Tory lobbying row over unregulated ‘Westminster Russia Forum’ / Donald Trump can't stop praising Vladimir Putin

By Dilip -

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….

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/conservative-lobbying-row-westminster-russia-forum-unregulated-ukraine/


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


Jonathan Steele: Understanding Putin’s narrative about Ukraine is the master key to this crisis / American Exceptionalism Is on Display in Ukraine / Mariia Shynkarenko: Not about NATO


Putin’s absurd, angry spectacle will be a turning point in his long reign


रूस ने गुलाग इतिहासकार की सजा और बढ़ाई / Gulag historian, activist Yuri Dmitriyev sentenced to 15 years

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


Book review: Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev - Putinism and the oil-boom years


Allies of slain Putin critic Nemtsov allege cover-up after guilty verdict


Russian Justice: Sergei Magnitsky’s Torture and Murder in Pre-Trial Detention


Nick Hopkins and Luke Harding - Intelligence sources vouch for credibility of Russia dossier author / Mark Sumner - Trump Was Bailed Out of Bankruptcy by Russia Crime Bosses


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)


Book review: Midnight in the Century by Victor Serge – life in the Stalinist Soviet Union // Memoirs of a Revolutionary by Victor Serge – review


The Bolshevik Heritage. By Dilip Simeon


Jairus Banaji: A Hundred Years After October Revolution, Rethinking the Origins of Stalinism


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