Concerns have been raised that unregulated pro-Moscow lobbyists at the heart of Westminster are using their links to Tory MPs to gain influence and respectability. A group formerly known as the Conservative Friends of Russia (CRF) is advertising its first in-person conference for two years next week, despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Thursday. Now called the Westminster Russia Forum (WRF), the group’s British organisers often appear on the Russian state broadcaster, RT. The WRF, which loudly echoes official lines from Moscow, has links with numerous Conservative MPs and other senior UK political figures….
Donald Trump can’t stop praising Vladimir Putin
Donald Trump can’t help himself. Over and over again this week — as Russia massed forces along Ukraine’s borders and then invaded on Wednesday night — the former US President found time to praise Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Tuesday, in an interview with conservative radio hosts Clay Travis and Buck Sexton, Trump repeatedly praised Putin for his strategy on Ukraine.
“I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine – of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent,” Trump said. “Oh, that’s wonderful.” Later in that same interview, Trump said this: “Putin is now saying, ‘It’s independent,’ a large section of Ukraine. I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper.” Then on Wednesday night, Trump sounded a very similar note while speaking during a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago…
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/24/politics/donald-trump-praises-putin/index.html
The destruction of society EUROZINE REVIEW
British banks handled vast sums of laundered Russian money
Putin’s absurd, angry spectacle will be a turning point in his long reign
Solidarity with Memorial: Russia’s most prominent civil rights group in danger
STANISLAV MARKELOV – Patriotism as a diagnosis
Vasili Arkhipov, the man who stopped nuclear war
Allies of slain Putin critic Nemtsov allege cover-up after guilty verdict
Russian Justice: Sergei Magnitsky’s Torture and Murder in Pre-Trial Detention
Lawyer For Russian Whistleblower’s Family Falls From Building One Day Before Hearing
Alexei Navalny, Russian opposition figure, unconscious in hospital
Simon Tisdall: Putin, a criminal and incompetent president, is an enemy of his own people
Madhavan Palat lectures on Dostoevsky
Madhavan Palat: Utopia and Dystopia in Revolutionary Russia
Books reviewed: Solzhenitsyn as he saw himself
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Historian of Decline and Prophet of Revival by Madhavan Palat
Apollinariya Yakubova: The face of the woman Vladimir Lenin loved most is revealed
Lev Kamenev’s Preface to Machiavelli (from New Left Review)
The Bolshevik Heritage. By Dilip Simeon
Jairus Banaji: A Hundred Years After October Revolution, Rethinking the Origins of Stalinism
After the truth-shower 