Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I feel that the self-righteous stance taken by the US and the EU beggars belief. We listened to John Kerry tell us that this is a completely unacceptable breach of international law for which there will be costs. It was interesting to read Seamus Milne in The Guardian last week. He said:

That the states which launched the greatest act of unprovoked aggression in modern history on a trumped-up pretext – against Iraq, in an illegal war now estimated to have killed 500,000, along with the invasion of Afghanistan, bloody regime change in Libya, and the killing of thousands in drone attacks on Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, all without UN authorisation – should make such claims is beyond absurdity.

It's not just that western aggression and lawless killing is on another scale entirely from anything Russia appears to have contemplated, let alone carried out – removing any credible basis for the US and its allies to rail against Russian transgressions. But the western powers have also played a central role in creating the Ukraine crisis in the first place.

The US and European powers openly sponsored the protests to oust the corrupt but elected Viktor Yanukovych government, which were triggered by controversy over an all-or-nothing EU agreement which would have excluded economic association with Russia.

Interesting also was the leak from Victoria Nuland that they spent €5 billion investing in destabilising Ukraine for their own economic benefits.

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