Western apologists enabling Putin’s aggressive stance

Bernard-Henri Lévy finds extreme danger in a ‘fifth column’ of Western supporters who slavishly endorse every move by the Russian president.

Across Europe, apologists for Russia and Russian policy have coalesced into what amounts to a fifth column. The emergence in Western capitals of what might be called the ‘Party of Putin’ is an exceptionally dangerous development, precisely because those who comprise it are not only the usual far-left and far-right suspects. So who are its ‘members’?

They are, for starters, those who, regardless of party, have had nothing critical to say about the full state reception that Russian president Vladimir Putin just staged at the Kremlin for that multi-recidivist enemy of the West (and butcher of his own people), Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. They are those whose craven relief that a “strongman” has appeared to impose order (his own) on the Syrian mess prevents them from seeing that the primary effect of Russia’s massive, indiscriminate bombardments has been to accelerate the flow of refugees toward Europe.