I’m getting a bit weary of this sort of thing. Are there people in the FR, DE etc political systems who think this? Probably. Is that the official position of any of those countries? No. Are they objectively behaving in pro-Putin ways? No. twitter.com/anders_aslund/…
A few misquotes out of context (as is pointed out in the replies) don’t mean France is pressuring Ukraine to surrender. Slow action from Germany is not great but not a sign that they want Russia to win (listen to scholz’s speech last night).
And the country that is actually blocking things – Hungary – never gets a mention. It’s all the bad old Western Europeans. (Or, for Brexiteers, the evil EU undermining heroic British leadership).
Maybe I’m wrong, maybe stuff is happening behind the scenes that we don’t know about. But I would expect that to be sourced better than a few viral misquotes, unsupported by countries’ actual actions.
Originally posted as a thread of 4 tweets on Twitter on 27 May 2022. View the original thread.