The spectrum of “Useful Idiots”, a cold-war term for unwitting allies of communism, is wide. In both politics and business, despite multiple rounds of Western sanctions, Russia still has plenty of “friends”
Some countries have twisted seemingly noble intentions into policies that warm Mr Putin’s heart. Citing its vaunted neutrality,has wielded arcane local laws to block the supply of arms to Ukraine, including 96 mothballed Leopard tanks sitting in Italy that happen to belong to a private Swiss firm. Scoring repeated own goals with freedom-of-speech principles, police inhave permitted public burnings of the Koran.
, for instance, has been a vital conduit for Western aid and recently pledged its fleet of 13 Soviet-era Mig-29 fighter jets to the Ukrainian air force. But polls show that the party of Robert Fico, a Russophile leftist who has blamed “Ukrainian fascists” for provoking Mr Putin, looks likely to win national elections scheduled for September..
, Wolfgang Streeck, a German sociologist, posits that the hidden purpose of the crisis is to set the stage for putting a fearfulWhat seems to link Europe’s far right, far left and “intellectual” opposition to Western policy is something simpler, however. It is a hoary, cold-war-style anti-Americanism.
At a recent political rally near Berlin Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, found himself heckled by a chorus of beefy peaceniks shouting “Warmonger!” Normally polite, soft-spoken and unflappable, Mr Scholz roared back into the microphone that it was Mr Putin who wanted to destroy and conquer Ukraine. “If you loudmouths had even a little bit of brain, you would know the real warmonger!”
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