Before the NATO summit in Madrid, Russia was hoping against hope that its frenemy Turkey's President Recep Tayip Erdogan would sabotage Finland and Sweden's application to join NATO. It was therefore a disappointment to Russia when Erdogan dropped his opposition in return for concessions on the Kurdish issue.
Zahar Prilepin in an article titled "Europe Sold Out the Kurds, It Will Sell Out the Ukrainians As Well," advised his countrymen to see the silver lining in the denouement. Prilepin is a Russian Gabrile D'Annunzio, an author, journalist, politician and freebooter, who organized his own unit to fight Ukraine in Donbas in 2017. Now a member of the Just Russia Party, he was previously a member of the outlawed avowedly Stalinist National Bolshevik party that sought to merge extreme right and Communist ideologies.
Prilepin believes that the episode involving Finland and Sweden confirms Russia's working assumption that Europe's support for Ukraine will not last. The Europeans enthusiastically embraced the Kurds and then dropped them, when support for the Kurds ran counter to their interests. They will do the same to the Ukrainians when the going gets tough.
Prilepin's op. ed. follows below:[1]
Zahar Prilepin (Source: Rbc.ru)
"The fact that Erdogan’s 'principled stance,' that for a while didn’t allow the Swedes and Finns to join NATO, was merely a bargaining chip and nothing more, was stated in this newspaper and other media from the very first minute that he enunciated it. It was clear to all sane people that Erdogan is a sly fox.
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"And so. the Swedes and Finns sold out the Kurds to Erdogan.
"And they have been nurturing the Kurds for years, opening their diplomatic missions, allocating and generously spending budgets for them. The Kurds, like naive children, felt needed and protected.
"There is no real point in discussing Erdogan, as everything is clear about him, but the main thing is to relentlessly recap, 'Europe has no agency. It doesn’t respect itself. Finnish and Swedish political executives were instructed by the US, "Do as we tell you, betray those, who must be betrayed, make a decision without taking into account the opinion of your own [peoples] and even less that of foreign peoples,"' and they [the Europeans] did everything.
"It looks disgusting, but there are good tidings for us here.
"Europe forgets and betrays everyone. There were Kurds - freedom fighters [in Europe], and then they were gone, they ‘fed’ them to Erdogan.
"The day before yesterday, Europe believed that nature knew nothing better than the Chechen people and the Chechen resistance. Now they have forgotten that forever.
"Yesterday they believed that Venezuelans were on the path to liberation from despotism. Now they are even getting bored about bringing this up.
"The day after tomorrow they will be just as disenchanted in the Ukrainians and will rat them out.
"'You all didn’t want to die for your freedom, then why should we feel sorry for you?'
"After that they will make a circus around some other small nation, bringing that nation chaos, shame, betrayal and death."
[1] Vz.ru, June 29, 2022.
