As of the 22nd of August, 20 year old Alex Ryzhuk from Dublin has gone missing and has been presumed dead while fighting in pursuit of NATO’s interests in Ukraine.
Ryzhuk was reportedly a drone operator in the 3rd Assault Brigade of the fascist Ukrainian Army. The 3rd Separate Assault Brigade is a special branch of the Azov Battalion personally commanded by neo-Nazi and white supremacist Andriy Biletsky. The Brigade regularly uses swastikas, black suns, and SS imagery, and has used symbols such as the shield of the infamous SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger to mark its various battalions. The Brigade has also been the subject of many allegations of war crimes, such as the abduction and abuse of civilians. One picture shared online shows Ryzhuk posting as he pins down an elderly civilian restrained by cable ties. There have also been several photographs shared publicly which show Ryzhuk posing with Nazi imagery.
Socialist Republicans lament the needless deaths of Irishmen fighting as NATO cannon fodder for imperialist objectives. We hold the Free State guilty of pushing and allowing an illegal recruitment drive by the Ukrainian embassy for volunteers to join their war effort, along with facilitating intensive pro-Banderite propaganda campaign through state sponsored pro-war rallies, targeted social media promotion, and pro-war commentary on public broadcasters.
Though the fervour has now died down as opposition to Irish involvement in the war mounts, the casualties of the Free State’s Redmondism continue to rack up. The story of Alex Ryzhuk paints a grim picture of the consequences of the Free State and its major political parties flirting with NATO and Banderite ideology. A young, educated man from Dublin, Ryzhuk was indoctrinated into fascism and travelled to Ukraine as a foreign volunteer while still a teenager, not long after finishing secondary school. The fascist ideology of the Ukrainian Army twisted Ryzhuk’s Ukrainian heritage and turned him into a war criminal, allowing him a brief year to live out a fantasy of being a modern-day Nazi stormtrooper.
This is the fourth demonstration of the human cost of the Free State’s Redmondite policy. The fact that Ryzhuk was recruited in 2023 shows that all recruitment by the Ukrainian embassy did not end in 2022 after it was discovered that teenagers and the militarily inept were being sent to the trenches.
All recruitment in Ireland for NATO’s war effort against Russia and Donbass must be opposed or more young people like Rory Mason and Alex Ryzhuk will be lured in, brainwashed, and killed in a futile conflict to oil the gears of imperialism.
While it is clear that Ryzhuk became a fascist terrorist, a thug fighting to subjugate the people of Donbass, guilt must also be assigned to the semi-colonial and colonial governments occupying Ireland for creating the optimal conditions for that transformation to take place. Disgracefully, RTÉ has already begun lionising his story, undoubtedly encouraging many other disaffected young men to follow in his footsteps.