Greek Cypriot politicians’ response to Zelenskyy speech was a disgrace
THREE weeks ago, I wrote in this newspaper about the shaky comparisons that some in Greek Cypriot politics were attempting to draw between the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the Turkish intervention in Cyprus that happened a little under 48 years ago.
It is obvious to anyone who looks at the two situations for five minutes that they are not remotely similar, and that such a comparison would not be made by anyone who had any intellectual honesty whatsoever.
In truth, I had no intention of ever revisiting the issue of some Greek Cypriots’ opinions about the Russian invasion of Ukraine once my article debunking the comparisons made had been printed.
However, the issue was brought to the fore once more when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a speech to the Greek Cypriot parliament on Thursday, April 7.
After how the day unfolded, I am almost sure that he now wishes he had not.
It was not only the issue of the Cyprus Problem that marred President Zelenskyy’s speech to South Nicosia, either, with the Greek Cypriots throwing the first punch at him over a different issue entirely.
The day’s problems began in the morning, when President Zelenskyy was making a speech to the Greek Parliament.
As part of his presentation, a video of an ethnically Greek fighter from the Azov Special Operations Unit was played to the parliament. The Azov unit is controversial across Europe due to links between a number of its members and the far right, and therefore the move to promote one of its fighters in the Greek parliament was met with disapproval by many.
The fighter himself clarified in his video that his grandfather fought against the Nazis in the Second World War, and drew comparisons between his own fight in Ukraine and his grandfather’s, but the dye had already been cast at that point.
Alexis Tsipras, leftist leader of Greece’s main opposition party Syriza, labelled the fighter a Nazi, which the Ukrainian embassy in Athens denied.
This controversy led the Greek Cypriot left-wing party Akel to sniff an opportunity. No sooner had President Zelenskyy ended his video call to Athens, that Akel announced their decision to boycott his upcoming speech that afternoon to South Nicosia.
This is undoubtedly a ridiculous decision, but it is unfortunately the type of decision that I have come to expect from Akel.
I have long had my suspicions about that particular party’s links to Russia – many current and former high-profile figures in Akel were educated in the Soviet Union or other Warsaw Pact states, and it appears to me that those links did not die off with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Akel’s youth organisation Edon has been notoriously barmy on various issues in the past. Their party literature still often features images of Marx and Lenin, and they still call each other “comrade”.
It was Edon who sent protesters to the American embassy to protest in favour of Venezuela’s tinpot dictator Nicolas Maduro in 2019, and has released various statements in the last few weeks blaming Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the “westward expansion of Nato”.
Akel themselves are not covered in glory, either, with “golden passports” given to Russian oligarchs in exchange for large sums of money in recent years known to have passed through the hands of Akel politicians.
With this context in mind, it felt to me like Akel were waiting for a moment to strike in the last month and a half.
Unlike their youth organisation, which really has nothing to gain or lose from anything it says, Akel knew they had to be strategic on the issue, given that no intellectually honest person in their right mind would be able to defend Russia’s invasion of Ukraine based off nothing at all.
It seems that on Thursday last week, they found one reasonably small piece of controversy and blew it up into the end of the world, in order to justify now taking a stance against Ukraine.
Akel is now talking more openly about its opposition to what it calls “Nato imperialism” as regards Ukraine, and seemingly feels like the appearance of a fighter from the
Azov unit is pretext enough to get away with it.
Why would they be so keen to do such a thing? It is my firmly held belief that Akel is awash with Russian money. As I mentioned earlier, the fact that high-profile Akel politicians frequently live in Russia in their youth, and the party’s links to the golden passport, constitutes smoke in my opinion, and there is seldom smoke without fire.
As an aside to that, anyone from Akel reading this article who disputes it is more than welcome to send me the party’s full financial records from the last 30 years to prove me wrong, but I doubt I am.
The fact is that while Akel may claim to be a party with principles, its only driving force is to look after its own interests.
In this case, those interests involve disseminating Russian propaganda and damaging the relationship between Ukraine and the European Union, and in others, the party simply looks for ways to increase its own power.
In 2004, having looked likely to support it, Akel decided to reject the Annan Plan, with its large base voting “No” adjudged to have been a major reason behind the failure of the referendum in South Cyprus.
Akel claimed some excuse about security fears as to why they did not support the referendum, but it was clear to most who saw it that the party intended to back Tassos Papadopoulos in order to gain favour and remain in government in the South at the time.
Akel sold out the Turkish Cypriots in 2004 and would do exactly the same to the Ukrainians now if they had the power to do so. I find it a shame
that this is the case.
These days, Akel seems to be the only Greek Cypriot party that wishes to interact with the Turkish Cypriots, but given their wild opinions on various subjects and their willingness to serve themselves to the detriment of anyone else involved, they are impossible to like.
The Akel boycott proved to be but the beginning of Zelenskyy’s problems with South Cyprus, however. The aforementioned issue of Greek Cypriots desperately trying to draw comparisons between their own predicament and that of Ukraine reared its ugly head at the highest possible level during the speech.
Both Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades and president of their parliament, Annita Demetriou, expressed their sorrow that President Zelenskyy had not made the comparison himself.
Mr Anastasiades said that “it bothers us” that such a comparison was not made, and Ms Demetriou embarked on a rather stroppy response, exclaiming that “I had expected a diplomatic, considered reference because as you are aware our country faced the same situation 47 years ago”, while also hanging her government’s European Union status over his head in a threatening manner.
The point became even more sore as President Zelenskyy used his speech to call upon South Cyprus to close its ports to all Russian ships and deny “privileges” to Russian nationals, including the aforementioned “golden passports”.
It became apparent quite quickly that the Greek Cypriot leadership does not react very well to being reminded of their responsibilities, with politician
Emily Yiolitis tweeting that “whom Cyprus naturalises, under what criteria and which passports it rescinds is its own matter”, which might be a reasonable retort were they not handing out passports to criminals.
All in all, therefore, it was a terrible day for Greek Cypriot politics. Across the political spectrum, every single party found a way to do or say something that was both damaging to themselves and to Ukraine.
They have all completely disgraced themselves, and embarrassed themselves, their people, and the island as a whole.
Frankly, I am embarrassed that the name of this island is associated with the band of selfimportant crooks who wasted an afternoon of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s time last Thursday. Their inability to see beyond their own personal problems and their own personal gain is difficult to watch, especially when one knows that the name of this island will be carried with their words wherever they go.
My hope is that the Greek Cypriot people have seen this awful display of incompetence and self-servitude from their leadership and will now think again about who they are to elect as their next leader in nine months’ time.
The election of a new Greek Cypriot leader, just as with the election of any leader, has the ability to turn the tide for any people and the land in which they live.
The Greek Cypriots have been plagued by bad leadership for far too long and, if nothing else, I hope that the disgrace of last Thursday opens the eyes of enough people to realise that, and bring real positive change to their leadership.