Some are glorifying that a Black migrant to Europe ends up dying for Putin's dirty supremacist war of invasion, occupation and annexation of another people's country, a war which is also a Nato proxy war that sees Western imperialism successfully bait Putin into a war of entrapment. We deplore and denounce this glorification for a number of reasons, not least that Putin's war is conducted totally by racist right-wing nationalist forces in an explicit manner.
Lenin was a revolutionary against Russian chauvinism and all chauvinism and racism, he was on-point when it came to oppressed peoples and their path towards liberation. Lenin inspired many oppressed peoples including the Pan-Africanist pioneer Marcus Garvey who called Lenin the greatest man in the world, and rightly so.
Putin's Ukraine war is the counter-opposite of Lenin in the explicit words of Putin himself when he made the speech explaining his war on Ukraine: "Soviet Ukraine is the result of the Bolsheviks’ policy and can be rightfully called “Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine.” He was its creator and architect. This is fully and comprehensively corroborated by archival documents, including Lenin’s harsh instructions regarding Donbass, which was actually shoved into Ukraine. And today the “grateful progeny” has overturned monuments to Lenin in Ukraine. They call it decommunization. You want decommunization? Very well, this suits us just fine. But why stop halfway? We are ready to show what real decommunizations would mean for Ukraine."
This is not a war any Black person or any person should be invested in. The Ukrainians have been invaded and their land is being taken away in an overt act of colonialism by Putin, in a sense the Ukrainians have the moral high ground and it's understandable they get sympathy from people as invasion, occupation and colonial annexation is so immoral that it will garner some sympathies. However, no one should be going to fight on the Ukrainian side either as it is tainted by the strategic involvement of Nato.
On Putin's side you have the total control of very racist, right-wing and often far-right nationalists who control Russia annexed areas of Ukraine and the Russian state itself. Putin has long openly promoted anti-Black and racist politics across the world and saw it fit kidnap and weaponise a young Black gay woman - Britney Griner - for his war strategies and culture war against those opposing white supremacy racism.
Alexis Castillo must have noticed the endless senior and mass right-wing nationalist head jobs around him, did he share any of these reflections and observations with anyone? Did anyone encourage him to see that killing, injuring, maiming and dying for Putin's far-right project is perhaps something he should refrain from doing? We would be interested to hear from anyone who knew him if there were problems around this that he experienced or commented on. No one who goes to the Russian occupied areas of Ukraine can be unaware of the fact that it is controlled by racist and far-right oligarchs and nationalists unless they are drunk off the red-brown juice that befuddles their brains to mush.
