By Fabrizio Verde
May 12, 2021
Russia has decided to respond to the long series of Russophobic provocations, threats and intimidations from the European Union. Brussels, pushed by Washington, has now embarked on an heavy anti-Russian campaign which can be of no interest whatsoever to the European people aspiring to peace and prosperity and nothing else. Instead, Europe is playing war by provoking Moscow.
Therefore, Russia has decided to sanction the President of the European Parliament, David Sassoli of the Democratic Party (Italy) and other personalities, including Vera Jourova, Vice-President of the European Commission, responsible for policies on “Values and Transparency”.
The Russian move sparked an attempt by the warmongering leaders in Brussels to disguise themselves from executioners to victims of Russian authoritarianism. Sassoli solemnly declared: “Not having asked to enter Russia it is evident that it is a political attack by which we will not be intimidated. They’re trying to hit parliaments because they are the voice of the citizens and this means that the European parliament has done its duty in defending fundamental freedoms, in denouncing violations of the rule of law in Russia.”
From Russia, however, they reiterated to Sassoli that they had not threatened anyone. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova rhetorically asked: “Did we threaten?”, and later reiterated that Russia will not be intimidated. Despite the constant provocation and aggression, the country is forced to bear the United States and European vassals clearly excited by the arrival of the new democratic administration at the White House and determined to push hard on anti-Russian politics.
Behind the sanctions, provocations and threats lies the real motive for such aggressive policies. “To hold back the development of our country at any cost,” said the Moscow Foreign Ministry.
‘Sovereignists’ aligned with Brussels
In this story marked by the umpteenth instrumental attack on Russia, however, we saw one positive aspect: some forces of a fake opposition, self-proclaimed ‘sovereignists’, such as Fratelli d’Italia (heir to the neo-fascist party Movimento Sociale Italiano) and Lega have finally thrown off the mask and hurled themselves against Russia to align itself with the aggressive position taken by Brussels towards Moscow.
Giorgia Meloni, leader of the ‘Fratelli d’Italia party, was quick to express her solidarity to Sassoli. “The President of Fratelli d’Italia, Giorgia Meloni, expresses the solidarity of Fd’I with the president of the European Parliament David Sassoli and the other institutional figures included in the blacklist of the Russian government. No difference of views – the parliamentarian affirms in a note – can justify personal sanctions of this magnitude and gravity.”
The party led in Italy by Giorgia Meloni, which is on the rise because it is considered the only opposition in Italy to the Draghi government, has made its voice heard in Europe as well. “On behalf of the ECR group, I extend my heartfelt closeness to President Sassoli”. The MEP of the Brothers of Italy, Raffaele Fitto, belongs to the group of European Conservatives (ECR). “Mr. Putin continues to go lower and lower. Threats and acts of arrogance will not make us abandon our commitment to human rights”, adds the Fitto dose. Even the co-president of ECR, the Polish MEP Ryszard Legutko, underlines that “the actions against President Sassoli are a strong reminder of the need to take concrete measures against the Russian aggressor.”
The Lega did not want to be outdone: “Solidarity with the President of the European Parliament David Sassoli and with all the other EU representatives included in the blacklist by the Russian foreign minister. Unjustified sanctions and intimidation are not the answer to normalize relations and help dialogue”, reads a note written by the Lega delegation to the European Parliament.
But it doesn’t stop there. The Lega, credited as a pro-Russian force by certain Italian fake media, has gone so far as to ask for “concrete interventions” by the EU in Ukraine.
“One hundred thousand soldiers are deployed at the gates of Ukraine from Moscow and this is a heavy signal for the whole West”, said the Lega’s MEP Susanna Ceccardi, in words that could have been uttered by any Russophobe and pro-European liberal who sits in the European parliament. “And yet – she even added – beyond the proclamations, asylum and solidarity expressed in words, to date there is no credible European intervention”.
Here one wonders what the Lega is asking of the European Union. A re-edition of the Operation Barbarossa launched in 1940 by Nazi Germany for the invasion of the then Soviet Union? Bandera’s grandchildren in Kiev, so pampered by the EU, are of course ready to join in the action in this regard.
No leader of the Lega has distanced himself from the warmongering words.
Heard by the newspaper ‘Il Foglio’ – evidently exalted by the anti-Russian positions of the Lega, the Secretary Matteo Salvini affirms: “Human rights are always valid, and in any case and everywhere they must be respected”.
Senator Armando Siri definitively sets the record straight: “The Lega has never moved from the usual axis in which Italy is located from the post-war period to today, everything else was an imaginative forcing”. Along the same lines, Roberto Calderoli said: “Everything that is the defense of human rights must be carried out regardless of the country with which one is dealing”.
The Lega has finally thrown off the mask as well. Its leader openly admitted what any observer free from ideological prejudices knew already: it is an ‘other pro-European’ political force and dominated by the EU-NATO-US triad like any other Italian and European political force. There is not much difference that separates Salvini from the new secretary of the Democratic Party Enrico Letta. In fact, they are passionately together in the same government (liberal and liberista) led by Mario Draghi. The differences on pandemic, curfew and other measures of little political weight matter little. On the question of directives, the underlying policies are all aligned and covered behind Brussels and Washington.
Has the Lega ever been pro-Russian?
For a long time, Matteo Salvini’s party has played on this ambiguity: to be perceived as an anti-system, anti-European political formation, open to Russia and the Eurasian project of which Moscow is a bastion. In reality, it was probably just a strategy aimed at winning a certain electorate which was distrustful of Brussels and which looks positively to Putin’s Russia. Instead, now the time has come when the League has decided to put an end to the ambiguity: from the pro-Russian media strategy to the favorable vote for the intervention of the European Union in Ukraine.
The winds of war in the Ukrainian Donbass worry the EU and the Western world, and the Lega immediately found itself ready to support the anti-Russian policy of the European institutions.
This move has caused quite a stir in the Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament, where Salvini’s party is a member.
Voting in opposition to the Lega were the French of the Rasseblement National, the Germans of Alternative for Germany, the Dutch Marcel de Graaf of the Party for Freedom and the Belgians of the Flemish Interest movement.
Aligned with the Lega were only the members of the Party of Finns, the Danish Peter Kofod of the Danish People’s Party and the Estonian Jaak Madison.
The change in the foreign policy front of the Lega found justification in the meeting held at the beginning of April in Budapest, when Salvini met the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and the Polish counterpart Mateusz Morawiecki. On that occasion, the three expressed their desire to create a new conservative European right. Poland and Hungary do not look kindly on Putin’s Russia, especially the Polish government, the main military partner of the United States and Israel.
They define themselves as anti-European, illiberal, anti-euro and so on, but in reality they share liberal positions. All at ease under the NATO umbrella, aligned with the wishes of Brussels and Washington.
At this point, some media sources, despite the evidence, are still trying to convey the narrative of a Lega close to Russia that would work with Putin to bury the European Union.
The Lega is a party fully integrated into the system of so-called European liberal values, and it is preparing to become so more and more.
Published at uwidata.com
