It’s clearer than ever that Ukraine conflict is a proxy war
be given. If they exclude our members, so what? As elected representatives they have to be let back in to continue the fun.
It is long past time the SNP stopped playing by the rules, showed smeddum, stuck their necks out, took risks. Light a fire under the people of Scotland. The loyal North British Provincials would be apoplectic. There are not that many of such jellyfish, and their fulminating would serve to amuse.
We mun heize aff oor dowps gin we want Lunnon oot o’ here.
R Mill Irving
Gifford, East Lothian
WITH the possibility of another penny off National Insurance “to help the poorest workers”, one has to ask what use that will be. The majority of poorest workers earn less than the threshold to begin even paying income tax, so that this will make only a tiny difference to that pittance, while the highest earners will benefit hugely.
What the hell have the 40-plus SNP MPs been doing?
Typical Tory ploy to make their rich friends and voters that bit richer and confuse the gullible into believing they care about poverty. P Davidson
Falkirk
IT seems as if the Tories, Labour and even the media are all building up George Galloway’s return to the House of Commons. They seemed concerned that his experience and knowledge of the rules of this place will result in him causing more trouble for their tame MPs.
I’ve one concern – if one solitary MP can cause so much upset then what the hell have the 40-plus SNP MPs been doing? They seem happy to abide by the parliamentary rules and not ruffle any feathers, and as a result are trampled on as they were in their last opposition-day debate. Maybe it’s not the number of MPs that’s important but the fight within each MP that counts?
Alex Beckett
Paisley
IF there were any doubts that the Ukraine conflict is a proxy war between Nato and Russia, provoked by the US, they should be laid to rest after recent revelations about Nato member states’ direct involvement.
On February 19, high-ranking German generals were caught on tape discussing how to take down a pair of parallel 12-mile bridges connecting Crimea to Russia. They discussed whether to target these or the ammunition depots and queried Ukraine’s ability to handle rocket technology.
Not wanting the German military to be implicated, they discuss seconding military personnel to the German missile manufacturer MBDA. After training them, they would turn the Ukrainians over to the British to take things to the next stage.
Outing the UK, German chancellor Olaf Scholz said that British soldiers are helping the Ukrainians launch long-range missiles. Tobias Ellwood accused Scholz of “a flagrant abuse of intelligence” to distract from Germany’s reluctance to arm Ukraine with a long-range missile system. This indicates fractures within Nato.
Another confirmation of UK involvement came in a report that the Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, has been helping Ukraine destroy Russian warships. In addition, since 2021, the UK has been building military bases near Odessa, a direct threat and provocation to Russia’s security.
The New York Times reported that the CIA has, since 2013, been operating in Ukraine to destabilise Russia. It installed 12 secret underground bases along the Russian border to spy and launch terror attacks on Russian territory. Would the US tolerate Russia doing the same on the Canadian or Mexican border?
These are all signs that the West knows the game is up in Ukraine. It gambled and lost. Russia is stronger than ever and has forged economic and strategic alliances with China. Ukraine has been destroyed. But defending Ukraine and its “democracy” was never America’s goal. Rather, it was to weaken Russia and the EU. It failed miserably in the first but succeeded in the second. The EU economy, led by
Germany, is in a tailspin. Again, it was all preventable.
Yevgeniy Muraev was right. A former presidential candidate and leader of the Nashi (Our) party which was banned in 2022 by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for supposed ties to Russia, Muraev advocated for Ukrainian neutrality and an end to hostilities in Donbas. In January 2022 he said: “We are hostages of false priorities of Ukrainian politicians and somebody else’s geopolitical game … we cannot win in this, no matter which of the two geopolitical players [US or Russia] wins … the fight will be on our land … our government and our president are placing the country under attack in the interests of those beyond the ocean. We are cannon fodder in their eyes.”
The former chair of Nato’s military committee, Harald Kujat, blames all the dead Ukrainians and Russians on the US/UK stopping Ukraine from signing a peace agreement hammered out in March 2022 that would have prevented the war. Boris Johnson acted as the US’s errand boy telling Zelenskyy not to sign it because the West would support Ukraine to the end.
Now the whole Ukraine debacle, fuelled by Western hubris, is collapsing. The toll is horrendous. Ukraine will be carved up – the east will go to Russia and the west will become a Nato arms manufacturing hub.
Here’s a tantalising thought. An independent Scotland could forge a foreign policy that places economic trade and development above the UK’s pathetic post-imperialist, dangerous and bombastic wargame-playing that has exposed it as the failing third-rate power it is.
Leah Gunn Barrett Edinburgh