You can take the oligarch's son out of the dictatorship...
Evgeny Lebedev, proprietor of the Independent and the Evening Standard, has called for Britain to ally with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Moscow-born Lebedev, son of Russian oligarch and co-owner Alexander Lebedev, writes in both papers today that Britain should ‘pick up the phone’ and work with Russia to address the war in Syria.
He laments the poor relations between the two countries, calling a policy of keeping Russia in the ‘doghouse’ over its invasion of Crimea and Ukraine ‘naive’.
Lebedev writes:
“This is an appalling state of affairs. Given Russia’s standing on the world stage, it is also a deeply unhealthy one. If we can make pragmatism the basis of our relations with, say, China, then why not Russia too?”
He cites ‘conversations with senior figures in Moscow’ who say ‘the Kremlin wants to make an ally rather than an enemy of Britain’.
Lebedev adds:
“We have common cause with the Russians, a common enemy. The biggest threat to humanity today is cancerous, Islamist ideology that is growing fast right across the world.”
He points to Russia’s recent air strikes in Syria and the threat from jihadist terror attacks, noting that Russia ‘is much more militarily decisive because it doesn’t put all big decisions to Parliament’. Which is one way of putting it.
Russia’s air strikes have destroyed four hospitals and killed civilians, appearing to target US-backed rebel militias rather than Islamic State terrorists.
The headline of the Independent piece is unintentionally amusing:
‘Britain must make Vladimir Putin an ally in the disaster that is Syria’
The piece itself makes no mention of Vladimir Putin, (who is quite a big factor in Russian affairs), though it is illustrated with a picture of him. The Standard version says ‘Russia’ should be our disaster-ally, rather than Putin.
The Lebedevs also own the Independent on Sunday and the i newspaper.
Anyone who worried back in 2009/10 that a Russian oligarch buying up British newspapers would affect their editorial positions was clearly barking up the wrong tree…
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Adam Barnett is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow MediaWatch on Twitter
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8 Responses to “Press baron Evgeny Lebedev calls for a British alliance with Putin’s Russia”
Esmee Phillips
Funny how some pinheaded parrots think terms such as ‘hard left’ and ‘hard right’ denote anything but their own level of brainwashing.
Henry Page
Tell Mr. Lebedev to dream on. Ally ourselves with Putin? Is he having a funny turn? First Putin invades Ukraine (via maskirovka) and ultimately was complicit with blowing MH17 out of the sjy over Ukraine and then he bombs Syria so badly that it leads to a Russian airliner being blown apart just after take off from Sharm. Thanks, for the consideration, Evgeny, but Putin is a really dodgy commodity to align with at the moment and will be for the next few decades …
Fake News: The Independent Has Been Outed For Using Fake Bylines, False Filing Locations – MILO NEWS
[…] in 2010. His son, Evgeny, wrote in both The Independent and its sister newspaper Evening Standard in 2016, calling on the British government to team up with Russia in Syria. More recently in 2017, a Saudi […]