The justifying myths of Russian intervention

"The regime in Ukraine is fascist."

Following the Second World War, Winston Churchill sagely predicted that in future 'fascists will call themselves anti-fascists'. That is precisely what we see happening when, for example, the Russian Federation's Ambassador to Australia calls the new Ukrainian Government 'neo-Nazi'.

This is an extraordinary claim given his President's and his Government's:

• squashing of domestic political dissent, persecution of people on the basis of sexual preference and control of mass media;
• forcible occupation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and other acts of unilateralism; and
• breaking of several international treaties such as the UN Charter, the Final Act of the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the Budapest Memorandum which expressly sees the Russian Federation and others support Ukraine's territorial sovereignty.

But we should expect such statements from what's becoming the 21^st Century's Libya-on-a-larger-scale. What's more surprising, perhaps, is when we look at who in the Australian scene is parroting these arguments – all expressed in one form or another by Putin, his Foreign Affairs Minister Lavrov, and his Chemical Ali-like Ambassador to Australia. We find some unusual bedfellows; some from the hard left, as old Moscow habits die hard, and some from the hard right, including the Lyndon LaRouche-affliliated Citizens Electoral Council (CEC).

Our own Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, sees through the disinformation and desperate claims from a Putin regime that's bigger on paper than it is any substantive way. Our PM knows you stand up to bullies and their nonsense. The world would do well to be as clear in opposing Mr Putin's actions and his words.