Written by a friend in Ukraine, originally in Russian and now translated into English. Episode one of many, a continuous look back at anti-fascist subculture and groups from 2005 onwards.
It’s a holiday today and this photo (Taken 2007) is a little reminder that a right wing SXE (Straight Edge) scene doesn’t exist. Especially one that would be created in Dnipropetrovsk. This photo was taken at The Olympic stadium before the reconstruction of the stadium, when the club was owned by the city and played only at “Olympic”.
We visited the big derby in Leipzig on the side FC Chemie Leipzig (Chemie). We had a bit of time for a small look around the city. One day before the game together with some local lads we went to a bar not far from the stadium. We thought that Lokomotive Leipzig (Loko) fans will make some graffiti around stadium, they did not. But on the same evening at nearly midnight they came out with a squad of around 40 people. We were with around 30/40 with a big part of our squad that was made up of very young ultras. So Loko squad moved forward to us and our boys moved up to them as well. Just as we were meeting some of our lads went to a nearby bar to stock up on bottles and other items (by the way bar had a Russian or Ukrainian theme), the rest of us started an unequal battle with the Loko firm. Loko throw bottles and stones to start but mostly into the air or far away, their aim was pretty poor. One thing that was useful for them was pepper spray which I got in the eyes from the start of the fight, but just before it starts to work properly I had time to (with one eye, other one barely worked because of the spray) grab someone in a Loko balaclava, to land a few hooks on them (one was to our lad unfortunately, fucking balaclavas, it was dark after all). One of our lads who during the fight only last 30 seconds as after his last punch to the Loko guy he got sprayed straight into his right eye. After a few hours we recovered from the gas and started making our way to the estate with the lads and to share a common experience with our local mates. Derby had a positive outcome, Chemie won and there was no Loko opponents at the stadium. The local riot cops said that they can provide security only if Loko fans will be less than 250 people and because they were more they were refused entrance to the stadium on derby day.
A few days after our trip a mad right winger by the name of Steffen wanted to kill a load of people and make an incident like happened recently in New Zealand, but in the town over from Leipzig, Halle. So it also seems that the theme of right wing terrorism and radicalism works with the rule “the quieter, the better”.
During the last two years there have been fifteen separate occasions where explosives and weapons have been confiscated from nazi organisations. Did anybody heard about it? I, for example, did not.