The RMT leader also suggested that the EU’s influence was partly responsible

By Charles Hymas, HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR

12 August 2022 •

Rail union baron Mick Lynch has suggested that Ukrainians “playing with Nazi imagery” and the influence of the EU provoked “trouble” in the invaded country.

Asked about Russian aggression, the general secretary of the RMT appeared to partly place the blame on the EU and “corrupt politicians in Ukraine”.

It comes ahead of fresh disruption on the railwaysas Aslef train drivers strike at 10 rail companies followed by RMT strikes next Thursday and Saturday involving 40,000 workers including 20,000 from Network Rail and the remainder from 14 train companies.

Mr Lynch’s claims about the role of Nazi or neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine mirror that of the Kremlin despite the RMT leader and his union condemning the invasion in March and calling for the Russian army to withdraw.

His comments came in an interview in the New Statesman where he was asked whether Brexit had weakened the EU in the face of Russian aggression and the rise of China.

“The EU also provoked a lot of trouble in Ukraine. It was all about being pro-EU and all the rest of it,” he said, referring to the pro-EU Maidan revolution in Ukraine in 2014. 

“There were a lot of corrupt politicians in Ukraine. And while they were doing that, there were an awful lot of people [in Ukraine] playing with Nazi imagery and going back to the [Second World] war, and all that. So, it’s not just that this stuff has sprung from one place.”

The RMT, and particularly its assistant general secretary Eddie Dempsey, have long-standing sympathies for the pro-Putin separatists who have been fighting government forces in the east of the country for almost a decade.

Dempsey visited the Donbas region of Ukraine in 2015, where he posed for a picture with Aleksey Mozgovoy, leader of the pro-Russian “Ghost Brigade” of rebels in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic.

Mr Dempsey was also one of the most high-profile signatories to a Stop the War Coalition statement that criticised Nato for showing “disdain for Russian concerns” in Ukraine at the start of the war.

Brendan Kelly, an RMT regional organiser for South Wales and South West England, was also reported in May to have spouted Kremlin propaganda about the invasion.

Although he said the Ukrainian government was not fascist he claimed that “what they have done is unleash, or been prepared to unleash, some of these fascist groups to become embedded within state forces”.

In his New Statesman interview, Mr Lynch was also sceptical of the prevailing narrative about China. “I don’t know if what I’m told by The Telegraph and by American policy writers [about China] is true,” he said. 

“We were told Saddam Hussein was the greatest threat to the Western world that there had ever been … what he actually had was a very oppressive regime against his own people and a collection of pots and boilers that he’d strung together as so-called Scud missiles. 

“We were told all that by the same analysts that are telling us now that China wants to commit all of this aggression against all of these people. We should stop being so belligerent towards countries.”

In an interview with The Telegraph on the eve of Saturday’s rail strikes, Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, accused the union bosses of being motivated by “outmoded class war”.

“The union bosses are motivated by some outmoded class war that hankers after days that have gone. Much to their upset, they’re not bringing the country to a standstill because people are able to work from home,” said Mr Shapps. 

“The world has changed. It’s moved on. These union bosses are dinosaurs who haven’t realised that’s the case.”

He criticised the refusal of the unions to modernise archaic working practices in return for the eight per cent pay rise the RMT had rejected without putting it to its members.

“For years and years, successive governments and secretaries of state have just capitulated rather than get the modernisation of the railway done. 

“I simply will not capitulate on this. We absolutely have to modernise the railways for the passengers. It is ludicrous that we’re operating under contracts, which go back to precedents set in the 50s, 60s and 70s which completely miss out on the Thatcher reforms entirely.

He pledged to crack down on union strike action with a menu of 16 proposals for the incoming prime minister, including a ban on strikes by different unions in the same workplace within a set period.

End of Telegraph article.

……………

The RMT is busy doing its job as it sees it of wrecking the UK economy and bringing down the Tory government, because it hopes to install the seemingly mild Sir Keir Starmer, who actually supported JeremIRA CorbLenin when he was Labour leader.

The RMT, like a number of other British trade unions, has been infiltrated by extremely unpleasant Irish communists who are owned, bought and paid for by putler’s murder gang. The unions in turn bankroll the Labour Party.

The article attracted a flurry of kremtrolls. Here are some comments from DT readers who are NOT kremkrapper scum:

Mark Goodwin: “ I wonder what the dull-witted union members think about being influenced by this triumvirate of paddy poison?”

Ig Igm: “It is truly amazing that communists can tell whapping lies and oh so nice people believe them!”

John Appleby: “He can emigrate and live in Russia if he wants let him send a postcard let us know how he gets on.”

Harry Flashman: “Time to ship him back to the Nazi Soviet Union, formerly/formally known as Russia.”

Lord Inso Much-as: “Thick as pig’s excrement and red as the USSR was. Dangerous mouthpiece who is Putin’s village idiot.”

Chris Milton: “Mick Lynch, thick as mince and Putin’s useful idiot. Give him a visa to go to Moscow (one way) and good riddance to poisonous rubbish.”

Phil Straw: “We should stop being so belligerent towards countries”. Including your own, Mr Lynch.”

Kate Smith: “The only thing these union leaders are interested in is bringing down the democratically elected conservative government. They have no interest at all in their members.”

Chris Hunt: “As if we didn’t know already, Lynch has just shown his true colours and agenda. He’s overreached himself because he got cocky, believing his own hype. What a massive mistake. He and Eddy Dempsey: toadying up to Putin because he’s Russian, so they assume him to be Stalinist, when what Putin really sees himself as is the new Tsar or Emperor.”

John Savage: “Ukraine discovering natural gas in the Donbas and off-shore Crimea provoked the invasion. Nothing more, nothing less.”

And now some filthy kremtrolls:

John Armstrong: “The Ukrainian fascination with all things “Nasty” was well documented by main stream media until a few months ago. Now it’s taboo.”

Reply from Martin Mitchell: “Damn those Nazis electing a Jewish president just to fool us!”

Tim Relf: “On this occasion Mick is actually telling the truth about the whole messy situation in Ukraine dating back to 2014 … unlike our ‘totally trustworthy’ government and Biden’s cronies. If Putin promised not to expand his borders but gradually inched his way to Calais … how would we feel? In effect this is exactly what NATO has done. I’m surprised that DT readers are so quick to dismiss Lynch just because of who he is without first checking the facts. You may dismiss me too but please look into what has happened in Ukraine over the last 8 years first.”

Reply from Marc Standing: “Er if democratically elected Governments chose to join a new Soviet Union we might not like it but we’d live with it. If your comment made any sense you’d be able to explain why Russian politicians, officials etc keep threatening the UK when we just broke free of the EU.”

Another reply to Relf from Neil Baker: “Your comment makes no sense….Nato hasn’t inched it’s way across borders towards Russia in any shape or form like Russia who has Invaded another sovereign state. These countries chose to join Nato and pose no threat unlike Putin with his intentions.”

Kremtroll “Dominic Jenkins: “Ukraine in the most corrupt country in Europe and ranks low on a global scale. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rode to power on pledges to clean up the Eastern European country, but the Pandora Papers reveal he and his close circle were the beneficiaries of a network of offshore companies, including some that owned expensive London property. Nothing is straightforward.”

And finally, an excellent comment from Counting Sheep: “Russia’s reasons for invading Ukraine are; It’s a facist junta regime ( changed to: unfortunately, most of the population are facists), the government are drug addicts ( remember Gaddafi?), they want to join NATO, they want to join the EU ( the reason Maidan took place because Yanokovich, the Russian puppet tried to stop them), Ukraine is not a country, it belongs to Russia. The fact is Ukrainians wanted to move away from Soviet inspired corruption which Russians accept as the way things have to be. They like the Cosmopolitan and free democratic societies that live in the West and they are highly educated and motivated people who had had enough. Maidan was a bloody battle and the Ukrainian people who took part were fighting for theirs and their children’s futures. Let’s support them and give them everything they need.”

Excellent comment Mr Counting Sheep. Bravo!