A few days ago, Leo Varadkar said that Ireland did not have the resources to definitely claim that Russia was responsible for the nerve gas attack in Salisbury, Britain.
Yet within a few hours of listening, to Theresa May at an EU summit he changed his mind and said Ireland would be expelling Russian diplomats.
The U turn has nothing to do with actual evidence – it is a political move to demonstrate solidarity in a dangerous new cold war between Europe and Russia.
People Before Profit hold no brief for Putin and his authoritarian rule. We have joined in protests at his embassy in Dublin over his terror campaign in Syria. We have denounced the use of Russian planes to bomb civilian areas and back up the dictator, Assad.
But none of this means that we should support the fake war games being played by the British Tory Party.
The Tory party has received €3 million in donations from Russian oligarchs living in London since 2010. Foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, even played tennis with the wife of one of Putin’s ex-Ministers in return for a £160,000 donation to the Tory party.
Yet despite this massive financial support, it is trying to undermine the rise of the Jeremy Corbyn by running Cold War stories about his supposed covert support for Russia.
These internal manoeuvres have spilled over to the European stage and in a bizarre move, the EU has suddenly come out in support of Theresa May. Once again, this has little to do with hard evidence about Russia’s role in the nerve gas attack. It is instead designed to send a signal that even when Brexit occurs, Western ‘security’ co-operation remains intact.
Whatever the ultimate truth about the attack, Britain has not produced enough evidence. Under Article 9 of the Chemical Weapons Convention, countries are required to ‘make every effort to clarify and resolve, through exchange of information… any matter which may cause doubt about compliance with this Convention.’
Yet despite this, Britain has refused to exchange the materials used in the attack with Russia. Instead it has claimed that Novichok could only have been made in Russia.
There are problems with this argument.
In 2017 the Director-General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Ambassador Ahmet Üzümcü, congratulated Russia for the full destruction of the 39,967 metric tons of chemical weapons possessed by the Russian Federation.
Of course, Russia can still maintain secret stockpiles – but so too can other countries.
The former Irish Times Correspondent, Seamus Martin, has pointed out that the main production plant for Novichok was in Uzbekistan. a country which is now a member of NATO.
Quantities of the gas may also have been sold on an international black market.
The central issue, however, is that the Irish government is joining a new EU Cold War against Russia – for reasons that have nothing to do with abhorrence of violence of dictators.
The same British regime that condemns Russia is actively selling 48 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia to murder people in its cruel war in Yemen.
And while Varadkar moves quickly to expel Russian diplomats, he stays silent about the fate of Israeli embassy, which is actively supporting war crimes against the Palestinian people.
Instead of playing Cold War games, we need an independent for foreign policy based on opposing all imperialist adventures, whether they come from Brussels or Russia.