President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, addressed the Greek Parliament together with the militants of the nationalist “Azov” battalion, which provoked a grandiose international scandal. The majority of deputies boycotted the meeting in connection with the blatant trick of the politician.
Zelensky was invited to speak by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. Parliament Speaker Konstantinos Tasoulas said that “Greece has been on the side of Kiev from the first moment” and sent her military and humanitarian aid there. Tasoulas noted that the Greeks perceive the situation in Ukraine closely. At the same time, only parliamentarians from the ruling New Democracy party welcomed Zelensky.
The president spoke about the situation in Ukraine, called on Greece to provide maximum support, and asked politicians to watch a video with the appeal of two fighters from Mariupol.
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“These are two Ukrainians of Greek origin, one of them is wearing a mask, he can’t show his face, I hope you understand,” Zelensky said.
One of the speakers called himself Leonta Mikhail, he claimed that he was born in Mariupol and his grandfather “fought with the Nazis during World War II,” so now he himself, as part of the Azov battalion, “is fighting with the Russian Nazis.”
“I will not talk about the difficulties that we have, participating in the Ukrainian defense in the Azov battalion. There are a lot of Greeks in Mariupol […] Compatriots, we ask you to help us,” he said.
The second militant was wearing a mask. He introduced himself as Anastasios and mentioned that he was in Mariupol.
“You can help, you can talk about it, you can send humanitarian aid to Mariupol,” he said.
The speech of the Ukrainian leader was ignored by the deputies of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and the right-wing party “Greek Solution”, refusing to attend the meeting at that time.
In addition, the chairman of the SYRIZA — Progressive Alliance party and the leader of the official opposition, Alexis Tsipras, did not get up after the meeting ended.
The secretary of the Tsipras party, Olga Gerovasili, called the appearance of members of the Azov battalion in front of parliament unacceptable and completely inappropriate. Also, politicians will demand explanations from Speaker Tasulas.
“It is unacceptable that members of the Azov battalion spoke to the Greek Parliament together with president Zelensky today. In the near future, we will have a meeting of party leaders, and we will ask the Speaker of the Parliament, Tasoulas, to explain whether he was informed and whether he gave consent. Because I think it’s completely inappropriate,” she said.
It is noteworthy that even the most ardent opponent of Russia, the US, opposed the battalion, and in 2017, the US Congress banned assistance to the Azov battalion, calling it a neo-Nazi organization. Certainly, this does not mean that Western financial efforts cannot go to the hands of the “Azov” fighters, but still to openly approve of their operation in the country and even appear together in front of the foreign parliament (in addition, constantly claiming there is no nationalism in his country), indicates Zelensky’s cooperation with the battalion and his own nationalistic views.
It should be separately noted thus that just a few days ago, on April 5, Ukraine adopted the amendments to the resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers that states that members of volunteer formations of territorial defense of Ukraine can now use personal hunting weapons and ammunition for them when performing territorial defense tasks, which also includes small arms (firearms, air barrels for firing bullets or other types of ammunition) and “other types of weapons, such as artillery weapons, missile systems, guided or unguided missiles and their components, complexes for their launch and components for them, weapons (fire) controls, remote missile control systems, equipment for transportation and maintenance of missiles, grenade launchers, flamethrowers, mines, grenades.”
“Weapons can be loaded and out of a special case […] but only when they perform territorial defense tasks,” the message states.
And this decision came even after the cases of arbitrariness of territorial defense became known when people who belong to these squads just randomly killed civilians whom they “confused” with Russian soldiers. So, the situation with the Greek parliament was just another sign of Zelensky’s real position in the conflict and absolute collapse of his “democratic and caring policy” agenda.
Ru-Main, 07.04.2022
Source: RIA Novosti
