Statement by the Priama Diia trade union at the meeting organised by the International Trade Union Network for Solidarity and Struggles on 8 June 2026.

Hello, my name is Tamila, and I'm a student at the Ukrainian Academy of Printing and a member of a student union Priama Diia (or Direct action in English). I have moved from an occupied city of Kherson and have seen what life under Russian imperial oppression and chauvinism promises. It was an immense relief to flee to an independent part of Ukraine back then and feel like the very air I breathed was free, that I could finally say anything aloud in the streets without being endangered, that I was not indebted to somebody for even remaining alive and unharmed. The contrast was stark and made me feel grateful for my homeland and for the people who inhabit it, for the values of freedom, dignity, solidarity and peace that Ukrainian culture started to embody in my eyes. But our people are not a monolith and we exist within a difficult and dangerous world, where everyday Ukrainians have to sacrifice something to survive. The usual suspects, such as imperialism, capitalism, patriarchy, homophobia and xenophobia thrive in such conditions, and malevolent actors feel emboldened by our time of crisis.

Yet despite all of this, as a teenager I have only ever dabbled in activism, not quite approaching it because I had a lack of information about what activism can even look like in Ukraine. I was not given the way out for my despair, thinking that politics were not available to me, that I had no power to change the social currents of the world.

It felt quite hopeless and isolating, seeing the international rise of fascism and spreading of neoliberalism into my own country, and not doing anything about that. At one point, I was so depressed and sick of my own inaction, that I took a leap of faith and joined Priama Diia. That's when everything changed for me.

Priama Diia is an independent student union that is quite different from the majority of other student organisations and unions in Ukraine. You see, in Ukraine universities have mandatory union structures. Students are encouraged to join them, and it's called self-organising, yet such "yellow" unions are not truly independent. They only respond to the needs of powers that be, and never represent students' real interests. They're only concerned with preserving the image and good name of universities. In turn, students are not particularly interested in joining them, and this dynamic undermines the spirit of unionism at large.

Thus, the main goal of Priama Diia is to bring student attention to what true independent self-organising can be. Our main principles are:

Grassroots action
Horizontal structure
Anti-discrimination
Solidarity
Internationalism
Free education

Our generation of the union exists from 2023 and unites students from all over Ukraine. We have multiple autonomous local chapters in different cities, but we unite in solidarity and our common principles. 

To further explain the context within which Priama Diia operates, we will have to explain the Ukrainian context. As you might know, the ongoing full-scale war has lasted four full years. As of now, 20% of Ukrainian territory is occupied; still, we suffer ongoing bombings and military drone attacks on our civilian infrastructure. Most Ukrainians are aware that, in this war, our physical survival is at stake and our access to housing, utilities and medical help is extremely precarious depending on where you live and what class you are, as well as pure luck.

These four years have completely shifted our collective understanding of politics and activism. Due to the hybrid mode of warfare, characterised by blending of military force with methods such as disinformation, cyberattacks, economic coercion and proxy operations, our citizens have grown weary of anything that might contribute to the instability fostered by the enemy, both economically and culturally. The unfortunate side effect is that the popular position is sceptical and inflexible toward efforts for social change, and that is often utilised by far right actors and the government.

The task of a unionist in Ukraine is walking a fine line between demanding change and not destabilising the unity of the populus so much as to be accused of treason. We are often told we're "asking for too much" by people and institutions that aim to obscure how much is even possible to ask for.

The role of trade unionism in this context is different from what might be familiar to you, but we still share the same goals.

The majority of people at the front lines are workers and thus many union members have joined the army, and unions aim to help those members and keep contact with them. We are a student union and we don't have a lot of people who are at the age to join the army. We're trying to help our anti-authoritarian comrades at the front lines, but our main goal remains giving voice to students across Ukraine, and we're not afraid to demand radical social changes.

We're fighting for free and accessible education, and preservation of social welfare. We believe that during wartime access to education is necessary, for it’s a key to our survival and post-war reconstruction. In times when a lot of civilian infrastructure has been destroyed and lots of territories taken, the only chance for students to have a place to live is via dormitories. The existence of dormitories and free education programs is a necessity for those young people under occupation who seek to flee into Ukraine.

We have been undergoing many changes, such as a merger of universities with the purpose of so-called "optimisation".

I am one of those students affected by this policy, because my alma mater (The Ukrainian Academy of Printing) has been merged with the Lviv National Polytechnic, even despite its cultural relevance to Ukrainian history. This made me a student of a different institution than the one I applied to. This policy was dictated to Ukraine by the International Monetary Fund. Universities were given huge grants to encourage the merger, and this money was promised to be used to build new dormitories, which to this day has not yet happened. Nor were any solid guarantees given to the affected students that their degrees and their right to live in dormitories would remain active in the future.

There was a massive student protest that I attended, yet the Ministry of Education ignored our voices, placating us with empty promises instead. I was forced to remake documents and go through bureaucratic rituals and other students were forced to pay bigger fees for their education than they used to.

The other issue Priama Diia is fighting is sexist narratives within education. In the last few years we had what might be called a "#MeToo" movement of female students and female university staff reporting sexual harassment and abuse done by professors and administration workers. Many of those men escaped justice for years and even decades, and even now aren't held properly accountable by universities and the law.
 As a union that stands against discrimination and supports feminist principles, we carried out protests against them and we try to give voice to the victims and stand against the culture of silencing that enables such abuse.

In spirit of this, Priama Diia actively cooperates and fights alongside many feminist and queer organisations. Ukraine has a long way to go in regards to women's and LGBT rights compared to some European nations, yet we stand strong in our dedication to breach this gap. This year, our parliament has proposed changes to the law regulating private affairs of citizens, businesses, and organizations, namely the Civil Code. It has many, many issues and has been criticised by activist organisations and even the ministry of Justice. The 800 pages project was voted in by the parliament in the first hearing without any public discussion in just one day.

This project strips queer people of the ability to register as families by creating a strictly heterosexual definition of a family, erasing the only rights queer people still have in Ukraine. It also creates a case for explicit discrimination against trans people, stripping them of their marriages if they choose to undergo transition.

It also has a new term throughout it called "boni mores" translated as "good morals" which is a plain attempt to provide a loophole for appealing to vague ideas of public morality in court. Its use case is in the text itself, that is taking away the right to no-fault divorce by asking the couples to make up in order to preserve "good morals". This policy would massively endanger women in abusive marriages if they're unable to prove physical violence.

Because of that and other issues regarding the freedom of speech, privatisation of land and so on, Priama Diia has vehemently opposed it from the day one. We joined an all-Ukrainian campaign protesting the project and demanding changes. I've helped organise a Direct Action protest in Lviv where we marched across the city making ourselves seen and our voices heard. Just before that we invaded a university and occupied the main stairs, agitating students to join our struggle.

I want to bring your attention to the bravery of every Ukrainian who joins grassroots action, since they knowingly put themselves in danger of Russian military attacks, and yet we do it anyway. Even though there is always a level of physical danger to being outside at the wrong time, people have organised and carried out many successful campaigns. Police have told us that we wouldn't be allowed to protest since large crowds are a target for shellings, yet we never back down.

For we are proving every day that we will never surrender or concede in the fight for our freedom and our rights.

Having told you all of this, I ask you all to stand in solidarity with us. Stand with Ukraine not just in words but in action, for together all of us are stronger against the oppressive powers of this world.

We demand the unions of the world to recognise Russian imperialist oppression.
 We demand that they recognise the Ukrainian right to resist this oppression.
 Recognise us not only as victims or puppets of some governments' interests, because now you can see that social movements in Ukraine are alive and well, and we struggle inside a complex context where we need your support and strong comradery.

We're grateful for the actions the comrades of this network have already provided for us.

For example, all of the fundraisings that Solidaire has organised to help our union were extremely important for maintaining our activity and organising safety measures for us.
This has also allowed us to be more independent from political actors, and we're thankful for that, because we strongly believe that independent unionism is essential for bringing about the changes we want to see.