As the holiday spirit takes hold, we have compiled the highlights of our year for you: New homepages, a book publication, study trips and exhibitions, and a new appeal for our fundraising campaign for Ukraine. We thank you in advance for your support and wish you a fulfilling holiday and a peaceful start to the New Year.

For almost two years, since February 24, 2022, Ukraine has been forced to defend itself against Russia, which has launched a full-scale invasion of the country in violation of international law. In his most recent press conference, the Russian president reiterated that he has no intention of ending this war of aggression, which has been ongoing since 2014, including the occupation of Ukrainian territory, relentless missile strikes on civilian sites, the deliberate destruction of the Kakhovka Dam resulting in ecocide, and the forced relocation of thousands of children to Russian territory. Beyond the toll of casualties and injuries, the psychological impact on both victims and soldiers, as well as society at large, cannot be overlooked. We continue standing in solidarity with Ukraine and providing financial, military, and informational support. The war can only be ended with a complete victory for Ukraine.

At the same time, support for Ukraine is also becoming more difficult for German civil society. The considerable cuts to the federal budget are affecting NGOs and associations in particular and are also creating uncertainty for international collaboration. We, as Dekabristen e.V., were already declared undesirable by the Russian government in 2022. This year, the AfD submitted a minor question to the German government, raising the doubt of further funding of our projects. Despite such attempts to discredit our work, we will continue speaking out for democracy and human rights!

Our organisation stands up against imperialism and authoritarianism as well as state repression of all kinds. Since 2022, we have been increasingly supporting the work of independent journalists, particularly from Russia and Belarus, enabling investigative research in exile. We provide training, workshops, resources, and consultations to those who have moved abroad and connect independent media from the region with their international counterparts.

In many of our projects, an increasing number of participants are refugees and displaced persons who bring new perspectives, actively shape their environment and raise further questions. We see new communities emerging and are trying out new formats, as we are based in Berlin, whose urban society is rich in experiences with newcomers. We find it particularly concerning that right-wing populism is spreading wider in European societies, especially in Germany. It is becoming increasingly difficult for people to find safety, e.g. in the EU with changing visa and asylum laws. Civil society is needed to defend the rights of refugees, politically persecuted people and other new arrivals!

Alongside the challenges, there are also positive developments. In December 2023, the European Union decided to start accession negotiations with Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova and to offer both countries the prospect of EU membership. At the same time, Georgia was also granted EU candidate status. This progress represents a victory for the committed, pro-European civil society, which has worked tirelessly to bring their countries closer to the EU and put pressure on their governments.

And finally, we at Dekabristen e.V. have also evolved in 2023, growing not only in our team but also in the impact of our projects and activities. These processes will continue in the coming year, and we look forward to updating you on the results of our efforts in the spring - so stay tuned!
In the meantime, we would like to thank all our partners, supporters and friends for their unwavering collaboration and solidarity in 2023. Let’s continue uniting our forces, and building a strong network together! Let’s stand together in times of crisis!

We are again collecting donations in support of Ukrainian initiatives that provide Ukrainian defenders with the necessary equipment and organize humanitarian support for people affected by war. We launched our first fundraising campaign in the spring of 2022. We continued it throughout the year, resulting in first aid kits and medical equipment being sent to Kyiv and humanitarian aid being provided in Kharkiv and to refugees in Berlin. We are committed to continuing to support Ukrainian initiatives.

This year we again invite you to support our partners Soldatskyi pryval (marching break) in Zaporizhzhia, who provide the Ukrainian Armed Forces with food and supplies, Co-Haty, a project that creates houses for displaced persons within Ukraine, the volunteer initiative Livyj Bereh that continues restoring residential houses in eastern Ukraine that have been damaged due to Russian military invasion and Sunflower Care, a Berlin-based organization that evacuates and supports disabled, neurodivergent, chronically ill persons and their caregivers from Ukraine. We also encourage you to support Solidarity Collectives, an anti-authoritarian volunteer network that helps the Ukrainian resistance movement to fight the Russian invasion, and organises humanitarian aid to the civilian population of Ukraine.

All donations go directly to Ukrainian initiatives. Thank you for your support and solidarity!

If you want to support one of our partners in Ukraine, please donate via Paypal or by bank transfer to Dekabristen e.V. with the purpose “Donation Ukraine”. You can also indicate which of the partners you would like to support in the comments on the transfer. For donations over 100 Euros, please use bank transfer only. Our payment reference:

DE20 12030000 1020168561
BYLADEM1001
with the purpose “Donation Ukraine”, and optionally indicate a partner of your choice.

On our webpage you can find more information about the campaign and links to other initiatives you can support. Visit our website, share our campaign and support Ukraine!

Thank you for your donation!

2023 marks the halfway point in implementing the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, progress is falling short worldwide. How can civil society foster the achievement of the SDGs and hold their governments accountable to their commitments?

With our project SDG LENS. Monitoring Sustainable Development in Eastern Europe & South Caucasus, we are strengthening civil society by monitoring, reporting, and advocating for the SDGs and connecting actors across different sectors and regions. We recently launched the online training series "From Observers to Advocates", which invites experts and civil society actors to actively work on independent reports on the implementation of the SDGs in their countries in the coming year and to present the results internationally.

The members of the SDG LENS network have already gained extensive experience in advocacy and monitoring of the SDGs this year, including through their work on nine Spotlight Reports on the implementation of individual SDGs at local and national levels. All reports can be found on the new SDG LENS website, the central platform for news and publications on sustainable development in the region. You can also find SDG LENS on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Follow us and become part of the growing SDG LENS network!

The two-year re:imagine your city project, completed at the end of this year, has now been available in book form for two months! The publication re:imagine your city "Rethinking Urban Paradigms" invites readers to explore and reflect on current paradigms that characterise our urban environment and rethink them. It offers insightful perspectives on the culture of memory and the cultural heritage of cities, urban planning and gentrification, migration and post-pandemic changes, spaces of possibility for solidarity and new urban practices. The publication results from a collective effort by a dedicated interdisciplinary network of educators, researchers, artists, designers and architects as part of the international design lab for urban practices and transformation re:imagine your city.

Eight local projects have been created within the programme in Germany, Ukraine, Poland, and Georgia. The audio walks developed and available in this way take listeners to different cities and familiarise them with the history as well as the current challenges, such as air pollution and economic challenges, and show possible ways to bring about change. The various projects and episodes can be found here.

The homepage also documents the summer school in Tbilisi and the COMMON FUTURES audio lab, which was developed by young creatives from Germany and Moldova. The project is, of course, also present on Instagram and is now coming to a close.

Citizen+ is a 2-year project of political education mainly for young people from Ukraine that ends this year. We invite you to visit our new website, citizen-plus.com, which has educational material, including online courses, podcasts, and webinars on democracy, human rights, disinformation, media, remembrance cultures, and Ukrainian history.

In November, we invited young people from Ukraine and Germany, including newcomers, to join us in Berlin to participate in the “Traces. A Study Trip on Remembrance Cultures” program. The participants actively contributed their experience and knowledge on remembrance work and decolonization. During the week, the group visited memorial sites and exhibitions and met cultural and civil society actors, such as Platforma TU! and the GOGOLfest teams from Mariupol, Art Space in Exile, and Foundation EVZ based in Berlin. Connections of remembrance and the physical spaces in the city were discovered during city (audio) walks and workshops.

The panel discussion “Flight, arrival, participation?” on political realities of Jewish and Ukrainian refugees in the past and today took place against the background of almost two years of the full-scale Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and the escalation of the Israel-Hamas war. The evening was dedicated to the dialogue between communities in Berlin, discussing arrival and participation in times of objecting public debates to migrants. Our guests were taz journalist Erica Zingher, Deborah Kogan, vice president of the Jewish Student Union Germany, Jonna Rock, a researcher at DeZIM, Oleksandra Bienert,member of the Berlin State Advisory Council for Participation, and Iryna Berezneva from the Freefilmers NGO. Read more & listen to the audio recording.

For the network of Feminist Translocalities, the first part of 2023 was dedicated to organizing the side program of "Өмә", an exhibition that brought together 30 artistic voices of members of indigenous communities and people with migrant identities and life experiences in Russia. More than 35 workshops, performances, and lectures by artists, activists, and academics communicated the complexity of Russia's colonial past and present and showed various aspects of anticolonial resistance. Among the events was the art and discourse program "Reconstruction of Happiness", curated by Natasha Tselyuba at Kulturfabrik Moabit. The aim was to reconstruct the feeling of human happiness that was taken away from Ukrainians due to war.
A significant event for Feminist Translocalities was a seminar for 20 indigenous activists from the still colonized parts of russia which was dedicated to developing strategies of their joint work. We also continued to be active online and organized two online labs on (de)colonial practices and the politics of spatial relations with Цвірінь (Tsvirin'), later renamed into Zgraya. You can find some of the decolonial readers published already on the website of Feminist Translocalities.

The last event of 2023 was a residency for 20 artists and activists from the countries of the former USSR who work on the topics of queerness, feminism and decoloniality. In collaboration with Untitled Tbilisi and Salaam Cinema Baku, we collectively worked towards the final performance, "Metamorph", which you can watch a short clip on Instagram. In 2024, we will publish documentation of the performance, edited into a film. The network is currently looking for funding for further development of this project in Kazakhstan, as well as for other formats with and for environmental, queer feminist, anti-racist, crip and indigenous activists and artists.