After failing to reduce their reliance on Moscow for energy, Hungary and Slovakia now want help from Brussels.
You reap what you sow.
Privately, that’s the exasperated sentiment among EU diplomats as Hungary joins with Slovakia to try and leverage EU rules to preserve access to a discounted product nearly everyone else has had to shun: Russian oil.
Their maneuvering comes in the wake of Ukrainian sanctions blocking the transit of pipeline crude sold by Russia’s largest private oil firm, Lukoil, which could strip the two countries of a third of their oil imports.
Hungary and Slovakia have gone to the rule book, arguing the penalties violate a 2014 trade deal between Kyiv and the EU and asking the European Commission, the EU’s executive, to intervene.
Yes it is a legitimate complaint, ignoring the traditional owners of the land and favouring the settler colonists is a problem. Likewise the historical context is within living lifetime for many people in the world, Israel isn’t even a 100 year old state.
The “status quo” was decades of apartheid and systematic abuses against Palestinians by Israel.
The ‘anti-war’ shit was what that the Russians tried to pull with Ukraine in re-framing their invasion by discrediting support for their opposition, not buying it here either.
Fight against genocide, don’t sit on the fence and act morally righteous because ‘both sides’.
Tradition is not, and should not, be the compass by which we chart our course.
Russia began an attack. Why? Historical redress. Hamas began an attack. Why? Historical redress. Redressing of historical grievances, from any point before the current day, makes you an aggressor.
This is so disgustingly dishonest.
Israel was and is still abusing and killing Palestinians, this isn’t historical it was every day leading up to Oct 7th and continues every day after.
No, there were other options. Movements like BDS, civil disobedience, etc were possible. Now, however, hamas has doomed the Palestinians. Netanyahu’s ethnic cleansing will likely be successful now, and the world will not halt it any more than we are halting the genocides in Sudan or Xinjiang.
You do not need to start a war to prevent killing, and starting a war only makes it worse.