Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, Moscow, December 5, 2023
(Vladimir Gerdo/TASS)
I joined India’s WION News on Wednesday to cut through layers of propaganda around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — including Moscow’s posturing with Iran, distortions about the effects of sanctions, and India’s position on the aggression — and to look at the assistance for Vladimir Putin from a group of hard-right Republicans and Trumpists in the US.
Commenting on a photo opportunity by the Russian and Iranian Foreign Ministers in Moscow, I explain how Iran’s vital military support for the invasion is not matched by a strong economic relationship. Instead, both countries are linked by vulnerability and long-standing problems.
EA on Times Radio: An Axis of Weakness — Russia, Iran, and the Ukraine Invasion
I explain the mistake of looking at sanctions as “all or nothing”, instead consdering their primary aim of limiting Russia’s capacity to wage war.
I discuss the political and diplomatic isolation of Moscow, with its good friends limited to Tehran, North Korea, and Belarus. Instead, Putin’s biggest hope to avoid complete failure may rest with the Republican extremists and Trumpists propping up his invasion by opposing further aid to Ukraine.
See also Ukraine War, Day 651: Zelenskiy Cancels Meeting With Senate After Top Republicans Block Aid
And I knock the host’s position, supporting the Indian Government, that “India is against war”.
If the Modi Government was really against war, then it would have condemned Russia’s aggression rather than sitting on its hands and profiting from cheap Russian oil.
[Reader’s Note: Another recitation of the Kremlin’s propaganda after it failed in its objective to occupy Kyiv and putting in a puppet government in the opening days of the February 2022 invasion. The Russians were forced to withdraw from all of northern Ukraine in April 2022.]
The Russians did not attempt to take Kiev. Why would Russia attempt to take Kiev with 60,000 troops? The staging of troops on the outskirts of the capital was meant to intimidate the Ukrainian government and bring it to the negotiation table. The result: the talks in Istanbul. The outcome: an agreement that Zelensky signed. The talks were sabotaged and the war continued.