated initiative designed to develop a “left formula” for achieving peace between Russia and Ukraine that could be useful to the broad European left.

As I kept trying to understand how the anti-war agenda of these organizations was structured, I saw that there were things that disturbed me at least as much as my concern over the influence and pushing of disturbing narratives about suspending military aid.

On the PSL website, I got acquainted with the resolutions entitled “PSL’s position on the Ukrainian regime” and “PSL’s position on the Russian regime”; I read reports and materials about the holding of the “Left Emigration Forum” in Cologne on November 2-3 2024, co-organized by PSL and subjected to a wide range of left criticism while it was still being organised. It was precisely there that "Peace from Below" was established. Alexei Sakhnin (one of the former leaders of the "Left Front", a Russian political strategist and ideologue of the Ukrainian Stalinist, neofascist organization "Borotba") and Liza Smirnova presented the project on a stream of Boris Kagarlitsky’s channel Rabkor as "a company that brings PSL to life" and which shares "conjoined communities" with PSL. One of the leaders of the French cell of PSL, Andrei Demidov, also spoke about the fact that “Peace from Below” is one of the initiatives organized under the aegis of PSL.

Alexei Sakhnin and Andrei Konovalov state repeatedly on a Rabkor stream that one of the most important areas of their work is advising the German and French left parties “on the situation in Ukraine” and helping them to develop a strategy and “position on the war”. In their recent article, Sakhnin and Smirnova set out the “anti-war” program of “Peace from Below”, which also envisages seeking political “allies among Ukrainians” to “achieve peace between the brotherly peoples.”

On a stream on the YouTube channel of the Russian Communist Party of Internationalists, the leaders of PSL’s French and German cells, Andrei Demidov and Alexander Voronkov, also talked about the “Ukrainian” and “anti-war” directions of their activities. Prior to his conversation with leaders of PSL, Sergey Krupenko, host of the broadcast and member of the Central Committee of the RKP (I), described Ukraine as a “puppet state”.

On the same stream, Andrei Demidov said that in March 2025, PSL leaders had taken part in parliamentary hearings in the National Assembly of France, convened at the initiative of the largest left party in the country, La France Insoumise ("France Unbowed"), opposing arms supplies to Ukraine. This party was founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who took third place in the 2022 presidential election and supported the Russian annexation of Crimea. He has repeatedly been criticized on the left for his loyalty to Putin and his calls to put pressure on Ukraine.

Mélenchon provides support (including financial support) to Alexei Sakhnin and his associates personally, as well as PSL and the Peace from Below coalition, presenting their initiatives as "the entire left opposition of Ukraine and Russia" to his supporters. During the 2022 presidential election, Mélenchon and his supporters broadcast Sakhnin’s speeches to French voters, effectively presenting him as the “leader” of the Russian left opposition. This, of course, does not correspond to reality — many well-known representatives of the Russian left opposition will under no circumstances cooperate with Sakhnin, and try to distance themselves from all his initiatives. On a Rabkor stream, Sakhnin also says that he advises Mélenchon on "complex ceasefire questions".

At hearings of the French National Assembly, Andrei Konovalov and Alexei Sakhnin presented the demands of “Peace from Below” and agreed with the delegates of La France Insoumise to create a permanent bilateral “working group” to convey their expert opinions on Russia’s war against Ukraine and strengthen “channels of influence” on the left in France.

The PSL website has only one report of their activities for the second half of 2024. This report describes a series of rallies that were held and co-organized by PSL in November-December 2024:

“In November, we took part in the action organized by Russian liberals in Berlin, putting forward our own agenda. On the same day, we co-organized a rally against the lawlessness of the TTsK [state conscription service] in Ukraine. At the end of December, our organization, with the support of sympathetic citizens, held four more actions in Cologne, Paris and Berlin in support of Ukrainian deviationists and Russian deserters.”

I was interested in this series of rallies, because, when discussing the results of the Forum in Cologne on Rabkor, Alexey Sakhnin (a member of the “Peace from below” coalition, long known for his extravagant interest in Ukraine), declares that the coalition’s program is now politically closest to the “ukhilyant [draft-dodgers] movement” and deserters on “both sides of the front”, and that those deserters constitute the ‘anti-war entity from below’ at which the coalition’s activities are directed.

Andrey Konovalov (a member of the “Peace from Below” coalition and one of the leaders of PSL) also talks about “working with ukhilyanty” as one of the main directions of his activity. He lives in Cologne, runs a political YouTube channel in German and is actively engaged in establishing cooperation with the leading left parties in Germany. In one stream on Rabkor, Konovalov says that before his departure from Ukraine he was a supporter of pro-Russian political figure Anatoly Shariy, that he wasn’t interested in left-wing ideas, did not maintain ties with any Ukrainian left-wing organizations, and at the moment does not contact the left in Ukraine, because they cause him “itchy, unpleasant sensations”. In the discussion that arose in the wake of Smirnova and Konovalov’s speeches at a rally in Paris, comrades from Ukraine also made it clear that they were not familiar with this activist or his ideas.

No open sources can confirm that Konovalov’s previous professional background was connected to legal assistance or human rights advocacy, or that he possesses any specific competencies in this field. However, since 2023—2024, Konovalov has been conducting public “human rights activities” on the PSL platform, engaging in the “defense of the rights of Ukrainians” and the “rights of Ukrainian men” within European political institutions. The PSL website features a report on his speech at the Council of Erope in June 2025 and his participation (together with Sakhnin) in the discussion of a Council of Europe resolution “on the topic of the war in Ukraine.”

In a Rabkor broadcast devoted to his speech at the October 5 rally and the debate on arms supplies, Konovalov also stated that he is preparing “charts for a presentation at the UN” on “unauthorized abandonment of military units, ” as well as personal forecasts (also for the UN) regarding the growing number of deserters in Ukraine. He also mentioned his intention to convey to major German parties such as Die Linke and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance the position that “arms deliveries serve neither the interests of the Ukrainian people nor the interests of the Ukrainian state.”

Recently, Andrey Konovalov spoke on behalf of PSL at the 60th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. There, he talked about “militarism” and how “democratic values are being destroyed” in Ukraine. In a statement dated October 29, 2025, regarding Konovalov’s speech at the UN, PSL’s official pages emphasized that “representatives of the Permanent Missions of Ukraine and Belarus to the UN” were anonymously present at Konovalov’s address and “expressed interest in the work being done by members of our organization.” After his speech, Konovalov met with staff members of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, provided them with his reports, and agreed that he would henceforth prepare reports for them and directly submit his documentation of “human rights violations in Ukraine.”

Konovalov’s closest “colleague” Sergey Khorolskyi, with whom he has organized rallies “against dictatorship in Ukraine” and “for men’s rights, ” is also highly interested in “communication channels with the UN, ” something he regularly talks about to his followers in the manosphere.

On the PSL platform, political activity aimed at ending European arms supplies to Ukraine is also carried out by Viktor Sydorchenko, the author of an eccentric article titled “The Ukrainian Field of Experiments, ” published on the PSL website. Viktor Sydorchenko is a citizen of Ukraine who has been residing in Germany since early 2022. He was a member of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU), as well as secretary of the Kharkiv City Committee of the CPU and head of the ideological department of the regional committee of the CPU. In 2012, he also ran as a candidate for parliament from the CPU in the elections to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.

Already in 2014 — immediately after the Revolution of Dignity — Sydorchenko became an activists in Kharkiv “AntiMaidan”, and one of the organizers of the March rallies of the so-called “people’s militia” in Kharkiv, where he demanded the holding of a referendum and “full economic and cultural-historical autonomy” for the Kharkiv region (that is, the creation of the so-called “KhNR” — by analogy with the “DNR” and “LNR”).

These rallies were organized by the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU), the pro-Russian organization Borotba, as well as by far-right organizations and movements such as Russ Triyedinnaya (“Tri-unate Rus”), Russkiy Vostok (“Russian East”), Velikaya Rus (“Great Rus”), and Oplot. Their main slogans included “Yes — to the union of brotherly peoples, ” “Kharkiv demands a referendum, ” and others; the protesters held Russian flags and chanted “Berkut, ” “Russia.”

In 2014, reflecting on the activities of the CPU as being based on “Great-Russian chauvinism, ” Ukrainian anarchists wrote in materials published on the Nihilist platform that:

“In recent years, their program was hardly distinguishable from the textbook program of any ultra-right party. The Communist Party of Ukraine consistently advocated for the introduction of the death penalty and the restriction of the rights of sexual minorities, pursued a Tatarophobic policy (and where it had real local influence — for example, in Luhansk — also a Ukrainophobic one), supported Orthodox clericalism, and appealed to antisemitic sentiments. The newspaper Kommunist published racist articles in which African Americans suffering from unemployment were called idlers, and the shootings of striking workers in Kazakhstan were welcomed as a ‘struggle against imperialism.’”

Many leaders of the red-brown movement “Borotba” also came from the Communist Party of Ukraine (СPU) and worked under the supervision of the Russian political strategist from Putin’s administration Vladislav Surkov. Among them were Aleksey Albu, who called for the deployment of Russian troops in Odesa, and Oleksandr Fedorenko, known for his participation in the brutal attack on unarmed Ukrainian anarchists and the Ukrainian poet Serhiy Zhadan on March 1, 2014 (Zhadan was struck on the head by comrades of Sidorchenko for refusing to get down on his knees before them). Viktor Sydorchenko and Oleksandr Fedorenko are co-founders of the charitable foundation Angel. It is impossible to determine the nature of this foundation’s activities from open sources.

It is important to note here that the Russian “left-wing” political strategist Alexey Sakhnin, is one of the ideologues and “political designers” of the Stalinist and pro-Russian movement Borotba (which was created on the basis of the Communist Party of Ukraine’s “youth section”). 

After Borotba and the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU), having allied themselves with pro-Russian neo-fascists, became organizers of violent attacks on anarchist activists during the Revolution of Dignity and organizers of the Anti-Maidan (which was also supported by Russian intelligence services and paramilitary groups that came to Ukraine from Russia), Alexey Sakhnin acted as the main advocate and “promoter” of these organizations on the international leftist scene.

In numerous interviews with European left-wing media, Sakhnin presented Borotba and the CPU as “left-wing dissidents” and “anti-fascists” allegedly subjected to “repression” in Ukraine and in need of support. Meanwhile, activists of Borotba and the CPU took part in “political destabilization” campaigns in Moldova, allied themselves with the Russian neo-Nazi organization Slavic Unity, and a significant portion of their activists joined paramilitary groups fighting on Russia’s side in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine since 2014. Throughout all these years, Sakhnin continued to support Borotba, and in an interview with the Russian service of Radio Liberty in 2021, he called it a “brotherly organization”.

He also published calls for international “anti-fascist solidarity” with Vlad Voitsekhovsky — an activist of Borotba, who, the fascist Prizrak battalion, which fought on Russia’s side under the command of Alexey Mozgovoy and is infamous for its particular cruelty. While the majority of Ukrainian leftists have strongly criticized Borotba and called on European leftists to be cautious in cooperating with this organization.

In this context, it appears entirely consistent and logical that the political strategist Sakhnin — who today oversees the “Peace from Below” coalition and PSL, and presents himself as an “advisor to Mélenchon” — after 2022 brought into cooperation such “Ukrainian leftists” as Sydorchenko, who had been an experienced supervisor of “the youth” in the CPU and Borotba, as well as an organizer of the Anti-Maidan in Kharkiv.

After 2014, Sydorchenko worked as a specialist in the District State Administration of the city of Chuhuiv, as a correspondent for Ukrhazvydobuvannia, and shortly before the full-scale invasion in 2021, he became head of the PR department at the Malyshev Plant in Kharkiv — one of Ukraine’s largest producers of heavy military equipment, where strikes began shortly after his arrival.

Sydorchenko left Ukraine immediately after the invasion and is now one of the public faces of PSL. He produces “political analysis” for PSL and their allies, which mainly concerns assessments of the leftist movement in Ukraine, “corruption in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, ” mobilization in Ukraine, and rather peculiar evaluations of its defense capability. Thus, in his article published by the Telegram channel Allo, Macron, Sydorchenko portrays the Armed Forces of Ukraine as “illegal armed formations of the nationalist Kyiv regime, ” and at an international meeting of the Workers’ Party of France [Parti des Travailleurs] he spoke about the need to end “arms supplies to Ukraine, ” which he described as “a typical semi-colonial country” that “is, in principle, incapable of turning resistance to Russian aggression into a nationwide struggle.”

Both public “representatives of Ukraine” from PSL/Peace from Below — Konovalov and Sydorchenko — in their speeches at European leftist venues usually emphasize that they personally express and know the position, sentiments, and aspirations of the Ukrainian majority and the Ukrainian people, as well as the position of the Ukrainian left. In my opinion, this is very far from the truth.

Political activity of PSL with incel communities and "manosphere representatives" 

The “anti-war” rallies organized by PSL in November-December 2024 were covered in Russian-language, German, and Ukrainian media. They were announced as a series of street actions in Berlin, Paris, and Cologne “against dictatorship in Ukraine” and “against the excesses of the TTsK.” A series of coordinated actions in Dublin was also synchronized with these events. One of the Berlin actions (October 17, 2024) and several actions in Dublin were timed to coincide with International Men’s Day. The organizer of the Berlin rally on behalf of PSL was Andrey Konovalov. Another notable co-organizer of the event was Sergey Khorolskyi — one of the “leaders” of the Russian-speaking manosphere.

Sergey Khorolskyi is also a citizen of Ukraine, who left the country after the start of the full-scale invasion and currently lives in Berlin. Since the early 2010s, he has performed as an actor and singer, and in exile he actively developed his blogging and musical activity under the pseudonyms “Khaipovyi” and “Seryoga Khorol.” He participates under his own name in the Berlin stand-up community  alongside feminists and left-wing activists, appears on broadcasts on Radio Voice of Berlin, and manages several accounts on Twitter, TikTok and Instagram, as well as radical YouTube and Telegram channels.

Before the start of the full-scale invasion, his independent work mainly consisted of songs calling for extreme violence against women and feminists, as well as the sexualized harassment of women online. Shortly before emigrating, a new area of work appeared in his activities — he began producing short political YouTube videos dedicated to “men’s rights, ” the “manosphere, ” Ukrainian politics, and “mobilization issues.”

Some videos are “parodies” of Ukrainian women refugees, as well as of those women Khorolskyi identifies as “patriots” and “feminists” who “date Arabs, ” while others are filmed as “parodies” of TTsK employees and Ukrainian military personnel. On his YouTube channel, one can also find videos discussing the “crimes of Zelensky, ” and mocking individual Ukrainian politicians and liberal journalists.

Khorolskyi informs his subscribers about his fight against “androcide, ” records reports of his calls to the UN and appeals to the Bundestag. He hosts broadcasts and discussions with “leaders of the Russian and Ukrainian manospheres” — Mikhail Zebrong, Aleksandr Remiz, Oleksandr Ermis (head of the Rational Masculinity movement), Aleksey Larin/Vorobyov (activist of the Fathers’ Rights Movement) — focused on discussions of the war, “men’s rights, ” and the fight against feminism. He publishes videos supporting Arsen Markaryan (whom he calls a preacher of the manosphere who “opened men’s eyes”), and also records a series of videos in which he explains what he considers the key problems of women’s dominance in the legal sphere, the dangers of “pedo-hysteria”, and nuances of female psychology.

A few years ago, Khorolskyi’s YouTube videos were quite marginal. His amateur recordings about how to spend February 14 with a friend or songs about women, such as “A punch in the fucking face”, “Dick Pic”, and others, averaged 400-500 views. Currently, his musical work includes clips such as “The TTsK is between us”, “Ukhyliant”, “Patriotka”, and others, which have tens or hundreds of thousands of views and are promoted on Russian propagandist and “Z”-channels.

Khorolskyi’s contacts with “men’s rights movements” and communities in the manosphere are multifaceted — for example, on the website of the National Coalition of Men, he is listed as the coordinator of the coalition in Ukraine. There, in 2023, he also published a statement in English in which he describes how he escaped from the “concentration camp called Ukraine” and spoke “against the genocide and dictatorship of Zelensky.”

rallies were coordinated with the PSL rally in Berlin, PSL itself seemingly distances itself from the “Dublin group.” Shortly before this, the “Dublin group” also held other actions that attracted media attention and the Ukrainian OSINT agency Molfar, and on the Telegram channel VotTakTV, it was noted that the participants at the Dublin rallies and the Berlin rally largely overlapped.

The organizers of similar rallies in Dublin were four activists, some of whom also position themselves as “representatives of the manosphere.” Among them are Aleksandr Remiz (also known as Viktor Makhno/Lex Makhno), both of whom hold Ukrainian citizenship. Remiz describes himself as an expert in female and male biology, a “representative of the Ukrainian manosphere, ” and a defender of men’s rights. He calls himself an ally of Khorolskyi, runs his YouTube channel Men of the World and a radical Telegram channel of the same name, where the main narratives focus on fighting women, feminism, the “genocide of men, ” and various conspiracy theories. In his posts there, he calls Ukraine “Femokukoldistan”, posts videos about fighting the “leftist threat”, and regularly shares materials from the communities Black Front, Channel Androcyde, and others. He also recently announced the creation of the Dublin “Gordeyist cell”.

The name of this cell suggests that the “Dublin group” consists of followers of Gordey Armensky, a Russian politician, graduate of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, and founder of the organization Men’s League, officially registered in Russia, whose channels call for “isolation from women.” In one of the latest broadcasts with Khorolskyi, the leader of the “Dublin group, ” Remiz, outlines his personal conspiratorial view on the war between Russia and Ukraine, claiming that the war is actually being waged by the Ukrainian and Russian matriarchy to exterminate all men.

It follows that the political cooperation of PSL and Peace from Below with the “Ukrainian Ukhilyant movement, ” on which their leaders claim to rely, is, at least at present, most clearly expressed in carrying out joint political actions with representatives of radical and misogynistic “men’s movements” who left Ukraine before or after the full-scale invasion and are focused on promoting their (including pro-Russian) narratives within the EU and among Russian-speaking emigrant communities.

These “activists” also attempt to reach their “target audience, ” which remains in Ukraine, but it is unclear how successful they actually are, since their main media channels remain platforms controlled by Russians. For example, Serhiy Khorolskyi and Andrey Konovalov became the primary speakers and experts in Andrey Rudoi’s documentary Ukraine and Mobilization: Draft Dodgers, Deserters, and the Lawlessness of the TTsK, released on the channel Vestnik Buri (one of Russia’s largest left-wing media outlets).

Does the end justify the means? On the risks of compromising left-wing communities in emigration and the risks for women activists

Recently, on his Facebook page, one of the leaders of the French PSL cell, Andrey Demidov, announced the creation of a working group including “Russian and Ukrainian deserters and draft dodgers” and stated that “public statements and actions will be forthcoming in the near future.”

Looking at those who represent “Ukrainian deserters and draft dodgers” working in partnership with PSL and Peace from Below, I believe that the presence of these people in leftist activist communities may be unsafe. Leftist communities often also include feminists and women, who in emigration already face additional risks and vulnerabilities. I think that for all women — regardless of their political stance or position on the war — working in the same or adjacent space with radical representatives of the manosphere significantly increases the risks of sexualized, physical, and psychological violence.

Much has already been written and said about how the discourses of “men’s movements, ” incels, and the manosphere can pose a direct threat to children, women, queer people, and LGBT individuals, as well as to boys and men who come into contact with them. In May 2025, the organization UN Women released a report explaining the structure of the manosphere and related extremist male groups, and the threats they pose to societies. In particular, the report states that:

“According to the Movember Foundation, two-thirds of young men regularly interact with influencers promoting ‘masculinism’ online. Experts note that the popularity of extremist language in male communities not only normalizes violence against women and girls but increasingly links it to radicalization and extremist ideologies.”

The danger posed by such communities is not only “discursive”; it is not limited to inciting hatred on social media or online harassment of girls and women. Hate speech based on sex and gender in closed online and offline “men’s communities” can also lead to support for far-right groups, acts of physical and sexualized violence, real murders of women and girls, and other serious crimes. We could breathe a sigh of relief if everything depicted in the series Adolescence were purely fictional.

Are these really the political allies who could bring us closer to peace — whatever frame of reference we use?

I also believe that representing these figures from the radical wing of the manosphere as Ukrainian oppositionists, activists, human rights defenders, and peace advocates discredits not only leftist movements, values, and ideas but also creates significant risks of compromise for local European leftist organizations.

European leftists, in turn, can be misinformed and, in this way (under the guise of supporting the “Ukrainian left opposition”), become involved in the political backing of radical “men’s groups” that promote neo-fascist discourses and call for extreme violence against women and girls. I believe this is a case where no end can justify the means.

We could indeed have a reasoned discussion about arms deliveries, changes in global politics, or ways to stop Russian military aggression, even if the positions of the PSL and Peace from Below leaders seem somewhat surreal to me. But now I think such a discussion must be approached with a certain preliminary distance and caution. As a feminist and a person with lived female experience, I do not feel safe engaging in dialogue with political forces that rely on online and offline (!) cells of “men’s groups” to implement their agendas.

As for other aspects of the activities of PSL, Peace from Below and their allies, aimed at discrediting Ukraine and spreading Russian propaganda narratives — I think everyone can have their own judgment about why this is happening now and what changes it is oriented toward. But right now — at first glance — it personally seems to me that the ideas promoted by the Peace from Below coalition, PSL, and their allies at rallies “against the dictatorship in Ukraine” and other “anti-war” events, in vulnerable émigré communities, on European platforms, and in the media, have nothing to do with real human rights protection in Ukraine and Russia, nor with contemporary leftist struggle. They do not bring us closer to peace and justice; on the contrary, they make it more distant — for everyone without exception — or simply create the conditions for this “peace” to become as catastrophic as possible for Ukrainians.

Translated from the Russian by Reuben Woolley and Maria Bikbulatova