The Second Jubilee World Congress of the Anti-Imperial Block of Nations was held in Munich. Delegates from the Chechen, Tatar, Buryat, Circassian, Karelian, Pomeranian, and other national liberation movements, authorised persons from the ABN Committees in the USA, Canada, and Georgia, representatives of the Ukrainian diaspora in Germany, journalists, and academics took part in the Congress. The event was timed to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the creation of the ABN, as it was in Munich on 16 April 1946, that the founding conference of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations was convened.
On the eve of the Congress, the “Russian Ministry of Justice” added the Anti-Imperial Block of Nations to the register of so-called “foreign agents.” This news only emphasised the significance of the ABN’s work on the decolonisation anti-Moscow front.
Opening the event, the President of the Anti-Imperial Block of Nations, the Head of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (Banderites), Oleh Medunytsya, emphasised: “It is a great honour for me to address you today here in Munich – a city that has a special symbolic meaning for our movement. It was here, 80 years ago, that the conference of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations took place – an association of nations that rose up against Soviet imperialism. Today, we continue this historical mission as the Anti-Imperial Block of Nations, the heirs of the great tradition of the liberation struggle.
“We stand here not only as representatives of individual nations,” noted Oleh Medunytsya, “we are the voice of those who have been silenced. The voice of those whose states have been destroyed, cultures oppressed, and freedom taken away.”
I would like to sincerely thank all the representatives of freedom-loving nations who have arrived in Munich today. Your presence is not only a sign of solidarity. It is proof that the empire has not been able to break the main thing – the desire for freedom.
Our nations have different histories, different languages and different traditions. But we are united by one thing – the experience of fighting imperial oppression and the belief in our own right to be masters of our own land, the President of the ABN emphasised. Today’s Russia is not a new phenomenon. It is a continuation of the same imperial essence that the Soviet Union embodied. The flags have changed, the slogans have changed, but the essence has not changed. Both then and now – it is a “prison of nations”, where freedom is suppressed by force, and identity is erased by repression.
But history gives us reason to believe. Our predecessors, who created the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, persevered through the darkest times. They did not give up. They preserved the idea of freedom. In the end, the empire that seemed eternal fell. The Soviet Union disappeared from the world map. This means only one thing: empires are not immortal.
Today, we face a new challenge. The Muscovite empire, which emerged from the ruins of the USSR, is trying to regain control over the nations, restore the colonial system, and return the world to the past.
But we are not a generation of defeat. We are a generation of the end of the struggle. Our mission is to bring the matter to a victorious end. Our goal is the liquidation of the empire as a system. Our path is the solidarity of nations that will no longer agree to be colonies. We must act together. Only together are we the force that can break the empire. Together, we are able to build a world in which every nation has its own state, and every person has their own freedom. Our future depends on our determination today. Freedom for nations! Freedom for the Individual!
For their significant contribution to the decolonisation of Muscovy and the struggle for the liberation of enslaved nations, Oleh Medunytsya awarded the ABN jubilee awards to the Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria Akhmed Zakayev, a well-known figure of the Chechen national movement Muslim Tsebiev, ABN Vice-President, Head of the Tatarstan Independence Committee Aida Abdrakhmanova, long-time head of the OUN (Bandera) Andrey Gaydamakh, leader of the Buryat national movement Dorzho Dugarov, head of the Transcaucasian Committee of the ABN Lasha Mukbaniani, member of the Council of the Canadian Committee of the ABN Boris Mikhalets, representative of the Circassian national movement, graduate of the University of Free Nations Rustam Khuazhev, and representative of the government of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria in Vienna Roza Dunaeva.
At the beginning of the event, the organisers and participants of the Congress were greeted by the Chechen Volunteer Battalion named after Sheikh Mansur, the State Committee for the Deoccupation of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, the Committee for the Independence of Tatarstan, the national liberation movement “Free Belarus”, the Government of Independent Tatarstan in Exile, and other partners of the ABN.
Delegates to the Second Anniversary World Congress of the ABN heard information about the implementation of the main projects of the Anti-Imperial Block of Nations. The educational project, “University of Free Nations,” was presented by its head, Vice-President of the ABN, Rector of the UFN, Leontiy Shypilov. The results of the implementation of the human rights project “Putin’s Real Prisoners. Political Prisoners of Enslaved Nations” were presented by the Executive Director of the Anti-Imperial Bloc of Nations, Oleh Vitvitskyj.
The Congress also presented information on the work of the ABN Committees. In particular, an extensive informational report on the activities of the ABN in the United States was presented by the Executive Director of the American Friends of the ABN, Yuriy Kymyotyk, and in Canada by the Secretary of the Canadian ABN Committee, Anton Sestritsyn.
The main topic of the panel discussion, which took place within the framework of the Congress, was the discussion of the prospects for the national liberation struggle of enslaved Nations. The participants of the discussion made several practical proposals, expressing their readiness for effective cooperation with the structures of the ABN for their implementation.
During the Congress, a strategy for supporting the national liberation struggle of enslaved nations was also discussed, an action programme of the Anti-Imperial Bloc of Nations for the near future was approved, in particular, regarding the development of the University of Free Nations, and ideas were discussed for finding partners in the cause of the collapse of the Moscow “prison of nations” both in Ukraine and throughout the civilized world. The main goal of the programme is the victory of Ukraine and the decolonisation of Russia.
An important task of the Congress was to establish cooperation between representatives of the national liberation movements of the enslaved nations and the leadership of the ABN Committees abroad. Such cooperation would include coordinating activities to support Ukraine and form a united anti-imperial front of struggle.
The Congress delegates unanimously supported the “Munich Declaration”, which approved the main postulates regarding the continuity of the struggle and the programmatic goals of the ABN.
At the end of the event, the Congress participants paid tribute to the memory of the leader of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists Stepan Bandera, the President of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, the head of the OUN (b) Yaroslav Stetsko, and the prominent leader of the Chechen national liberation movement Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov, by laying wreaths at their graves at the Waldfriedhof cemetery in Munich.
