Belarus Issues Dire World War III Warning as It Gets Ready to Send Troops to Ukraine

Barbie Latza Nadeau, Jamie Ross, Shannon Vavra

The Daily Beast
Mon., February 28, 2022

Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters

The Putin-backed president of Belarus has warned that World War III could be about to begin as he reportedly prepares his troops to assist with Russia’s mass-scale invasion of Ukraine.

President Alexander Lukashenko warned that the crisis in Ukraine could spark a global conflict, writing in a statement: “Russia is being pushed towards a third world war. We should be very reserved and steer clear of it. Because nuclear war is the end of everything.”

Despite the dire warning, the increasingly rogue leader—who allowed Russia to amass its military hardware and launch an attack from his side of the border—is expected to send troops into Ukraine, according to The Washington Post, citing an unnamed Biden administration official who said, “It’s very clear Minsk is now an extension of the Kremlin.”

Umit Bektas/Reuters

The threat of Belarus joining the invasion cast a shadow over Monday’s peace talks which began on the Belarus border town of Gobel shortly before 1 p.m. local time.

The talks, which were not attended by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky or Russian President Vladimir Putin, were assisted by Russian-Israeli billionaire Roman Abramovich, who owns Chelsea Football Club. Abramovich attended at the request of Ukraine, according to the Jerusalem Post, which cites his close ties to close ties to the Jewish communities in Russia and Ukraine, of which Zelensky is part.

Ukraine’s first request was an immediate ceasefire, which was denied as bullets and missiles continued to rain down across the country, especially in Kharkiv, which was came under heavy cluster bomb attacks Monday afternoon, according to CNN. On social media, several Western journalists posted images too gruesome to repost of an elderly woman whose devastating wounds that blew off her legs eventually proved fatal.

Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei opened the session with a message meant to clam nerves. “Dear friends, the President of Belarus asked me to welcome you and to provide everything for your work, as agreed with President Zelensky and President Putin,” he said. “You may feel completely safe here. This is our sacred duty.”

Lukashenko had called Zelensky on Sunday and offered to guarantee his safety if he should attend the peace summit on the Ukraine border with Belarus, saying he would take “responsibility for ensuring that all planes, helicopters and missiles stationed on the Belarusian territory will remain on the ground during the Ukrainian delegation's travel, meeting and return.”

Vitaliy Gnidyi/Reuters

Zelensky declined the offer, choosing instead to continue fighting off Russian troops in the capital city of Kyiv where heavy fighting seemed to calm down overnight with the Russian military opening a safe corridor for Ukrainian civilians to leave the capital city after the end of a weekend-long curfew. Instead many lined up for food and other supplies to hunker back down or stay to protect their city.

Heavy fighting continued elsewhere, including the cities of Chernihiv and Kharkiv, which European and British defense ministries confirm is still under Ukrainian control despite heavy losses. Ukraine’s defense ministry confirmed Monday that dozens had been killed and hundreds injured after brutal Russian fire power.

Russian forces have instead reportedly secured the Black Sea city of Berdyansk and the city of Kherson near Crimea. NATO head Jens Stoltenberg tweeted on Monday that NATO partners are “providing Ukraine with air-defence missiles and anti-tank weapons.”

In Mariupol, which has seen some of the deadliest fighting, a 6-year-old girl in unicorn pajamas died after being hit by Russian firepower. The doctor who tried to save her told an Associated Press crew, “Show this to Putin. The eyes of this child, and crying doctors.”

Ukraine’s defense ministry was also bolstered by intense interest in its “International Legion” of foreign fighters. After putting out a call over the weekend for any foreign nationals to come join the fight to protect Ukraine, the ministry said it received “thousands” of messages from people who wished to help.

Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters

The Russian military has been hit with a series of setbacks, even admitting they had suffered casualties against the scrappier and smaller Ukrainian military for the first time. “The Russian occupiers have reduced the pace of the offensive, but are still trying to develop success in some areas in the offensive against Ukraine,” Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers posted Twitter Monday.

In recent days, Russians have had to resort to drawing on their fuel and logistics supplies “earlier” than U.S. officials think they planned to, because of Ukrainian resistance the official said. In their own version of events, Russia claimed control over Ukraine's airspace. “Russian aviation has gained air supremacy over the entire territory of Ukraine,” Russian Ministry of Defense spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement.

The senior defense official pushed back on that idea, telling reporters Monday that airspace is still contested in Ukraine. The Russians also haven’t successfully taken the cities of Kharkiv or Mariupol, the official said, adding that Ukrainians are putting up “stiff and determined resistance” in those cities.

There are not yet indications Belarus forces are in Ukraine, the senior U.S. defense official said Monday.

As the fighting rages, over 400,000 Ukrainians—mostly women and children—have left the country with many crossing into Poland. Men between the ages of 18 and 60 are prohibited from leaving the country.

The NZ anti-vax movement’s exploitation of Holocaust imagery is part of a long and sorry history

The Conversation
February 27, 2022

images.theconversation.com

During the anti-lockdown protests at parliament last year, I was told about a 15-year-old who stopped to ask someone why they were crying. The person replied they were Jewish and had been upset by Nazi imagery used by some protesters, including swastikas chalked on the ground.

Water bottle in hand, they set about washing these off, until a well-dressed, middle-aged woman threatened to kill them and parliamentary security ushered them away.

The local Jewish community sounded a warning about the “grotesque and deeply hurtful” appropriation of the Holocaust by protesters that, as the situation in Wellington suggests, went unheeded.

The current occupation of parliament grounds has also seen disturbing references to Nazism and the Holocaust. These have been variously deployed to call for the execution of journalists and politicians, invoke the Nuremberg Code and compare vaccine mandates to the Nazi persecution of the Jews.

Not only do such comparisons rest on false equivalences, absurd leaps of logic and historical anachronism, they are also tactics that tap into long histories of exploitation of the Holocaust for political ends.

A history of appropriation

Twenty years ago, American historian Peter Novick surveyed the causes (left and right) that since the 1970s had sought legitimacy and impact by comparing themselves to the Holocaust. These included:

anti-abortionists and pro-choice activists
campaigners against the death penalty
the National Rifle Association
Christian conservatives
LGBTQ activists during the AIDS epidemic
and even an Oklahoma congressman who took the TV mini-series Holocaust to be a warning of “the dangers of big government”.

Since then, the trend has grown and the list become even more diverse. Social media and the active dissemination of conspiracy theories have made it global. Holocaust references were used to condemn both Donald Trump’s immigration laws and Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

Comparisons to Nazi genocidal policies have also cropped up wherever assisted dying legislation has been debated, with opponents claiming such policies would be akin to Nazi “euthanasia”.

As well as being inaccurate, that argument also perpetuates the criminal Nazi deception that hid racist mass murder under the euphemism of “euthanasia”.


Anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller at his first service after being released from imprisonment following the allied occupation of Germany in 1945.

First they came for …

In this charged context, anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller’s oft-cited quote about apathy in the face of threat – “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out…” – has emerged as a favourite meme.

Niemöller had initially welcomed Hitler’s rise to power but was later incarcerated in Dachau in 1937. Visiting the camp after the war, he was struck by a sign reading: “Here in the years 1933-1945, 238,756 people were cremated.”

While his wife was shocked by the number of victims, Niemöller was horrified by the dates: where had he been between 1933 and 1937? From that experience came the famous lines lamenting German conformism and indifference that had allowed Hitler’s rise.

Niemöller never wrote them down as a poem, but would open his speeches with them, amending the groups of victims depending on his audience (as indeed do the many memorials where his words are now engraved).

The deliberate universality and adaptability of Niemöller’s words have now been hijacked by any number of protest groups, only sometimes in intended jest: “First they came for the wealthy…”, “First they came for the YouTubers…”.

Now, inevitably, the US alt-right’s “First they came for the unvaccinated…” reverberates around anti-vax conference venues and the online forums of “freedom convoys”, alongside imagery featuring yellow stars and striped pyjamas.

These threaten to become the rallying cries of those with no experience of genuine dictatorships, lack of freedom or persecution, yet who share forums with neo-Nazis and anti-Semites – including in New Zealand.


A ‘Freedom and Rights Coalition’ protest at parliament on November 9 2021.

False equivalence

Reading ourselves and our times into history is a reasonably common phenomenon and easily done. After all, what was the Nazi party in its early days other than a tiny minority of disgruntled and disaffected “ordinary” people, coalesced around economic grievances and a general sense of moral and cultural malaise?

And while some historical analogies might be wrong, they’re not always harmful. But to compare vaccine mandates to Nazism is both inaccurate and harmful. As is comparing the New Zealand government’s health response to South Africa’s apartheid regime.

Not only do such comparisons equate fundamentally different policies, they wilfully ignore the fact those historical persecutions discriminated against people for who they were, not for what they believed or how they chose to behave.

Media and other commentators sometimes play down exploitation of the Holocaust or Nazism, either to starve it of publicity or because it can seem less serious or threatening than other more overt forms of intimidation.

But we should also guard against complacency. Since the 2019 Christchurch terror attack, New Zealand has known firsthand that racist and intolerant discourse can lead to deadly violence.

Despite evidence of violent rhetoric and behaviour in Wellington, some have sought to reassure that most protesters were “ordinary Kiwis”.

Just what constitutes an “ordinary” Kiwi is open to speculation. But I’d prefer to think they’re like the compassionate teenager who took out a water bottle to help remove swastikas, not the protesters who tolerate or ignore them.

Giacomo Lichtner, Associate Professor of History, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ukrainian sailor 'partially sinks' Russian arms exporter's nearly $8 million yacht
Sarah K. Burris
February 27, 2022


The Balearic Island newspaper Ultima Hora reported Sunday that a $7.8 million yacht "partially sank" at the docks on the Spanish island of Mallorca after a Ukrainian sailor opened the valves.

The sailor was arrested after the incident with the massive boat named the Lady Anastasia. The ship boasts nearly a 156-foot length and five cabins and employs the sailor along with a few other staffers. It's owned by Russian citizen Alexander Mijeev, who once headed the Russian Helicopter Corporation, which builds aircraft for the Russian military. In 2016, however, Mijeev took over Rostec, a weapons supplier.

In court, the sailor explained that the owner of the ship is in charge of the production of weapons that are currently hitting his country. When he saw the footage of the Russian cruise missiles hitting civilian targets like apartment buildings and a Kindergarten, the sailor said he was moved to act. He said that he knew the missile was produced by the company. That's why he took revenge on the owner. It caused only material damage, he explained, never physical.

He opened the valve in the engine room and a second where the crew lives. He told three crew members, also Ukrainians to abandon ship.

"The owner of this ship is a criminal who makes his living selling weapons and now they kill Ukrainians," he told the police when they came to arrest him.

The judge released him, but the sailor was charged.

See a photo of the ship below:

CYBERWAR

Russian Hackers target Ukrainian military, journalists on Facebook

 Facebook is encouraging Ukrainians to protect their accounts

Facebook 's parent company Meta said late Sunday that hackers are increasingly targeting Ukrainian military officials and journalists to spread disinformation. Hackers tied to an operation known as "Ghostwriter" compromised some Ukrainian Facebook accounts, but Meta said it wasn't naming the victims to protect their privacy.

© Provided by. Graphic by Pixabay/Illustration by CNET

Queenie Wong 
CNET 

"We detected attempts to target people on Facebook and post YouTube videos portraying Ukrainian troops as weak and surrendering to Russia," said David Agranovich, director of global threat disruption at Meta, at a virtual press conference.

The threats underscores the variety of challenges social media companies face as they try to combat false claims about Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Meta added features in Ukraine meant to keep users safe such as the ability to lock their Facebook profile and remove the ability to view and search friends lists. The company, like Twitter, is encouraging users to enable two-factor authentication, an extra layer of security that makes it tougher for hackers to break into accounts.

Ghostwriter typically targets people through email first through tactics such as trying to trick people into clicking on a malicious link to steal their login credentials, Agranovich said. After compromising a target's email, they will then break into people's social media accounts and use those accounts to post disinformation.

Nathaniel Gleicher, who heads Meta's security policy, said as social media users take steps to protect their accounts, they should also think about how their information could get compromised on other apps and devices. Gleicher said Ghostwriter targeted a "small number" of Facebook users but the group is going after valuable targets such as public figures.

Mandiant Threat Intelligence, which has done research on Ghostwriter, said in a report published last year it found evidence that suggests the operation has ties to a suspected state-sponsored cyber espionage actor called UNC1151. In November, Mandiant Threat Intelligence linked UNC1151 to the Belarusian government.

"We cannot rule out Russian contributions to either UNC1151 or Ghostwriter. However, at this time, we have not uncovered direct evidence of such contributions," Mandiant Threat Intelligence said in a blog post.

The European Union said in a press release in September that some EU member states have associated Ghostwriter with the Russian state.

Fake social media accounts

Meta also pulled down a network of about 40 fake accounts, Pages and Groups on Facebook and Instagram from Russia and Ukraine. The accounts targeted Ukrainians across multiple social networks including on Twitter, YouTube, Telegram, Odnoklassniki and VK. These fake accounts pretended to be news editors, a former aviation engineer and an author of a scientific publication on hydrography (the science of mapping water). They ran fake news websites and published stories that included "claims about the West betraying Ukraine and Ukraine being a failed state," Meta said.

The company said the network of fake accounts didn't have a wide reach. Fewer than 4,000 Facebook accounts followed one of more of these Pages and fewer than 500 accounts followed one or more of the Instagram accounts.

The social media giant shared information about the operation with other tech platforms, researchers and governments.

Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok are being flooded with misinformation and disinformation, including misleading videos that use old footage to create a false image of what's happening in real-time.

Meta said it's expanding its third-party fact checking capacity in Russia and Ukrainian, labeling state-controlled media publishers and barring ads from Russia state media. The company, which owns Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, said it created a special operations center with experts who speak Ukrainian and Russian to help monitor its platform.

Russia has partly restricted access to Facebook after the social network refused to stop fact-checking and label content posted on Facebook by four Russian state-owned media organizations. Russia's telecommunications regulator Roskomnadzor alleges Facebook violated "fundamental human rights" by restricting the country's state-controlled media.

Gleicher said he doesn't have any more information about what restrictions Russia put into place but Meta's teams continue to monitor the situation and "do believe that we're still accessible in [the] country."

On Sunday, Meta said it restricted some accounts, including several run by Russia state media, because the Ukrainian government requested the company do so. The company is reviewing other government requests to do the same in their countries.

Ukraine launches 'IT army,' takes aim at Russian cyberspace

By James Pearson

© Reuters/DADO RUVIC Illustration shows displayed CYBER SECURITY words and binary code

LONDON (Reuters) - Ukraine will create an "IT army" to fight against Russia's digital intrusions, Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said on Saturday.

Ukraine has called its hacker underground to help protect critical infrastructure and conduct cyber spying missions against Russian troops, Reuters exclusively reported last week.

"We are creating an IT army," Fedorov wrote in a Tweet that linked to a channel on the Telegram messaging app which published a list of prominent Russian websites.

"There will be tasks for everyone. We continue to fight on the cyber front. The first task is on the channel for cyber specialists,"

The Telegram channel listed the websites of 31 major Russian businesses and state organisations including energy giant Gazprom, Russia's second-largest oil producer Lukoil, three banks and a handful of government websites.

Kremlin.ru, the official website of the Kremlin and the office of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was taken offline on Saturday in an apparent distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

Malicious data-wiping software was discovered circulating in Ukraine last week, hitting hundreds of computers, according to researchers at the cybersecurity firm ESET.

Suspicion fell on Russia, which has repeatedly been accused of hacks against Ukraine and other countries. The victims included government agencies and a financial institution.

Britain and the United States said Russian military hackers were behind a spate of DDoS attacks last week that briefly knocked Ukrainian banking and government websites offline before the Russian invasion.

Russia has denied the allegations.

(Reporting by James Pearson; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

In the battle of official Twitter accounts, score this one for Ukraine

Courtney Greenberg 

The official Twitter account for Ukraine shared a series of posts on Thursday, one of which showed Nazi leader Adolph Hitler lovingly caressing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s cheek

.

© Provided by National Post A post by Ukraine's official Twitter account showing Hitler caressing Putin has been retweeted more than 290,000 times on Friday morning.

The post was retweeted more than 290,000 times and had more than one million likes by Friday morning. It sparked conversations online about the Russian invasion and attack of Ukraine, capturing the attention of social media users and garnering their support.

Hours later, the account tweeted: “This is not a ‘meme’, [sic] but our and your reality right now.”

In another post on Thursday, the account asked Twitter to remove “@Russia” from the platform, saying there was “no place for an aggressor” on Western social media platforms.

“They should not be allowed to use these platforms to promote their image while brutally killing the Ukrainian people,” they wrote.

Another tweet, in a call to action, asked Twitter users to “Tag @Russia and tell them what you think about them.”

The posts from Ukraine were in stark contrast to the posts coming from Russia’s official Twitter account, which had not published any tweets on Feb. 24. A video pinned to the top of the latter’s Twitter page shows a promotional video about the country with snapshots of its cuisine and culture, from its many landscapes to its traditional food and the colourful St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow.

However, many other Russian social media accounts were still spreading misinformation backed by the Kremlin and the country’s top five, state-backed media outlets, Politico reported.

“We see that there are many, many attempts to blame Ukraine for killing civilians, saying that the Ukrainian army is trying to attack,” Liubov Tsybulska, founder of Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communication, told Politico.

Leading social media platforms Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and TikTok say they have been trying to combat the misinformation.

Falsehoods currently being spread include claims that “Ukrainian troops infiltrated Russian territory” (with equipment they do not have) and that the “Ukrainian army shelled a kindergarten located in their own territory,” according to a EUvsDisinfo article.

EUvsDisinfo is a publication dedicated to exposing disinformation originating in pro-Kremlin media that is spread across the EU and Eastern Partnership countries. It said it has reviewed six months’ worth of Ukraine-related rhetoric from Russian state media outlets, pro-Kremlin outlets linked to the Russian state, and Russian official diplomatic accounts on Twitter.

“Pro-Kremlin outlets have consistently portrayed Ukraine as a ‘Nazi’ state to vilify Ukrainians, particularly in the eyes of domestic Russian audiences, and thus to justify Kremlin aggression,” it said.

It is this framework, EUvsDisinfo added, that has enabled those outlets “and now-sanctioned politicians to make gruesome and completely fabricated allegations of genocide in Donbas and to spin wild conspiracy theories about Ukraine using chemical and other prohibited weapons.”

EXCERPT

Introduction to Bukharin's Anarchy and Scientific Communism

The following translation comes from Kommunist #2 and was written in March/April 1918. There are two existing versions on marxists.org and libcom.org but looking at the original we realised that these are incomplete. They both appear to have been translated from an Italian version which was put out as a twelve page pamphlet by the Communist Party of Italy in the early 1920s. It seems that some of the more difficult Italian passages were avoided in that translation. [1] As previously, our translation is taken from La Revue Kommuniste (Smolny Press) which was based on the Russian original.

The article is itself a polemic and thus suffers all the weaknesses of that form of argument. In fact it is possible that this rather labored piece against the anarchists is as much motivated by Bukharin’s desire to distance himself from them since they, together with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, had shared the left communist critique of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. [2]

Nevertheless, the document is interesting in itself as it reflects a turning point, not only in the Russian Revolution, but also in the thinking of Bukharin himself. This introduction puts those issues into historical context.

In the first paragraph of the article Bukharin hints at the “liquidation” of certain Muscovite groups. In the third part he expands on this.

We have CONSCIOUSLY made a point not to criticize anarchists as criminals, bandits … But … we can understand why it is mainly anarchist groups that degrade themselves by carrying out their “expropriation”, why the underworld “creeps in” among anarchists. Everywhere and always there are elements that use the revolution for their own personal benefit.

What is this all about? During 1917 many anarchists had worked alongside Bolsheviks in the struggle to establish soviet power. Indeed many anarchists regarded Lenin’s April Theses as his adoption of key anarchist ideas. [3] In June 1917, when the Provisional Government tried to shut down the anarchist communal base in the Durnovo Villa in Petrograd, Bolshevik workers from the nearby Vyborg Side were amongst those who came to their assistance. Alongside the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, who actually joined the Bolsheviks in government from December 1917 to June 1918, the majority of anarchists formed the minor party in an uneasy and undeclared coalition to fight for soviet power.

Many anarchists thus supported the October Revolution even though they were deeply critical of the fact that the Provisional Government was replaced, not by the Executive Committee elected by the Second All-Russian Soviet Congress, but by a new Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom). Sovnarkom was nominally responsible to the Soviet Executive but, in practice, the latter had less and less control of affairs as time went on. Various anarchists recalled that Bakunin and Kropotkin had warned that the “dictatorship of the proletariat” would really be a dictatorship of the Social Democratic Party and the Bolsheviks were only the most radical version of Social Democracy.

They might have been re-assured had they read Lenin’s State and Revolution in which he talked of a “semi-state” that would only exist until the capitalist class was overcome. However, as that would not be published until the middle of 1918, by which time soviet reality was already beginning to contrast with Lenin’s theory, they could only judge by events.

Up until March 1918 the worst fears of the anarchists were not realised. The revolution was undergoing what one Left Communist of the time called its “heroic period”. Not only did the number of Soviets increase but a whole raft of social and economic changes were implemented. The Bolsheviks, by virtue of their massive support in the working class, may have stood at the apex of the system but the revolution had plenty of life of its own with communes, cooperative and committees being formed ad hoc to deal with all the social issues confronting the working class. [4] The Bolsheviks had led the overthrow of the Provisional Government as the first step in what they hoped would be a world revolution. They had no master plan for how the working class would change society inside Russia. [5] At this point Lenin could be seen as the leader of the left inside the Bolshevik Party. He constantly encouraged worker initiative.

Creative activity at the grassroots is the basic factor of the new public life. Let the workers’ control at their factories. Let them supply the villages with manufactures in exchange for grain… Socialism cannot be decreed from above. Its spirit rejects the mechanical bureaucratic approach: living creative socialism is the product of the masses themselves. [6]

Whilst addressing the Third Congress of Soviets in January 1918 (a few days after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly) he stated,

Anarchist ideas now assume living forms in this epoch of the radical demolition of bourgeois society. However it is still necessary, first of all, in order to overthrow bourgeois society, to establish the strong revolutionary power of the toiling classes, the power of the revolutionary State ... The new tendencies of anarchism are definitely on the side of the Soviets. [7]

So what is behind Bukharin’s polemic? As a careful study of the article shows, it was written at a time of acute tension between some in the anarchist camp and the Bolshevik Party. We have to remember that Kommunist was the brainchild of the Moscow Bolsheviks and it was there that the Cheka had just engaged in a gun battle with the Moscow anarchists on account of the “expropriations” that the latter had been carrying out since the October Revolution.

A historian of anarchism, Paul Avrich, fills in the background:

During the spring of 1918, local anarchist groups began to form armed detachments of Black Guards which sometimes carried out “expropriations”, that is, held up banks, shops and private homes. Most of their comrades – especially the ‘Soviet Anarchists’ – condemned such acts as parodies of the libertarian ideal, which wasted precious lives, demoralized the movement’s true adherents and discredited anarchism in the eyes of the general public.

After the bitter opposition of the anarchists to the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, their formation of armed guards and occasional underworld excursions led the Bolsheviks to act against them. On the night of 11-12 April 1918, the Cheka raided twenty-six anarchist centres in Moscow, killing or wounding some forty anarchists and taking more than five hundred prisoners. [8]

The presence of a criminal element, who were simply engaging in self-aggrandisement under the cover of anarchism, obviously played into the hands of the Cheka. The raids on anarchist premises could clearly be justified as mere police actions although, since the anarchists were also well armed (their arms included machine guns), over 50 died in the fighting (about 40 of them anarchists). Despite the bloodshed, many of the 500 arrested who could demonstrate they really were “political” anarchists, were released, and only the criminal elements detained. After this episode anarchist publications were still allowed to appear but were increasingly harassed and even “soviet anarchists” (those who accepted soviet power and worked within the soviets to turn them to anarchist ideas) like Iuda Roshchin, were sometimes arrested. The response to the April events came first as denunciations in the anarchist press that:

We have reached the limit! The Bolsheviks have lost their senses. They have betrayed the proletariat and attacked the anarchists. They have joined the Black Hundred generals and the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie. They have declared war on revolutionary anarchism. [9]

This was followed by more violence on the anarchist side. Avrich again tells us

The campaign of terrorism continued for many months, reaching a climax in September 1919 when a group of “underground anarchists”, in league with the Left SRs, bombed the Moscow headquarters of the Communist Party, killing or wounding sixty-seven people. This only led to greater repression… [10]

Despite all this, despite the actions of the Cheka in April 1918, many anarchists carried on fighting for the soviet system (as Bukharin recognises but only in a back-handed way as evidence of their “inconsistency”!) and fought bravely for it in the civil war. Others did not. Many later gathered around Nestor Makhno’s army in the Ukraine. The latter often fought alongside the Reds but when victory over the Whites was secured in 1920 the Bolsheviks (as Makhno had anticipated) turned on their erstwhile ally and drove him into exile. This was not simply an error. It demonstrated just how far the revolution and the Bolshevik Party had degenerated during the civil war.

Bukharin’s powerful polemic on the class basis of the individualist anarchists and their criminal cohorts is well made. However, his marking of all anarchists with the same label was reminiscent of his own complaint at the beginning of the article that anarchists accuse all Marxists of being statists on the basis of what various Social Democrats have done to “radically disfigure” Marx’s ideas. As Avrich tells us, there were many different kinds of anarchist in Russia in 1917-21. He identifies three broad groups, the anarcho-syndicalists, the anarcho-communists and the individualistic anarchists who looked to the theories of Max Stirner (we’ll leave aside the Christian-pacifist followers of Tolstoy). It was the individualist anarchists who were most susceptible to infiltration by criminal and lumpen elements and it is really these who Bukharin is largely inveighing against at the beginning of the article and in section 3.

Bukharin’s indignation against those Social Democrats who deformed Marx is also understandable. It was people like himself (such as Anton Pannekoek in a polemic against Kautsky) [11] who had first raised the issue of what the Marxist theory of the state was, both before and during the First World War. Indeed in his Toward a Theory of the Imperialist State he had already written (but in much more scientific and vastly superior form) the main outline of the polemic we have translated here.

Thus, the society of the future is a society without a state organization. Despite what many people say, the difference between Marxists and anarchists is not that the Marxists are statists whereas the anarchists are anti-statists. The real difference in views of the future structure is that the socialists see a social economy resulting from the tendencies of concentration and centralization, the inevitable companions of development of the productive forces, whereas the economic utopia of the decentralist-anarchists carries us back to pre-capitalist forms. The socialists expect the economy to become centralized and technologically perfected; the anarchists would make any economic progress whatever impossible. The form of state power is retained only in the transitional moment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, a form of class domination in which the ruling class is the proletariat. With the disappearance of the proletarian dictatorship, the final form of the state’s existence disappears as well. [12]

He wrote this in 1916 but Lenin (who was then still in the process of escaping from the Kautsky version of Marxism) refused to publish it as he regarded the treatment of the state as “decidedly incorrect”. [13] However he was soon doing his own research into the question of the state and making notes for what would become The State and Revolution. When Bukharin arrived back in Russia in May 1917 Lenin’s wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, greeted him with the words “V.I. asked me to tell you that he no longer disagrees with you on the question of the state”. [14] In fact Lenin went further in The State and Revolution to talk of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a “semi-state” or “not a state in the true sense of the word”.

However, taking back on board Marx’s recognition of the need for the state to “wither away” still leaves us with the issue of how to organise production in the new society. This Bukharin identifies as the real distinction between “anarchy” and “scientific communism”. His intentions here are good. He wants to reduce “necessary working time” and thus in the conditions of 1918 he argues that “large scale organized and planned production” is necessary. He sees the alternative to “centralization” as a reactionary desire to return to a pre-capitalist, petty bourgeois form of production which could not satisfy the needs of the whole of society. However, he does not spell out what “centralization” of production means. Looked at from the standpoint of today it has a Fordist ring to it – which stands in sharp contrast to the writings of other Left Communists in Kommunist, like Ossinsky who defended workers’ initiative against one-man management and the reintroduction of specialists. [15]

When you add to this Bukharin’s stress on the need for “a workers’ state” (in this article he never once equates the dictatorship of the proletariat specifically with the soviets) we can see that we have arrived at a critical point in both Bukharin’s political thinking and in the revolution itself. The motivation behind this change of thinking is divulged in the document.

READ MORE 

ORIGINALLY POSTED IN 2020

UKRAINIAN REVOLUTION CENTENARY 1917-2017

UKRAINESOLIDARITYCAMPAIGN.ORG

The following articles deal with the history of the forgotten Ukrainian Communist Party (Bolshevik) aka The Borotbitski (Ukrainian for Fighters).

The Party was formed in Kiev and was urban based and dealt with both its own reformist wing  in the Social Democratic Party of the Ukraine, and in the Ukraine Rada, or Congress, where they faced the real right wing nationalists around Anti Semitic pseudo Aristocrat Simon Petlurya (Petluria).

In the countryside closer to Russia the CPU(B) or as it is sometimes known CP(B)U held less power in the local soviets of peasants who gathered under the banner of the Revolutionary Anarchist Army of Nestor Makhno, the Social Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Revolutionaries, as well as Hetmanite bandit groups of Anti Semitic Anti Russian thugs and racists, and Petluraites aligned with the White Army against the Revolution.

The Russian Bolshevik Party under Trotsky's military leadership also used the Ukraine as a battle ground, with his Red Train of troops moving in out and across Ukraine fighting the Germans and White Russians who were combined to defeat the Revolution as part of their expansion into Russia during WWI.

Here then are the resources on the CPU (B) Borotbiski 

I have found on the Internet in English. 

The party continued to be the CP of the Ukraine until Stalin eliminated its leadership and absorbed it into the All Russian CP when he dissolved National Communist Parties in the 1930's.

CENTENARY OF UKRAINIAN REVOLUTION

2017 marks the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, a decisive turning point in world history.  But the revolution was not only in Russia but across the entire Russian Empire, and Ukraine saw the largest and most powerful of the resurgence of all the oppressed nations of the Empire.   With the fall of Tsarism in February 1917 Ukraine witnessed unprecedented popular self-organisation and mobilisation of the masses of peasants, soldiers and workers to achieve social and national liberation.  Events in Ukraine would be decisive in deciding not only the fate of the Russian Revolution but events in Europe as whole.  Before the Revolution in the mind of Moscow there was no Ukraine; only the province of Malorossia — ‘Little Russia’ – the revolution shattered that colonial position – and challenges it to this day.  

To mark the Centenary of the Ukrainian Revolution we will be republishing histories, analysis and documents of the time.  Below we publish for the first time in English a section of the most important histories of the by Pavlo Khrystiuk, the four volume Zamitky i materiialy do istoriï ukraïns’koï revoliutsiï 1917–1920 rr. (Comments and Materials on the History of the Ukrainian Revolution, 1917–20, 4 vols, 1921–2).  

Khrystiuk was a Central Committee member of the million strong Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (UPSR) and a deputy in the autonomous parliament the Central Rada, he held positions in the Ukrainian Peoples Republic and later he worked for the Society of Scientific and Technical Workers for the Promotion of Socialist Construction Kharkiv.  A publisher of several studies Khrystiuk was arrested in 1931 and perished in the Stalinist terror in a in a Soviet labor camp.  Reproduced here is section of Part I, The National Cultural Period of the Revolution, Chapter I, The Beginning of the Revolution.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE UKRAINE

Borotbists [Боротьбісти; Borotbisty]. The Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries-Borotbists (Communists) was the left faction of the Ukrainian Party of Socialists Revolutionaries (UPSR). At the fourth party congress on 13–16 May 1918 this faction gained control of the Central Committee of the UPSR. It advocated a form of government based on workers' and peasant's councils and demanded co-operation with the Bolsheviks.

These views were propagated by its weekly Borot'ba, edited by Vasyl Blakytny (see also Borotba).

After the Bolshevik occupation of Ukraine at the beginning of 1919, the Borotbists collaborated with the Bolsheviks, and several Borotbists participated in Khristian Rakovsky's Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine (Mykhailo Poloz, Hnat Mykhailychenko, Mykhailo Panchenko, M. Lytvynenko, and M. Lebedynets).

At the fifth party congress on 8 March 1919 in Kharkiv the Borotbists adopted a communist but independentist platform and changed their name to the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (Communists). Then in August 1919, after merging with a left group known as the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' party (Independentists), they founded the Ukrainian Communist party (of Borotbists) and demanded admission to the Communist International as an independent ‘national-communist’ party. Their application was rejected, however.

At this time the Borotbists had 15,000 members. Because the Borotbists had a strong following among the peasants, Vladimir Lenin accepted a compromise: he promised an independent Ukrainian SSR if the Ukrainian Communist party (of Borotbists) voluntarily abolished itself by merging with the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine. In March 1920 the Borotbists joined the CP(B)U. They played an important role in promoting Ukrainization in the 1920s. In the 1930s former Borotbist members were politically persecuted and many were executed.

In Ukraine the All-Ukrainian Congress of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies, which convened in Kyiv on 17–19 December 1917, endorsed the Central Rada. The Bolshevik delegates rejected this action, however, and left Kyiv for Kharkiv to join an alternate congress of soviets from the Kryvyi Rih Iron-ore Basin and Donets Basin.

Calling itself the All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets, this body proclaimed Soviet rule in Ukraine and established the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee (VUTsVK). Ukrainian democratic and nationalist parties generally rejected the soviet system of government on the grounds that it gave too much power to Russian or Russified workers and soldiers at the expense of the peasantry; they advocated a single parliament elected on the basis of universal suffrage.

Eventually the Bolsheviks, with the support of the Borotbists and then the Ukrainian Communist party, were able to establish soviet power throughout the cities and towns of Ukraine. At the same time they were able to assert their authority over rural soviets, most of which had been organized and controlled by the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries.

Ukrainian Communist party (Ukrainska komunistychna partiia, or Ukapisty). 

A Communist group of no more than 250 members who in 1920–4 supported Soviet rule but opposed Russian domination of Ukraine through the CP(B)U. Its most prominent leaders were Yurii Mazurenko, Mykhailo Tkachenko, and Andrii Richytsky.

In January 1919, at the Sixth Congress of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' party, a group called the nezalezhnyky [see Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' party (Independentists)] walked out and began to function as a separate party with its own press organ, Chervonyi prapor. It adopted an ideology of national communism, favoring a Soviet regime in Ukraine but rejecting both the Directory of the Ukrainian National Republicand the Communist Party of Ukraine. In June 1919 it formed a revolutionary committee under the protection of Otaman Danylo Zeleny, who had revolted against the Bolshevik regime. In August the group split: its left faction joined the Borotbists, and the majority co-operated in military matters with the Directory for a short period.

The Red and the Black - Anarchism and Marxism in The Russian Civil War

Edoardo Richard Grasselli Moyse

Published 2016

24 Pages

1 File ▾

Marxism,

Russian Politics,

Anarchist Studies,

History of Anarchism,

Marxist theory

 ...more ▾

Show more ▾

Most of the criticism and academic material related to the 1917 Russian Revolution is devoted to Bolshevism, Marxism and in part, Counter-Revolutionary forces. By contrast, not much attention has been paid to other revolutionary forces such as Anarchism. My aim is to show that Anarchism played a significant role in the Russian Revolution to the extent that it posed a critical challenge both at the theoretical and at the practical level, and that the two levels are closely interconnected. I will start by looking at what Anarchism is and how it relates to Marxism on a theoretical level, and then proceed to analyse the interplay between the two different ideologies during the course of the Revolution. In doing so I will retrace the episodes of the Revolution back to the debates of the 19th century and analyse the difference between theory and practice in both ideologies. As the period under consideration is very long, I will focus on the main events that saw the two factions facing each other, namely the peasant uprisings after the Revolution, involving mainly the Kronstadt Uprising in 1921 and Nestor Makhno in Ukraine. Many factors shaped the events that took place, and I will try to gain an understanding of how the two political theories, Anarchism and Marxism related to the general situation, and how their actions in practice, followed from their respective ideologies.

https://www.academia.edu/41133664/The_Red_and_the_Black_Anarchism_and_Marxism_in_The_Russian_Civil_War?auto=download&email_work_card=download-paper

BONUS

History of the Makhnovist Movement (1918–1921)  PETER ARSHINOV

https://www.academia.edu/32475535/History_of_the_Makhnovist_Movement_1918_1921

VIEW FROM THE CDN UKE LEFT
Why did Russia invade Ukraine? 

FAQs about the conflict that has shocked the world

Jars Balan, Director, Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta 

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia has put the world on edge. The military move by Russian President Vladimir Putin has left many people looking for information on how and why the conflict started. Here are answers to some key questions.

Why did Russia invade Ukraine?

Putin nurses a deep sense of grievance over the loss of Russia’s power and influence since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Ukraine was formerly part of the Soviet Union but declared its independence in 1991.

Having a prosperous, modern, independent and democratic European state bordering Russia was perceived as posing a threat to Russia’s autocratic regime. If Ukrainians succeeded in fully reforming their country along lines of other western democracies, it would set a bad precedent for former Soviet countries and serve as an example for Russians who want a more democratic country.

Putin also perceives that western democracies are in a weak and particularly vulnerable state — thanks in part due to Russian efforts to create discord and sow divisions in Europe and North America abroad — making this an opportune time to launch a major military adventure.

Is this a war?

Absolutely, both in the traditional and modern sense. It involves a military assault with air, sea and land forces being deployed in combination with sophisticated cyber attacks and relentless propaganda disseminated by conventional as well as social media.

Read more: Russia is using an onslaught of cyber attacks to undermine Ukraine's defence capabilities

The invasion of Ukraine is just an expansion and escalation of the earlier hybrid war.

It is a war that actually began after Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity, also known as Euromaidan, in 2013-14. That’s when widespread protests by citizens who wanted a closer relationship with Europe led to the ouster of then-president Viktor Yanukovych, who had asked Russia for help to put down the protests.

Russia responded by illegally annexing Crimea, a section of Ukraine that touches the Russian border on the Black Sea. Russia also supplied military personnel, mercenaries and other resources in support of a small but militant minority of pro-Russian separatists in the largely Russian-speaking cities of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine’s east. More than 14,000 Ukrainians have died since 2014 in fighting in the Donbas.
Is the invasion tied to Russia’s annexation of Crimea?

Crimea was the only part of Ukraine to have a slight majority of Russians at the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, 55 per cent of the peninsula’s population voted for Ukraine’s independence.

Putin mistakenly believed that by successfully annexing Crimea by stealth and orchestrating an armed uprising in the Donbas, he would shake Ukrainian unity and prompt the southern and eastern provinces of the country to break away from the Kyiv government and seek to join the Russian Federation as a new territory to be known as Novorossiya, or “New Russia.”

That failed to happen, so the current invasion is an attempt to achieve a similar end using force on a massive scale.

Is this a renewal of the Cold War?

The term “Cold War” refers to a period after the Second World War when the Soviet Union and Western democracies were aligned against each other in what was essentially an ideological battle between capitalism and communism.

At the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union — the two great military powers in the world — engaged in a titanic ideological struggle by means of subversion, propaganda campaigns and proxy wars in the developing world.

Putin and his inner circle are very much products of the Cold War and consider the breakup of the Soviet Union and its Communist Party dictatorship a humiliation. In that sense, the current conflict is a renewal or even a continuation of the Cold War because its goal is to restore Russia as America’s greatest military rival.

Putin is seeking to turn back the clock to a time when the Soviet Union and the West had defined and relatively stable “spheres of influence” in Europe. During that time, there was a military balance achieved through parity in nuclear arsenals. This was also known as the “mutually assured destruction” policy, which suggested that neither the United States or the Soviet Union would go to war because the ensuing nuclear battle would be devastating for both countries and the rest of the world.
How ‘Russian’ is Ukraine?

According to the last full census taken in 2001, 17.3 per cent of the citizens of independent Ukraine identified themselves as ethnic Russians. This was a decline of almost five percentage points from 1989, reflecting in part an out-migration of Russians after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

There was also a change of identification among Ukrainians who had claimed to be ethnically Russian in the late Soviet period when it was socially and economically advantageous to do so, but reverted to their Ukrainian identity when Ukraine became independent.

Since 2001, the numerical influence of ethnic Russians in Ukraine diminished even further, as a result of the annexation of Crimea and the creation of the two separatist “republics” in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Significantly, even in the Donbas, where ethnic Russians form a substantial minority, they do not outnumber ethnic Ukrainians.

Somewhat confusing the situation is the fact that most Ukrainians are able to speak or easily understand both Russian and Ukrainian. For many Ukrainians, especially in the south and eastern regions of the country, Russian is the first language.

Russian is widely used throughout large parts of Ukraine and it is not unusual for people to easily and even unconsciously move back and forth between languages. Nor is it unusual that many Russian speakers are fervent Ukrainian patriots, just as significant numbers of ethnic Russians are fiercely loyal citizens of Ukraine.

Russians and Russian speakers are not persecuted or discriminated against in Ukraine, even as the Ukrainian state — and increasingly Ukrainian citizens themselves — work to encourage fluency and the use of Ukrainian in daily life after centuries of linguistic and cultural Russification.

Finally, a large number of Ukrainians have ties to Russians and Russia, through mixed marriages, work, professional relations and longstanding friendships.

Sadly, many of these relations have been strained in recent years due to the Putin government’s hostility towards Ukraine and the Russian media’s relentless and baseless attacks on Ukrainians. The situation has resulted in contacts being terminated for political reasons as a result of changing attitudes towards Russia as a whole.

The vast majority of Ukrainians until recently had a positive image of Russia, but a growing number now have a critical or skeptical attitude to Russia. The current conflict is certain to make things worse.

Why does Putin say Ukraine isn’t a real country?

In a televised speech days before the invasion, Putin suggested that “modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia.”

Putin has inherited much of his world view from the Russian-chauvinist and Russocentric traditions of the former imperial and Soviet Russian regimes. His Ukrainophobic attitudes can be attributed in part to his being steeped in deeply rooted feelings of both Russian superiority and resentment towards Ukrainians who have consistently asserted their distinct identity.

Russia has for four centuries tried to fully subjugate Ukrainian lands and to subdue the Ukrainian nation by means of laws and policies designed to undermine and suppress the Ukrainian language and culture, while at the same time privileging Russians in Ukraine.

Russia has often resorted to using brutal force to prevent Ukraine from pursuing greater autonomy as well as outright independence, using invasions, ruthlessly crushing rebellions, exiling hundreds of thousands to Siberia and the Far North, starving millions in a genocidal famine, and simultaneously imprisoning and executing legions of gifted artists, intellectuals, spiritual leaders and political activists, who dared to challenge Russian dominance over the country.

As various attempts by Ukrainians to establish an independent state were thwarted by Russia and by other foreign oppressors, Putin has repeatedly sought to disparage Ukraine’s successful declaration of independence in 1991 and is determined to put an end to it.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:

Fake viral footage is spreading alongside the real horror in Ukraine. Here are 5 ways to spot it

Targeting Putin’s inner circle and keeping Europe on board: Why Biden’s sanctions may actually work to make Russia pay for invading Ukraine

Jars Balan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Many Americans still paying high costs months after insurers were ordered to cover HIV preventive care

By Sarah Varney, Kaiser Health News 

Anthony Cantu, 31, counsels patients at a San Antonio health clinic about a daily pill shown to prevent HIV infection. Last summer, he started taking the medication himself, an approach called preexposure prophylaxis, better known as PrEP. The regimen requires laboratory tests every three months to ensure the powerful drug does not harm his kidneys and that he remains HIV-free.

© AFP/Getty Images SAN ANSELMO, CA - NOVEMBER 23: A bottle of antiretroviral drug Truvada is displayed at Jack's Pharmacy on November 23, 2010 in San Anselmo, California. A study published by the New England Journal of Medicine showed that men who took the daily antiretroviral pill Truvada significantly reduced their risk of contracting HIV.

 (Photo Illustration by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

But after his insurance company, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas, billed him hundreds of dollars for his PrEP lab test and a related doctor's visit, Cantu panicked, fearing an avalanche of bills every few months for years to come.

"I work in social services. I'm not rich. I told my doctor I can't continue with PrEP," said Cantu, who is gay. "It's terrifying getting bills that high."

A national panel of health experts concluded in June 2019 that HIV prevention drugs, shown to lower the risk of infection from sex by more than 90%, are a critical weapon in quelling the AIDS epidemic. Under provisions of the Affordable Care Act, the decision to rate PrEP as an effective preventive service triggered rules requiring health insurers to cover the costs. Insurers were given until January 2021 to adhere to the ruling.

© Justin Sullivan/Getty Images/File 

A pharmacist pours Truvada pills back into the bottle at Jack's Pharmacy on November 23, 2010, in San Anselmo, California.

Faced with pushback from the insurance industry, the Department of Labor clarified the rules in July 2021: Medical care associated with a PrEP prescription, including doctor appointments and lab tests, should be covered at no cost to patients.

More than half a year later, that federal prod hasn't done the trick.

In California, Washington, Texas, Ohio, Georgia, and Florida, HIV advocates and clinic workers say patients are confounded by formularies that obfuscate drug costs and by erroneous bills for ancillary medical services. The costs can be daunting: a monthly supply of PrEP runs $60 for a generic and up to $2,000 for brand-name drugs like Truvada and Descovy. That doesn't include quarterly lab tests and doctor visits, which can total $15,000 a year.

"Insurers are quite smart, and they have a lot of staff," said Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute. They are setting up "formularies in a way that looks like I'm going to have to pay, and that's one of the barriers. They are not showing this is free for people in an easy way."

Schmid has found repeated violations: bewildering drug formularies that wrongly assign copays; PrEP drugs listed in the wrong tier. Some plans offer zero-cost access only to Descovy, a patented drug Gilead Sciences tested only in men and transgender women that is not authorized by the FDA for use by women who have vaginal sex.

More than 700,000 Americans have died from HIV-related illnesses since the AIDS epidemic emerged in 1981. But compared with its devastating impacts in the 1980s and '90s, HIV is now largely a chronic disease in the U.S., managed with antiretroviral therapy that can suppress the virus to undetectable — and non-transmissible — levels. Public health officials now promote routine testing, condom use, and preexposure prophylaxis to prevent infections.

"Contracting HIV or AIDS is not a fear of mine," said Dan Waits, a 30-year-old gay man who lives in San Francisco. "I take PrEP as an afterthought. That's a huge shift from a generation ago."

Still, 35,000 new infections occur each year in the U.S., according to KFF. Of those, 66% occur through sex between men; 23% through heterosexual sex; and 11% involve injecting illegal drugs. Black people represent nearly 40% of the 1.2 million U.S. residents living with HIV.

HIV prevention drugs, including a long-lasting injectable approved by the FDA last December, are critical to reducing the rate of new infections among high-risk groups. But uptake has been sluggish. An estimated 1.2 million Americans at risk of HIV infection should be taking the pills, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but only 25% are doing so, and use among Black and Hispanic patients is especially low.

"Until we can increase uptake of PrEP in these communities, we're not going to be successful in bringing about an end to the HIV epidemic," said Justin Smith, director of the Campaign to End AIDS at the Positive Impact Clinic in Atlanta. Atlanta has the second-highest rate of new HIV infections, after Washington, D.C.

Women remain a neglected group when it comes to PrEP education and treatment. In some urban areas, such as Baltimore, women account for 30% of people living with HIV. But women have been largely ignored by PrEP marketing efforts, said Dr. Rachel Scott, scientific director of women's health research at the MedStar Health Research Institute in Washington, D.C.

Scott runs a reproductive health clinic that cares for women with HIV and those at risk of infection. She counsels women whose sexual partners do not use condoms or whose partners have HIV and women who have transactional sex or share needles to consider the HIV prevention pill. Most, she said, are completely unaware a pill could help protect them.

In the years since Truvada, the first HIV prevention pill authorized by the FDA, was approved in 2012, lower-priced generic versions have entered the market. While a monthly supply of Truvada can cost $1,800, generic prescriptions are available for $30 to $60 a month.

Even as medication costs have decreased, lab tests and other accompanying services are still being billed, advocates say. Many patients are unaware they do not have to pay out-of-pocket. Adam Roberts, a technology project manager in San Francisco, said his company's health insurer, Aetna, has charged him $1,200 a year for the past three years for his quarterly lab tests.

"I assumed that was the cost of being on the medication," said Roberts, who learned about the issue from a friend last month.

Enforcing coverage rules falls to state insurance commissioners and the Department of Labor, which oversees most employer-based health plans. But enforcement is driven largely by patient complaints, said Amy Killelea, an Arlington, Virginia-based lawyer who specializes in HIV policy and coverage.

"It's the employer-based plans that are problematic right now," said Killelea, who works with clients to appeal charges with insurers and file complaints with state insurance commissioners. "The current system is not working. There need to be actual penalties for noncompliance."

A spokesperson for the Department of Labor, Victoria Godinez, said that people who have concerns about their plan's compliance with the requirements should contact the Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration.

Even as they push for broader enforcement, HIV organizations are taking one small victory at a time.

On Feb. 16, Anthony Cantu received a letter from the Texas Department of Insurance informing him that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas had reprocessed his claims for PrEP-related lab costs. The insurance company assured state officials that future claims submitted through Cantu's plan "will be reviewed to make sure the Affordable Care Act preventive services would not be subject to coinsurance, deductible, copayments, or dollar maximums."

The news was welcome, said Schmid of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute, but "it shouldn't have to be so hard."