Marseille Appeal: Defeat Russian Imperialism, by the Antifascist Platform against Russian Imperialism (PACIR) – 4 November 2026

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Faced with the war imposed on Ukraine and with the extreme repressive and colonial violence the Russian state is deploying on many other fronts, the response on the left and in activist circles has fallen far short of what the situation demands. That is why we are creating the Antifascist Platform against Russian Imperialism (PACIR), and calling for an urgent collective response.

Vladimir Putin and his ideologues keep repeating it, like so many warning signals sent to the whole world: “Russia has no borders.” Embodied by the letter “Z”, the symbol of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine after the wars of annihilation already waged from Chechnya to Syria, Russian imperialism must be judged by the scale of the danger it represents for the peoples of the world and for all emancipatory struggles.

Taking this reality seriously, we met in Marseille in the summer of 2026, bringing together people from or close to the European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine (RESU), feminist and anti-war circles in Russia, the Black Sea group of the The Peoples Want network, Afrique Europe Interact Sahel, the Libertarian Communist Union (UCL), Solidarity Collectives (the anti-authoritarian left in Ukraine), Arguments pour la lutte sociale (ApLutSoc) and the European Assembly of Citizens (AEC), as well as local people mobilised in support of resisting Ukraine.

One shared finding brings us together: faced with the war imposed on Ukraine and with the extreme repressive and colonial violence the Kremlin is deploying in many other theatres, Russia itself among them, the response on the left and in activist circles falls far short of what the situation demands. Indifference often vies with incomprehension, which the narrative of the Russian state and its supporters helps to sustain; some on the left have even become direct and zealous mouthpieces of this regime of death.

Campist “geopolitics”, abstract and lofty, is being normalised and is poisoning the debate. In the deadly logic of this way of thinking, Russia is seen as the lesser evil, even as an ally against Western imperialism. Instead of a force every bit as imperialist and bellicose, seeking to subjugate and dominate, it presents itself as a victim forced to defend itself.

This rhetoric of inversion ignores the voices of the peoples concerned, those of Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East/SWANA region, the Sahel, the Central African Republic, Sudan or Myanmar, who are given no say in this “debate”. The same goes for the dissidents and the ethnic and religious minorities of the Russian Federation.

Faced with this tendency to downplay the danger of Russian power and to erase its victims, it is urgent to react. We must reckon with the profoundly imperialist, reactionary and counter-revolutionary nature of the Putinist project, which stands in continuity with Russia’s imperial history. And we must support the resistance it provokes: so many fronts of struggle against “Great Russian” fascism and its international allies.

That is why we are starting the “Antifascist Platform against Russian Imperialism” (PACIR), a space of convergence to pool our resources around the following aims:

To make the popular struggles and decolonisation movements confronting Russian dictatorship and imperialism visible and comprehensible, in the different contexts where these mobilisations unfold; to make visible the violence and the forms of oppression exercised or supported by the Russian state;
To affirm our solidarity and mutual aid with the societies confronting it, including when they have no choice but to respond with armed resistance, as in Ukraine, or in Myanmar against the military junta backed by Moscow; to build bridges with these societies and make their voices heard;
To support the people in Russia who oppose the regime, Russian imperialism and its authoritarian model, the militarisation of society and the wars waged by Moscow;
To put resistance to the Russian regime back at the heart of present-day antifascism, and of the struggle against the reactionary international in which, like Trumpism, it holds a pivotal position;
To warn that feminist and LGBTQ+ struggles in particular are explicitly designated as targets in the political and military crusade launched by Russia in the name of “traditional values”;
To argue that this twofold perspective, antifascist and anti-imperialist, implies the defeat and total withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine. In support of the Ukrainian people, who are enduring invasion and occupation, and to halt the hegemonic project of a “Greater Russia” and weaken its far-right allies everywhere else. What is also at stake here is preserving spaces in which emancipatory struggles remain possible;
To combat the influence of the Russian regime on the French and Western political scenes, the spread of its rhetoric within the left and activist circles, and the complacency, the conduits and, at times, the inclinations to ally with it that appear there;
To oppose campist positions within anti-war movements, which sometimes claim to be decolonial and internationalist while in practice making invisible, or presenting as negligible, the “multipolar” dimension of the dynamics of expansion, neo-colonisation and repression, including those driven or supported by Russia;
To take part instead in building and developing an internationalism from below, anti-authoritarian, against all forms of imperialism and colonialism wherever they come from.

To that end, PACIR will work on various initiatives, notably the development of a common media project (website and social networks) called “Ctrl+Z”, in reference to the Ukrainian resistance’s subversion of the Russian nationalist symbol “Z”.

The PACIR platform will also co-organise events and meetings, or promote them, as well as actions and mobilisations against the fascism and imperialism of the Russian regime, in support of those who oppose it.

This English translation by the Left Renewal Blog.

Marseille Appeal: Defeat Russian Imperialism, by the Antifascist Platform against Russian Imperialism (PACIR) – 4 November 2026

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