Terror-Sanctimonious Moscow

"While Stoltenberg, getting carried away, battles the imaginary 'Russian threat', and stations troops in Latvia, people are being blown up in Brussels right under his nose."
Alexei Pushkov, Russian parliamentarian, head, Russian Foreign Affairs Committee

"[Russian President Vladimir Putin offered condolences to King Philippe of Belgium, and] extended his condolences to the Belgian people and assured them of his absolute solidarity with the Belgians at this difficult time."
presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov

"The Europeans are still paying a bloody tribute for their lack of a normal foreign policy, for being forced to submit to 'Uncle Sam' and enforce policies that absolutely do not conform to their national, European government interests, as well as the interests of individual peoples."
Gennady Zyuganov, head, Communist party of Russia

The guided missile cruiser Moskva of the Russian Black Sea fleet passes through Bosporus strait. Source: EPA / Vostock-photo

It well behooves the executive branch of any government to display  compassion and solidarity with heads of other nations when national catastrophes arise of profoundly disturbing order. And violent mass assaults resulting in the deaths of significant numbers of people and the wounding of far greater numbers at the hands of diabolical champions of death and destruction under the banner of a religion that its adherents worship as one of peace, certainly make the grade.

So Vladimir Putin bowed to the social grace of extending sympathy, while leaving it to lesser Russian authorities to vent a little spleen at the European Union and NATO. When an upheaval of world order occurs with one state attacking another, it represents a wholesale breach of international norms which no onlooking state could possibly condone. The action of a stronger, more militant nation invading, occupying and encouraging nationals of the invaded country to rebel is clearly and obviously illegal and immoral, all the more so that people die in the conflict that ensues.

To cast Moscow's decision to invade Ukraine as it did Georgia, and wrest from both former satellites of the Soviet Union territory that it wished to take possession of demonstrated an unequivocal violent aggression, which the Kremlin steadfastly denies the reality of, much less responsibility for, while expressing white-hot anger at the international community's steps to isolate Russia and impact its economy as punishment to ensure Russia understands fully its actions are condemned.


Russian state television has released a satellite photograph that it claims shows that a Ukrainian fighter jet shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. But many commentators dismissed the photo as a fake. Mark Solonin, a Russian author who is an engineer by training, said in his blog that both aircraft looked disproportionate to the landscape and concluded that their images were crudely edited into a satellite picture.





Hinting that in focusing on the fears of the Baltic states that their militantly bullying neighbour might have them next in mind, NATO missed the boat in preventing Islamist terrorist attacks on European soil, is a pathetic censure that is based on nothing but national pique and denial of Moscow's responsibilities to honour the international compacts that hold national boundaries of sovereign nations sacrosanct.

Russia's hypocrisy in sending troops and warplanes to the aid of an Islamist terrorist regime in Syria where a sectarian civil war is raging, preening itself that it was 'invited' by the murderous regime, whereas the U.S.-led and NATO-involved coalition battling the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant were not, stands logic and international law on its head.

Two Russian S-400 Triumf missile systems are seen at the Russian military base in Latakia province in the northwest of Syria, on December 16, 2015. (AFP photo)