Category Archives: Russia

Putin arrest warrant issued; warrants for Blair and Bush might be more successful

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Vladimir Putin: if he ever did go on the run, he might look like this – especially if he didn’t have time to grab a shirt.

Here’s a redundant threat:

The international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for overseeing the abduction of Ukrainian children, sending Russia another significant step on the path to becoming a pariah state.

In granting the request for warrants by the ICC prosecutor, a panel of judges agreed that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe Putin and his children’s rights commissioner, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, bore responsibility for the “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children.

The warrants are the first to be issued by the ICC for crimes committed in the Ukraine war, and it is one of the rare occasions when the court has issued a warrant for a sitting head of state

How does the ICC expect to deliver that warrant and have the arrest made?

Vladimir Putin is the head of the Russian state and, despite its losses in Ukraine, that country’s armed forces remain formidable – not to mention its nuclear arsenal.

He has no reason to honour the warrant and there is no possibility of him facing justice for his alleged crimes.

Some think the ICC should concentrate on more achievable aims:

How about it, ICC? Will you go after some alleged war criminals who can be brought to justice? Why not?

Source: ICC judges issue arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes | Vladimir Putin | The Guardian

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Firm connected to Rishi Sunak’s wife is still open in Russia and STILL getting government contracts

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Dodgy dealings? Rishi Sunak’s government has given a large commercial contract to Infosys, a firm part-owned by his wife Akshata Murty, even though it had failed to stop operating in Russia. Why?

Remember Infosys?

This is the technology company in which Rishi Sunak’s wife owns shares worth an alleged £400 million, and which was found to be operating in Russia after the UK had sanctioned firms that operate in, and profit from, connections with that country after it invaded Ukraine.

Infosys claimed in April last year that it was closing its office in Russia – providing a lucky escape for the then-Chancellor, who had refused to take any action about the company’s continued commercial interest in a country that the UK should have been shunning.

Now we learn the following:

So, after Sunak became prime minister the UK government gave a large contract to the company his wife partly-owns, even though it had not left Russia as it had promised.

Should we not have a statement from Sunak on how this has happened and what he proposes to do about it?

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ON THIS DATE IN 2022: Johnson sanctions hesitation lets Russians make a fortune

From March 6, 2022:

File this under: evidence that Boris Johnson is an asset of the Russian government.

Four Russian-born oligarchs have raked in $423 million in dividends on shares in Russian companies on the UK stock exchange, after the UK imposed sanctions on Russian firms.

How were Roman Abramovich, Alexander Abramov, Aleksandr Frolov and Alexander Nesis able to have the payouts from Evraz and Polymetal? Simple.

Those firms weren’t on Boris Johnson’s list of those to be sanctioned.

In total, the four named billionaires have received $4.5billion (£3.4billion) in payouts from the FTSE100-listed Russian commodities giants since the Tory government of the day failed to act decisively on them after Russia annexed the Crimea in 2014.

None of the four billionaires have been sanctioned either.

It seems Boris Johnson – and his government – deliberately pretended to be imposing heavy sanctions while doing nothing of the sort… wouldn’t you agree?

I’m still calling for comments on this new way of summarising articles, so please let me know what you think, in the comments.

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Rishi Sunak is giving Ukraine long-range air weapons. What will Vladimir Putin do?

Rishi Sunak is taking a huge gamble.

He has promised to give Ukraine long-range air defence weapons, along with jet fighter planes, to allow that country to better defend itself from Russian aggression.

And he wants Russia’s warlords to face justice after peace is brought about.

But what kind of peace will we get?

Sunak is gambling that Russian leader Vladimir Putin will not dare to use his nuclear arsenal.

But the easiest way to stop the UK from providing anything to Ukraine is to wipe the UK off the map.

It would be a suicidal strategy for Putin as well, because the UK’s allies would respond. But that would be scant consolation.

And, if you believe Boris Johnson (ha ha!), Putin has already threatened the UK with nuclear reprisals.

So one has to question whether sabre-rattling of the kind that Sunak is doing is really a sane way forward.

Here’s his speech to the Munich Security Conference:

What do you think?

The warmonger: Keir Starmer visits Ukraine to stir up hostility against Russia

Warmonger Starmer: this is a mock-up, of course – don’t expect him to climb into a uniform and get his own hands dirty. He’ll just talk about it.

Keir Starmer has visited Ukraine, where he made clear his desire for the war between that country and Russia to continue.

He prefaced a tweeted video of his comments with what I understand to be a fascist slogan associated with Nazi collaborators who participated in the Holocaust:

Notice that he actually said, on behalf of the Labour Party, that he was “showing our support for the conflict“.

I can only agree with Chris Williamson, below: the correct approach to a conflict between other nations is to offer to act as a mediator between the two and seem a negotiated end to hostilities through diplomacy.

It has been suggested that the two countries almost reached such a negotiated cessation of conflict – in April 2022 – until Boris Johnson flew to Ukraine and talked President Zelenskyy out of it. With Johnson out of power in the UK, it seems to me that renewed talks might bring about peace.

But it seems Starmer also wants the bloodshed to continue:

So there you have it. The leader of the UK’s Labour Party mouths platitudes about the suffering of the Ukrainian people but supports ongoing war in that country and quotes Holocaust perpetrators for good (bad?) measure.

He is a dangerous warmonger and deserves nothing from you but contempt.

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Rishi Sunak fails to answer why he helped a sanctioned Russian warlord

Rishi Sunak at PMQs: This is a stock pic – he’s not usually this animated.

Rishi Sunak is coming under pressure to explain why he apparently helped Russian oligarch and warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin dodge sanctions against him in order to sue a UK journalist for libel (the case later collapsed but left the journalist owing £70,000 in legal fees).

Prigozhin is the founder of Wagner, a private army that is currently understood to be committing atrocities in Ukraine.

Challenged on it in Prime Minister’s Questions, Sunak had the nerve to say he was proud of the UK’s sanction system – a system over which he appears to have run roughshod.

And he copped out of answering the question by saying there’s a government organisation that deals with such matters.

This Writer was watching the exchange via the BBC’s Politics Live programme, and was hoping the panel would discuss this matter afterwards, as my tweets showed.

No such luck. I wonder why?

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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Did Rishi Sunak help a Russian oligarch dodge sanctions to sue a UK journalist? Will it finish him?

Rishi Sunak: yes, this image again. He looks shifty in it – as he should, if he authorised the activities described below.

This is what happens when celebrities get to sue UK journalists like me – the government ends up giving financial support to a Russian oligarch whose private army is currently rampaging through Ukraine.

It seems the UK Treasury helped a close ally of Vladimir Putin to evade sanctions imposed against him personally (this was before the Ukraine-Russia war) in order to sue a UK journalist.

Rishi Sunak was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time. The Russian oligarch was Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Wagner, a private army that is currently understood to be committing atrocities in Ukraine.

In the light of the Ukraine-Russia war, the UK’s apparent support for Ukraine in that conflict (while actually having supported a Russian through this case) makes it seem clear that both Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson before him are hypocrites.

Some say it should bring down the UK government. Here’s Phil Moorhouse of A Different Bias:

He took his information from the website Open Democracy, whose article can be found here.

Here’s where this story intersects with my own legal case, in which I was sued by a certain TV celebrity (I’m currently appealing against the judgment):

Revelations about Wagner and Prigozhin were exposed by Bellingcat in 2020, leading to the notorious libel case against Higgins.

Higgins was targeted individually, rather than as part of a legal case against Bellingcat. This meant that, instead of claiming Bellingcat’s investigations into Wagner were defamatory, the lawyers instead relied on tweets Higgins had sent to promote the investigations on social media.

The approach allowed Prigozhin to launch his legal attack in the UK – where Higgins lives, and where libel laws are more punishing for journalists – rather than in the Netherlands, where Bellingcat is headquartered.

The case collapsed when the lawyers from Discreet withdrew their services in March last year, a month after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and was eventually struck out in May. Higgins was left with estimated costs of £70,000.

The case has been highlighted as an example of a SLAPP action (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation), an abuse of the legal process designed to intimidate and close down legitimate scrutiny.

You see, the idea is to intimidate the victim (Eliot Higgins in this case, or myself) by threatening them with huge damages to pay and/or huge legal bills.

Higgins told openDemocracy… it was clear that “wealthy individuals abuse the UK legal system to attack legitimate journalists with the assistance of British lawyers” and said the case demonstrated the need for “robust anti-SLAPP legislation” to protect journalists from similar actions in the future.

On a national level – and therefore more serious (even) than what happened to Mr Higgins or myself – is the allegation that the current UK government, and a department headed at the time by the current UK prime minister, deliberately evaded sanctions it had itself imposed, in order to help someone whose private army is currently attacking a country with which the UK has ostensibly allied itself.

How many other times has the Tory government done this? Is it still doing this? Why does Parliament not know about it?

This should be enough to bring Sunak down – along with his government. Please share – and ask your favourite national media outlets (newspapers, TV, whoever) to cover it.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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Zahawi asks nurses to take pay cut as ‘message to Putin’

Nadhim Zahawi: He claimed public money to heat his stables but he thinks nurses will accept another huge pay cut if he tells them it will help defeat Russian Premier Vladimir Putin.

Minister Without Portfolio Nadhim Zahawi has asked nurses to accept a real-terms pay cut “to send a message to Putin” that the UK will not accept his attempt to dictate to us using energy prices.

What?

Well, see for yourself:

Firstly, this is a non-sequitur. Nurses’ pay has nothing to do with energy prices or what has happened to them because of the war in Ukraine. What message would Putin really take from the UK government denying its underpaid nurses a decent pay rise?

Secondly, let us remember that this is the Tory MP who claimed a large amount of money – on expenses, so it came from the public purse – in order to keep his horses warm during the winter by heating his stables.

He has no right at all to preach to people who are having to go to food banks, simply to be able to eat.

What is he having to go without, to aid the resistance against Putin?

Nothing. And that is precisely what’s wrong with this massive hypocrite.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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Vladimir Putin has annexed parts of Ukraine – that Russia has not conquered. WTF?

Vladimir Putin: it’s easy to pretend to take land by signing a piece of paper saying it – but matching the word to the deed might be more difficult than he thinks.

This is Putin’s response to Ukraine’s success in retaking huge swathes of territory from Russia.

He has made an illegal land grab, annexing parts of Ukraine that his armies have not even taken. The four annexed territories are: Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk.

Under a law passed in Russia last year, this means it will be impossible to hand those territories back in any peace negotiations.

Here’s some commentary on that:

Putin has also announced mass mobilisation of people into his army – and is again threatening to use nuclear weapons.

Here’s Russell Howard on that:

This Writer doesn’t know how you feel about it, but I’m glad that Uri Geller is using “mind power” to deflect any nuclear weapons aimed at the UK!

Let’s all remember, though, that Ukraine’s fightback is continuing at speed – that country’s forces have recently retaking the city of Lyman in Donetsk. It makes a lie of Putin’s claim that his annexation is democratic and the people there want to be part of Russia:

Again, the words of Professor Tim Wilson appeal to This Writer:

Putin should go and sit in the Naughty Corner and have a think about what he’s been doing.

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Tories like Iain Duncan Smith are wrong to want to exclude nations from Queen’s funeral

Uh-oh: once again, public opinion should be against the man whose policies caused the deaths of untold thousands of benefit claimants.

After his persecution of people who are sick, disabled and unemployed at the Department for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith simply has no right to criticise other nations for causing deaths.

He has criticised the decision to invite the Chinese government to the Queen’s funeral, saying it was “extraordinary” that the “architects” of genocide against the Uyghur minority had been invited.

But there is a strong diplomatic reason to do so. Here’s Professor Tim Wilson:

Prof Wilson thinks Vladimir Putin should be invited as well, and it’s a good idea; get him here and we can quietly suggest face-saving ways to end the war in Ukraine, for example.

Now Boris Johnson is no longer in charge and is unable to derail peace proposals, we might actually make some progress.

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