Doubtful “pacifism” of the Irish member of the European Parliament

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Mick Wallace is an Irish politician and Member of the European Parliament from the Independents 4 Change party, which has been part of the Left in the European Parliament (GUE/NGL) since 2019. This political force unites supporters of socialism, communism, and critics of European Union and NATO policies.

Doubtful “pacifism” of the Irish member of the European Parliament, The Ukrainian Review

Mick Wallace, Irish politician, Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mick_Wallace_%2849237601651%29.jpg

Mick Wallace actively promotes his views on his own social networks, which reach an audience of many thousands, in particular, he has 58 000 followers on Facebook, and 181 000 on Twitter. He has his own website too.

He periodically speaks on other platforms, including in front of students, and gives interviews to various information resources and bloggers. So, on November 2, 2022, Mick Wallace wrote on his Twitter account about communication with residents of the Pakistani city of Lahore about “Ukraine, imperialism, Europe and austerity at great length.”

He actively speaks in the European Parliament, criticizing the policies of the EU, the USA, and NATO, including in relation to Ukraine. At the meeting on 20 October 2022, Mick Wallace stated:

“…I 100% support the idea of European support for Ukrainian research and innovation. It makes very good sense. We did oppose supporting Ukraine with arms, which has led to more violence, more bloodshed and at great cost to the ordinary people, the less well-off in Ukraine who are dying in their numbers…”

According to Mick Wallace, there is no need to supply weapons to Ukraine, as this only exacerbates the conflict and leads to even more deaths of poor Ukrainians. Against the background of war crimes committed by Russians in Buch, Izyum, Irpen, and other populated areas of Ukraine, such cynical appeals can hardly be called pacifist. After all, it was the support of Western partners, primarily military, that helped stop the enemy’s offensive and thus protect Ukrainians from the atrocities of the Russian military. And the supplied air defense equipment protects the Ukrainian sky from Russian missiles and drones and significantly reduces the number of casualties among the civilian population and the destruction of infrastructure.

It should also be recalled that on December 5, 1994, the United Kingdom and the United States signed a Memorandum on Security Assurances with Ukraine in connection with Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (Budapest Memorandum). This document was supposed to guarantee the independence, sovereignty, and inviolability of borders to the young Ukrainian state, which renounced nuclear weapons. This document was also signed by Russia, which violated it in 2014 when it attacked Ukraine and illegally annexed Crimea.

A day earlier, from the rostrum of the European Parliament, Mick Wallace suggested a return to the format of peace negotiations based on the Minsk agreements and accused the 436 MPs who voted against this amendment of choosing and supporting the war.

But for some reason, in these speeches, Mick Wallace does not call on Iran to stop supplying the Russian Federation with “Shahed-136” drones, which kill Ukrainians and destroy civilian infrastructure. Similarly, calls to the Russian authorities to stop the war and withdraw their troops from the territory of Ukraine are not heard from him. This is exactly what a person who wants peace and an end to the war should call for.

Speaking in Strasbourg on October 20, 2022, Mick Wallace defended Russian cultural figures and noted that they did not start the war. Therefore, in his opinion, there is no logic in banning Russian sports, music, and literature. It should be noted that famous Russian actors and musicians actively support the war and mobilize the patriotism of Russians, urging them to go to the front and support Putin – Oleg Gazmanov, Ivan Okhlobystin, Mykhailo Porechenkov, Mykola Baskov, and others.

And in September of this year, Mick Wallace came to a meeting of the parliament wearing a T-shirt of the Italian club Torino, of which he has been an active fan since 2014, with the name of the Russian football player Aleksei Miranchuk. Back in 2007, the politician founded the Irish football club Wexford Football Club, which he coached for three years.

It is certain that such a position of the Irish deputy impresses Russian propagandists. His speeches in the European Parliament and tweets about the guilt of the EU and the US in the Ukrainian conflict and calls to stop supplying arms to Ukraine are eagerly quoted and commented on. Internet publications ria.ru, news.ru, baltnews.com, tass.ru and others write about Mick Wallace as a politician who calls for “peace” and “shows the hypocrisy of the West.”

He rarely gets into the field of view of the Ukrainian mass media. In February 2021, Mick Wallace was one of the politicians who wrote a letter to the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, condemning the closure of NewsOne, 112 Ukraine and ZIK. In June 2021, the Ukrainian online media “European Pravda” wrote that Mick Wallace was fined together with two representatives of the extreme left “European United Left”/Green Left of the North” (GUE/NGL), namely the Spaniard Manu Pineda and Ireland’s Clare Daly for participating in fake election observation missions in Ecuador and Venezuela.

During the time of the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war, there are practically no mentions of Mick Wallace, unlike his more popular namesake British Defense Minister Ben Wallace, in Ukrainian online publications.