Ireland to consider expelling Russian diplomats

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Actually that’s stuff and nonsense. The polish regime may be right wing but it is pro NATO and anti Russian. Hungary is also anti Russian.

And Crimea is probably the limit of his ambitions.

The supposed interference in democracies is supposedly a few tweets and a news channel people can choose to watch or not - in short democratic discourse.

Unlike the USSR which did have a planned world global hegemony, modern Russia does not. The neo conservatives do of course.

BUDAPEST — As Russian President Vladimir Putin prepares to make a rare trip to the European Union Thursday, his choice of destination — Hungary — reveals a shift in the Kremlin’s strategy in Europe following the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Putin has met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán several times since the Hungarian leader came to power in 2010. The Russian ruler last visited Budapest in early 2015 in what was his first visit to an EU country following the annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of fighting in eastern Ukraine.

But this year’s visit comes amidst a subtle change in the Kremlin’s perception of Hungary. Putin has come to see Orbán as a Euroskeptic leader who can play on the European stage and hopes that Hungary could formally push for the lifting of EU sanctions.

“Over the past two years, Orbán has increased in importance for the Russians,” said András Deák, senior research fellow at Institute of World Economics at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. “During the migration crisis, he showed that he could raise his level in terms of EU politics, he became some sort of alternative to the EU liberal mainstream.”

‘First sanctions mover’
For the Kremlin, a public visit to Budapest at this time has both symbolic and political value. Putin wants to show the Russian public at home that Russia is a world power. Moreover, at a time when the Kremlin is hoping to cooperate closely with the new U.S. administration and improve relations with European partners, Moscow could also usefully show that Putin isn’t a pariah.

“Budapest is one of the few EU capitals where President Putin can feel at ease, meeting with someone who shares elements of his own worldview,” said Dmitri Trenin, director of the Moscow Carnegie Center. “Such reception allows Moscow to claim that not all Europeans follow policies shunning Russia’s leadership.”

The formal agenda for Orbán’s meeting with the Russian president is wide-ranging and includes the Paks II nuclear power plant project that Hungary contracted Russia to build, to the consternation of proponents of EU energy independence from Moscow. But Putin and his entourage will be arriving in Hungary with one clear priority: to clarify and strengthen Orbán’s opposition to EU sanctions on Russia.

https://www.politico.eu/article/why-vladimir-putin-needs-viktor-orban-russia-hungary/

The rise of pro-Putin parties in the recent Italian elections has again underlined how American leverage has waned in comparison, writes John Lloyd.

Ahead of Italy’s 1948 election, the CIA funnelled millions of dollars — this when a million dollars was a lot of money — into anti-communist parties in Italy. The Soviet Union sent in even more.

Former CIA officer F Mark Wyatt recalled in an interview how Moscow delivered black bags of money directly from the Soviet compound in Rome to Italy’s communist groups. In those hungry post-war years, the Communist Party was rising rapidly in popularity after its wartime leadership of the anti-fascist resistance, threatening to beat the centrist Christian Democrats and other non-Communist forces at the polls.

...

Italy is a founding member of the EU, a member of Nato, and of the G7. But its government, once formed, is likely to be the most philo-Russian democracy in the world. It could be the most powerful element in a group of other pro-Russian European politicians — such as Viktor Orban, prime minister of Hungary, Alexis Tsipras, prime minister of Greece, Marine Le Pen of the French National Front (now seeking to rename itself the Rassemblement National, or National Rally) and the leadership of the German Alternative for Germany.

These politicians are largely immune to charges that Russian meddling in elections is damaging to their countries’ polity and to democratic governments everywhere — since most of them have benefitted from Russian support, both overt and (probably) covert. The strong democratic ideology, both political and moral, which guided the Western democracies’ view of the Soviet Union until the late 1980s, shattered in step with the collapse of the Soviet Union and Soviet communism. But Putin’s construction of an illiberal state in Russia, most actively in the six years of his last presidential term, is to their liking.

These governments can draw support, too, from the fact that Russia is, in some moods, also to the liking of US president Donald Trump who, defying the strongest advice from his closest aides, warmly congratulated Putin on his re-election.

Those who believe that Russia is an increasingly malign power must also confront “whataboutism”: the argument that, when it comes to meddling in elections, the West, led by the US, has been at the fore.

Aside from the 1948 intervention in Italy, Washington has also acknowledged its substantial support for the right-wing Chilean opposition to the left wing presidency of Salvador Allende in the early 1970s. Why, this view asks, should the West posture as a victim, when it too has been a perpetrator of covert persuasion.

There are two responses to that objection. First, Thomas Carothers of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace points out that the hyperactivity of the US in fixing electoral outcomes has greatly diminished.

“The United States does have a past record of electoral meddling, particularly during the Cold War,” he writes. “

Yet… although the domain of US democracy promotion is hardly free of flaws and serious past mistakes, it is not the dark twin of the illicit, covert election meddling that Russia seems intent on making one of its defining signatures abroad.”

Second, to re-word a common injunction, it’s the democracy, stupid.

The danger of the populist-nationalist-far-right/far-left affection for Russia, and especially that emanating from the White House, is that it renders increasingly faint the distinction between a charismatic authoritarian leader and the messiness of democratic rule.

Russia sees Western support for pro-democracy demonstrations and revolutions as evidence of impermissible interference. The West sees it as an expression of its values.

If democracy is not to be fatally compromised, then the fundamental things — democratic governance, a vigorous and combative civil society, free speech and press and the rule of law — apply. They’re the guarantors of freedom; if held to and believed in, they cannot be destroyed either by black bags of money, or by populists who honour the powers who destroy these values.

ArchXStanton wrote: »

Eh no actually,once the EU gets the result it wants that's the matter finished,pretty dubious democracy...best out of three anyone

weldoninhio wrote: »

Like that time we voted no to Lisbon and no to Nice?? And were told, no, wrong answer, go again. It might be a genuine vote, but we'll keep having genuine votes until we vote the right way.

Topgear on Dave wrote: »

That's about it. We've done the bare minimum in throwing out one guy.

Relations with Russia are not as important as relations with our nearest neighbours.

BlackWitch wrote: »

Ireland expelling a Russian diplomat because of some sort of western campaign to vilify Russia is a disgrace, there is no evidence, there are no suspects, there is a theory that western govt's have been parroted by all "democratic" countries behind the UK, "the UK would never lie!".

Some people will call me a troll or Putler bot, or whatever.

Russia are simply not stupid enough to poison a Russian exiled double agent who they released from prison on a swap, at this time.

My personal belief is that it was an MI6 black-op, orchestrated to look like RUSSIA!, just as all the other BS was winding down with the US's Russia probe, which cost millions and millions then were shut down because of zero evidence.

This is just the latest BS campaign against probably the worlds greatest leader, he is smart, loyal to his people and has slowly and meticulously improved Russia from the basket case he inherited from Yeltsin.

He speaks the truth on world affairs and threats in a straightforward, easy to understand way, yet is completely ignored by western media when speaking of threats and provocations that have the ability to easily kick of Armageddon.

The Irish Lapdog establishment have shown nothing but obedience to it's masters yet again.

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

As many times as needed, until they get it right.

Mumha wrote: »

Facts, they're called facts. You're fooling no one.



People who voted Brexit, voted for a variety of reasons, not least the £350m that was supposedly going to go to the NHS, which didn't get beyond the following day before the traitor Farage admitted that it wasn't going to happen, and those in the deprived areas like South Wales, South west and North of England who only found out afterwards that they actually got a lot of help from the EU regional fund. The truth will come out in time about Cambridge Analytica, Farage and the Putin link.

theoneeyedman wrote: »

Someone should tell them that then.
Do you honestly think the Tories and the Brexiteers give 2 sh1tes about us in Eire.... I mean they have such a brilliant track record of upright behaviour in Anglo Irish affairs and International politics over many centuries!
Putin is no hero, but what are we doing sticking our oar in, such a load of crap. We have no business imo sticking our noses in this, it's part of an Anglo - Russian spat, that is acting as a proxy for a NATO-EU expansion policy vs perceived Russian expansionist policy.
I have no idea what happened in Salisbury, but neither has any of us. It's as likely to have been perpetrated by the British forces as the Russians to be honest, who knows,but I certainly wouldn't be taking Boris and the Home Office's word at face value.
Have we a choice anyway more though, is this a part of the PENSO club we joined last year?