Freedom Flotilla sets sail for Gaza. Their trip was short lived due to Israeli piracy on the high seas.

Oaklandsocialist spoke with Andril Movchan, a Ukrainian refugee living in Barcelona, who went on the recent Freedom Flotilla intending to bring relief to Gaza. Here is a transcript of what he reported and our further discussion:

John Reimann
Okay, so we’re talking with Andril Movchan, who’s from Ukraine. He recently was on the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza. Of course, we want to hear about that, but first, let’s start, just where you’re from, and a little bit about yourself.

Andril Movchan
I’m from Kyiv, in Ukraine, I was a journalist and left-wing activist, but in 2014 I had to leave my country and ended up in exile, living in Spain. I had to do it because of political troubles, political persecution by the far right. I definitely do not idealize the political situation, internal political situation in my country. You know, all the let’s say problems and contradictions that our society has, but when the full-scale invasion started, I decided that I have to support my people, people who, my comrades, who resist the invasion, and even being very critical about the politics in our country. I joined the European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine. It’s a network that unites different leftist organizations and activists across Europe to support Ukrainian resistance, and lately I dedicate myself to some solidarity campaigns with Ukrainian resistance, with Ukrainian left organizations, and with Russian anti-war movement,

John Reimann
Explain to us, How did you come to go on the flotilla to Gaza? 

Andril Movchan
When the genocide in Gaza started, actually all European left decided that it’s our duty to stay to stand with the people of Palestine in Ukrainian Solidarity Campaign, European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine, we also decided that we should support both causes, Ukrainian resistance and Palestinian people despite all all nuances, and despite all differences. There are many things in common: Palestine and Ukraine both suffer invasion, military invasion, occupation, illegal annexations, settler colonialism, so we decided to unite the struggles. This is basically our slogan for motto: Unite the Struggles, be on the side of oppressed people, no matter the geopolitical camp of their government.

John Reimann
Can you tell us a little bit about your experiences on the flotilla, and both for both before and during and after it was seized by Israel.

Andril Movchan
I Well, I joined the Flotilla, not from the very beginning, because it started from Barcelona. I live in Barcelona, but my condidature was approved for participation only four days before the departure from Barcelona, and it was like very, very difficult moment for me, but we found the solution, and the solution was to start from Sicily. That was the next point for the flotilla.

John Reimann
When you say it was approved at that time, you mean approved by the flotilla. How come it took so long for them to approve your application?

Andril Movchan
Actually, you know, in all activist campaigns because it is based on volunteers, the people who work not constantly working and who process a lot of information. I think my application was lost on that. Was there was also some misunderstanding with just, you know, cause of this campaign.

Also I found a comrade, a Ukrainian comrade who agreed to be with me this on this mission. Her name is Nina Potarska. She’s a famous, famous feminist and human rights activist. She, as a refugee, as a Ukrainian refugee, she lives abroad, lives in Canada, but she dedicates herself totally for campaigns about Ukraine, and well, she totally shares this idea that Ukrainians have to support oppressed people all over the world, and in Palestinian case, in particular.

So she joined me in Sicilia. First, there we spent more than one week with doing different trainings about history of Palestine, about like juridical side of our mission. There were safety trainings, there were like trainings about mental health. I was actually impressed by the high level of organization this mission, because everything was prepared really professionally

I think it is one of the best organized leftist campaigns in the world – solidarity campaigns, because it is not only leftist, it’s more wide, because there were people of different, of different views, for example, Muslim organizations from different countries, like from Turkey, from Malaysia, from Indonesia,

They are not leftists, but they support Palestine out of their religious beliefs. For example, yeah, this campaign is open for different people, and it was very important for us as Ukrainians to participate in the campaign, and actually I was happily surprised. We were firmly welcomed, warmly welcomed by the rest of participants, and there also were many people who supported Ukraine, who volunteered for Ukraine, who participate in different campaigns activity based for Ukraine, and I really was surprised I. And by the number of these people in the flotilla,

So we left when, when the Barcelona part of the flotilla came to Sicily after a few days we left towards Gaza, with the idea to maybe have a stop near Greece and have a stop in Turkey.

We had quite comfortable boat show was called Eros. Our crew was formed by like nine people, me, my comrade, Dina Potarska from Ukraine, one girl from Colombia, she represented indigenous movement, a guy from the Netherlands, from the US, a guy from Finland, Australia, so an Englishman, Syrian guy, were very international crew.

the trip itself, unfortunately, was short. Spent only four days in the in the open sea, and then intercepted

John Reimann
What happened when you were intercepted.

Andril Movchan
Actually, we didn’t expect such quick interception. We expected it closer to the waters of Palestine. We expected it after Cyprus. But nevertheless, on the third day of our trip, we spotted drones over our boat. Then next night we started spotting some small motor boats, and our first assumption was that this is like Greek coast guards They were not friendly to us, but not our, let’s say, enemies.

We were wrong. Actually, I was thinking until the last moment, you know, before, before the interception I went to have a nap. I didn’t have the recent information, which my comrades received, my comrades have already knew that these are early forces, and they are going to intercept us, but my latest update was that they are Greeks, until the last moment we thought that they are Greeks, and I was absolutely calm, and when they assaulted our boat, when they came to our boat with guns, with laser pointers. When I heard the English with a strong Israeli accent, at that moment I realized that we are intercepted with Israeli forces, that was slightly shocking for me.

And we are, we were assaulted by people with weapons, like with laser pointers pointed at our chest, so was not the most pleasant experience in my life. Let’s say, like that.

Our boat was severely damaged, so their goal was to make severe harm to the boat, let them float, so they cut the sail, they destroyed navigation tools, destroyed the engine.

So when they put out us on their small motor boat, that very first one, and and brought to their ship was like a ship transformed into a prison on its deck. There was like a small concentration camp designed especially for the members of the flotilla.

We were 181 so only only one part of the flotilla was intercepted at that moment, and all of us were brought there. We passed through some humiliation, some violence, some were interrogated, some people were, you know, maltreated, maltreated, beaten. Some of them were even forced to Israeli flag on the wall, forced kiss an Israeli flag. We spent 40 hours in that tiny concentration camp,

John Reimann
Can you describe the conditions in general in that floating concentration camp?

Andril Movchan
You know, on one hand, it was clear that we are representatives, mostly of Western countries with strong passports. They definitely don’t want to make us, like, to kill us, for example, yeah, or make some severe harm to our health. It would cause like big international scandal, but they definitely wanted to neutralize this part of the flotilla. No, in general, neutralize the flotilla, and like to accumulate these people,accumulate us.

John Reimann
Actually, the deck was quite small. This concentration camp was quite small, because the space was not enough for almost 200 people. There were only three containers sleeping. People didn’t fit there. So only, only half of the people were able to sleep, to sleep there. The rest slept outside under the sky. you know,

Andril Movchan
They actually tried to not to starve us, because they wanted to create an image that we know that we are in more or less normal conditions, they were filming us all the time. They later published some video of people in some activities, because people were organizing and spending time in order to boost their morale, you know, some exercises, for example, and they later published this video with people exercising on the deck, show that we are kind of happy, that they were giving us some food, very, very simple food, like bread and water,

But some moments, you know, some moments were quite hard. because once, for example, they assaulted this small space, the small square first, they throw some noise grenades, grenades, and an explosion of it in a small space, limited space. It’s not a pleasant sound, you know. When you don’t expect it, actually. So it was kind of moral terror, you know, emotional terror.

Saif Abukeshek and Thiago Àvila. They were kidnapped by Israel.

Then later they entered with guns and said, like, everybody go to the containers. People even were on the table to go to the toilet to go out, and they were placing us on our knees with like head down, counting us, etc. and they kidnapped several people, and first of all they kidnapped Saif Abukeshek and Thiago Àvila who is one of the leaders, a Palestinian who is one of the leaders just on the Flotilla, something like that, and the most relevant moment was at the end, we were on strike, protesting against the kidnap, the kidnapping of our comrades, and we said that we are not going to cooperate with them, so they started to attack people, and they even used rifle, rifle with rubber bullets. They injured one guy, injured his leg. There was quite a lot of blood, and later they bashed his face between these containers, container walls.

Andril Movchan
Yeah, so they were beating people to transfer them somewhere,

They also like used violence against my female comrade from Ukraine, you know, they pulled her hair, they tapped on her leg, and she also received some, some injury because of it, and when I was laying like face to the ground in that container next to Nina, there was a puddle of blood in like in the middle of us there.

John Reimann
So then, what happened next?

Andril Movchan
Due to international pressure, they didn’t bring us to Israel, they handed us over to the Greek authorities in Crete. Except two leaders of the flotilla Thiago Avila and Saif Abdul Keshev, Brazilian and Palestinian Spanish Palestinian activists, They kidnapped these two people and brought only them to Israel to go make some trial against against them short trial. The rest of us were released were released in Greece. So, fortunately, due to international pressure, we spent only one and a half days in that prison.

John Reimann
I want to go back to something that you said in the beginning. You said you were surprised the number of people involved in this who support Ukraine. Can you talk a little bit about that, because my experience here with the movement that supports Palestine – I support Palestine,obviously – but my experience here has not been very good as far as drawing a conclusion which you point out to, the similarities between Palestine and Ukraine, that a lot of people here do not see that.

Andril Movchan
yeah, look, yeah, yeah, actually, actually, I was very worried about this, this question. Yeah, when I was going to the criteria, I was very worried about how he will be received there. Yeah, what kind of attitude we will feel, but step by step, knowing more and more people started to discover that they are at least almost all of them are quite fine with the fact that Ukrainians participate in the fleet area along with them, some of them were even very happy about this fact. They were gladly surprised, and later we started to discover many of these activists already participated in some campaigns for Ukraine, for example, a significant part of the material members were critics, nurses, doctors, paramedics, and many of them previously volunteered in Ukraine, met the guy from the US did that as a doctor as a paramedic, we met rural nurses from Ireland from Italy, other countries, friends to Ukraine help our injured people.

Later, we met European activists whose friends close friends now are sending a humanitarian convoy to Ukraine, particularly that was from the Netherlands. Later, I found there a Turkish participant, the only leftist participant. I was 10% sure that he’s a Stalinist, because okay, Turkish left is very, very compist, but it was curious that he represented the only Turkish leftist organization that supports Ukraine, and that was the only leftist Turkish organization on the flotilla. The rest of Turkish participants were from climate movements.

And the most surprising moment for me was an Italian guy who used first being a pro-Russian Stalinist who supports like this Russian nationalist in Donbas, but later I discovered that actually he supports, he fully supports Ukraine, Ukrainian anarchist resistance. He even participated in a mission to bring some aid for our fighters. He personally knows even my twin brother, who is who is now in the Ukrainian army, so that is fairly commonplace there, I mean, in the pro-Palestine movement.

It is actually surprising, because, generally, I see this contradiction in the pro Palestine movement too. Some kind of, let’s say, critical perception, very critical perception of the Ukrainian resistance. But in the flotilla, in the flotilla, it was like a coincidence that vanguard of the movement is way more tolerant to Ukraine than wider and wider masses of the movement

John Reimann
That leads to the question, then: is this layer of people that you’re talking about, are they struggling within the pro-Palestine movement to change the position about Ukraine?

Andril Movchan
I wouldn’t say so. I wouldn’t say so. This, this would be exaggeration to say this. I think almost all of these people are focused on the Palestinian campaign, they dedicated to fall to criticize their government and Western parallelism, so this is their priority. Yeah, there were also people, you know, who are critical who are against the Russian invasion, but they are, say, not they are tolerant to it from the Ukrainian point of view. I would, I would want to see these people more critical, yeah, about Russia, so there also was some, let’s say, light campism that, let’s say, doesn’t, does doesn’t, doesn’t criticize Russia, especially enough.

John Reimann
It seems to me, if you’re going to be against what Israel is doing to be politically consistent, or else, how can the movement as a whole be taken seriously?

Andril Movchan
You know, from some certain point of view, I understand the logic of these people, because they see that the government, the government, for example, they host Ukrainian refugees, they send financial aid to Ukraine, they send military aid to Ukraine. So the governments are kind of responsible for this, while the same government, they don’t do anything to support Palestine and tolerate what Israel is doing, and they see their priority, the duty to be against this, because nobody, like them, nobody is on the side of the Palestinian people. I understand this kind of logic, and in this sense, I would, I would like to say that this is an example that I want to see from the Russian left, first of all, against their government, but unfortunately the Russian left in is infected by chauvinism, the anti-western and anti-Ukrainian resentment, they they are not that they don’t see their duty be radically against their government to set it as a priority. Would say that this, yeah, this is what I would like to see from the Russian leftist movement.

John Reimann
I know an Iranian refugee who lives in Greece. He makes the exact same point about the Greek left. They are nationalists. Yes, they support the Palestinians as long as they’re not in Greece, and that they don’t support the Iranian people, so don’t just don’t see how you can build myself as a socialist, you can build healthy working-class socialist movement if you don’t have some principles that apply, no matter if it’s your government or somebody else’s that’s doing it.

Andril Movchan
I think that our duty as internationalists to build these bridges between different movements, the it requires some change. It requires dialog. You cannot just accuse people that you are if you don’t support Ukraine enough, you are not an internationalist. Think this is not a constructive, constructive approach. Constructive one is what we were trying to show. We proactively participate in the Palestinian campaign, and by our own example show a consistent internationalism must look like. Yeah,

John Reimann
okay. I hear what you’re saying. My experience here with the left here is that we can show them anything we like, but they live in their own self-contained world, in their own, like their own echo chamber, that’s all that they are concerned about. Maybe your experience is different there, but that’s my, that’s my experience here, for sure.

Andril Movchan
Actually, my experience in the flotilla was quite inspiring. Yeah, and I have a lot of optimism. I think that bridges are possible, dialog is possible, collaboration is possible, the finding common ground is more than possible.

John Reimann
Yeah, maybe on the float, maybe it wasn’t a representative cross section was on the flotilla, maybe it was just something else,

Andril Movchan
Definitely. I think the people there were not representative. This was a good surprise to me.