American leaders are “making idiots of” Europe over Ukraine, Irish MEP Mick Wallace argued
FILE PHOTO: Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky (R) shakes hands with Ireland’s Prime Minister Micheal Martin (L) after a press conference in Kiev, Ukraine, July 6, 2022 © AFP / Sergei Supinsky
Ireland’s leaders are “promoting and loving” the “US-NATO proxy war” in Ukraine, while the European Union does nothing to bring an end to the fighting, Irish MEP Mick Wallace declared in a radio interview on Friday.
“Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have been promoting this war, and are loving this war,” Wallace told South East Radio, referring to the two major partners in Ireland’s coalition government. Many lawmakers in both parties, he continued, have “lost the plot.”
As a neutral country, Ireland is not a member of the NATO alliance. However, Dublin has backed all eight of the EU’s anti-Russian sanctions packages, while Prime Minister Micheal Martin has traveled to Kiev to pledge his support to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s EU membership bid. Martin has also publicly declared that Ireland’s concept of neutrality “needs to evolve,” while others in his party have called for its abolition.
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“This war is a disaster for the people of Ukraine and is going to drive up the cost of living for everyone across Europe. And we’re doing this on behalf of the US and NATO?” Wallace continued. “The Americans are making idiots of us.”
The cost of the EU’s sanctions have largely been borne by EU states themselves, with the continent in the midst of an energy crisis and the euro at an all-time low on currency markets. With the continent’s economies reeling, Wallace castigated European leaders for failing to stand up against Washington and Brussels, whom he said “want the war to continue.”
The MEP condemned the EU for being “a puppet of the Americans and being so God damned weak and leaderless.”
A well-known leftist in his native country, Wallace has emerged as one of the loudest critics of the EU’s response to the Ukraine conflict. Clips of Wallace and fellow Irish MEP Clare Daly excoriating the bloc’s leadership over sanctions on Moscow and arms shipments to Ukraine have gone viral on multiple occasions, prompting pro-Ukrainian pundits to accuse the pair of siding with Russia.
Both have condemned Russia’s military operation, and Wallace insisted on Friday that he’s “never said a good word about [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” adding that the political faction in Russia that he sympathizes with are “the communists.”
