Michelle Mulherin's office petrol bombed

ireland.man wrote: »

Meanwhile on After Hours most posters spend their time criticizing idealist Greek politicians

Moscow Times wrote:

Greece's new prime minister, Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras, established contact with Russia prior to being elected. Like other leaders of formerly fringe European political parties, Tsipras was received as a highly honored guest by the Kremlin. The leftist leader met with Russian officials in Moscow last May, including Valentina Matviyenko, chair of the Russian parliament's upper house who had served as Russia's ambassador to Greece in the late 1990s.

According to Greek media, Tsipras used the occasion to chastise the EU's policy on Ukraine, denounce European sanctions against Moscow and support separatist referendums in eastern Ukraine that the West said were illegitimate.

The terms used in Russia's anti-Europe rhetoric also seem to have infiltrated Tsipras' vocabulary. "It is a regression for us to see fascism and neo-Nazis entering European governments again and for this to be accepted by the EU," Tsipras was quoted as saying in May by the state-run Athens News Agency, a few days after Putin claimed that militant nationalism of the kind "that once led to the appearance of the Nazi ideology" had raised its head in Europe.

Syriza's natural leaning toward Russia stems from its origins as an amalgamation of communist, socialist and other leftist forces, according to Papadimitriou. The party with which it has formed a coalition, the right-wing Independent Greeks, also supports Russia because of its own platform that calls for conservative social policies in line with Orthodox Christian teachings. [...]

Russia has courted Europe's far-left and far-right political parties, which it views as platforms to influence European policy-making, according to political pundits.[...]