Ukraine

Are the Tories Russian assets or merely greedy incompetents?

Shocking really. Biggest humanitarian catastrophe to hit Europe since 1945 and total silence.
Few too many uncomfortable truths for Tories and right wing Labour types, how Russia has been allowed to pollute U.K. politics for almost two decades. Once again Jeremy Corbyn is on the right side of history as he has consistently opposed Putin, whilst others were only too willing to take dirty money from Oligarchs.

You say he’s insane but he’s been pretty consistent these past 20 years. He’s an ethno-nationalist which is why he’s so admired by Trump, Farage and other far-right groups, like the modern Conservative Party.
He’s been leading an aggressive foreign policy these past two decades and clearly has become increasingly emboldened since his military successes in Chechnya, Georgia, Eastern Ukraine and Syria. Add to that the Russian funded Brexit coup and the fact that so many in U.K. politics are bought and paid for by his regime, he clearly made a tactical decision that the West would do nothing to counter Russian expansion into the Ukraine. The guy has been consistent in his views of Ukraine not being a proper nation and an appendage of Mother Russia but our political leadership chose to, at best ignore it, and at worst operate as fifth columnists for his regime. Very dark days for Europe and U.K. democracy.

I'm not sure it would really help, but it would cheer us all up.

The sooner the better. Putin responding to criticism from within -

"Of course they (the West) will try to bet on the so-called fifth column, on traitors,  — on those who earn their money here, but live over there. Live, not in the geographical sense, but in the sense of their thoughts, their slavish thinking. Any people, and especially the Russian people, will always be able to distinguish the true patriots from the scum and the traitors, and just to spit them out like a midge that accidentally flew into their mouths,"

I know a lot of it is lost in translation but whenever he's asked a question he seems to give a response that goes on for ages, makes little sense and has the air of a man babbling to himself. 

Beat me to that !

According to the Tories the Ukrainians’ fight for survival has direct parallels with the Brexit Referendum. Crass, insulting and ill-judged, but not unsurprising. They are a national embarrassment, imagine voting for them.

Probably plays well with the plastic patriot Tory fan base. If they can fantasise that 75 year olds are WW2 veterans they can imagine that leaving a trading bloc is akin to brutal urban warfare. Ten years from now they’ll be boring their grandkids with tales of derring-do during the 2016 Referendum.

Two fascist states? Not sure you can describe Ukraine as fascist, the far right polled less than 2% in their last elections and gained no MPs. I know some of the far left tinfoil hat brigade on Twitter like to point the finger at the Azov Battalion as some kind of Naziism, but it’s a tiny, fringe group in a lawless part of the country that has been engaged in a brutal war for almost 10 years.

Platform for Life, one of those suspended parties (and the biggest), is led by Viktor Medvedchuk, a pro-Moscow oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin. Indeed, Putin is Godfather to Medvedchuk’s daughter.
Elements of the Left are falling into the same trap as Bush and Blair did. Someone who is my enemy’s enemy is not always your friend and the West chose to ignore Putin’s brutal methods to put down Chechnya’s Muslim population in 1999 because he was an anti-Islamist. It’s the same story now, with some people wilfully ignoring the atrocities because there is an anti-NATO element to it.

The vast majority of those parties are fringe groups and all have links to the Kremlin. Good job Twitter wasn’t around when the U.K. Government proscribed the British Union of Fascists in 1939. By the way I agree that NATO eastward expansion is a major factor in all this, but it doesn’t excuse the behaviour of the Russian state.

Not in the slightest.

The fact remains the Ukrainian leader has banned ALL left-wing and socialist opposition parties in their parliament. Essentially giving himself a quasi-dictatorship. Imagine the reports if this was Putin!

This is not as simple as “Ukraine good, Russia bad” - far more complex than that, especially with NATO’s involvement. Putin locks journalists in jail and even had one killed on his birthday. Putin is engaging in war crimes like bombing hospitals and civilian targets. NATO has done all of those things in Libya and Iraq but nobody talks about that because they’re “defending freedom.”

Not everything you don’t like to hear is “Russian propaganda” - this is Cold War era McCarthyism “red scare” bollocks. Acting like Ukraine and it’s leaders are perfect and innocent whilst condemning every single Russian for a war they have nothing to do with is a load of jingoistic Cold War era nonsense.

Just to clarify, I 100% support Ukraine’s sovereignty and right to self-determination and 100% believe Putin is a war criminal who must be stopped. I am confident that a lot of the preamble to this conflict was driven by western interference (US-backed coup in 2014) and NATO expansion in the region.

Zelensky and Putin have similar political views and policies but Putin is marginally more authoritarian. Russia isn’t a democracy, and now nor is Ukraine because ten opposition parties just got vexed for speaking out about NATO and Zelensky has signed a decree to unite all Ukrainian TV stations into one state channel. Both decisions made under the pretext of war.

Hope that clarifies my points.

Ukrainian politics is odd and there is no real left or right wing to speak of. Politics there is much more divided on regional and ethnic lines rather than political theory. The parties that have been banned are all pro-Russian, Slavic nationalists with very conservative social issues: pro death penalty, police and authoritarianism and are so far removed from anything we would describe as progressive here.
To describe Putin as marginally more authoritarian than Zelensky is ridiculous, there’s only one of them waging an aggressive war of invasion.