| Fascinating. |
About 150 members of Russian nationalist and right-wing European parties -- including Greece's Golden Dawn and Germany's National Democratic Party -- met in Russia's second city Saint Petersburg to berate the West for its stance on the Ukraine conflict and to promote "traditional values."
Far-rights groups across Europe have become vocal supporters of Russian President Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...over his handling of the Ukraine crisis, prompting allegations they have reached a Faustian bargain to help burnish the Kremlin's battered image.
The growing ties come despite Moscow's claims it is aiming to counter what it sees as "fascism
...a political system developed in Italy symbolized by the Roman
fasces-- thin reeds, each flimsy in itself but unbreakable when bound into a bundle. The word is nowadays thrown around by all sorts of people who have no idea what they're talking about...
" in Ukraine, where pro-Western protesters swept a Kremlin-backed president from power last year.
"We do not support the sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine conflict," Udo Voigt, a member of the European Parliament from Germany's National Democratic Party, said at the conference.
"It is incredible what patience Russia and president Putin have shown in the face of NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis....
's aggressive policies."
Organizers said the forum was intended to strengthen links with right-wing groups across Europe and help shape a common agenda.
"This meeting is the first foundation stone towards constructing the new world that we are obliged to build," said Fyodor Birukov, from the pro-Kremlin Rodina party that organized the event.
"I see this forum as a way pushing the fight back against liberalism and what we call modernism, the destruction of traditional values including Christianity throughout the modern world," said Nick Griffin, former head of the British National Party.
"Russia is about tradition and Christianity and it's very important that traditionalists from Russia, Europe and America get together to present our ideas more effectively to the general public."
Sunday's meeting sparked condemnation from the liberal opposition in Russia's former imperial capital, with several demonstrators outside the hotel venue holding placards reading "no to Nazis."
"It is scandalous for Russia to welcome the heirs of Mussolini and Hitler," protester Natalia Gerasimova, 57, told Agence La Belle France-Presse.
Russia is gearing up for major celebrations in May to mark the 70th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.
Fringe far-right groups from around Europe have sent observers to monitor votes by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine that sought to legitimize their rule despite widespread condemnation from Kiev and the West.