Kiev, Ukraine. Doubling down on dumb at full speed, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is doing his best to provoke an invasion by Russia, in his latest efforts he has banned the St. George’s ribbon, Soviet Russian flags and symbols as well as Russian language web sites. Outside observers are nervous Poroshenko may have already gone too far.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko will sign a law banning St. George’s ribbon as soon as it arrives from the Verkhovna Rada. He stated this on Sunday in his speech on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression ironically enough, given the act is one of political repression.
Poroshenko stated that eight years ago the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly adopted a resolution on the identity of the Nazi and Stalin regimes and proposed a joint day for the memory of the victims of Stalinism and Nazism.
This, he maintains, is the reason that Ukraine has been de-communized, but not de-nazified as he has named streets after Nazi SS leaders, erected statues to Ukrainian killers of Jews in the Holocaust and routinely allows parades of openly Nazi groups in Kiev.
“By the way, my Ukrainian people are also able to survive even without social networks controlled by the FSB. And, I will also sign the law on the banning of St. George’s ribbons, as soon as it arrives from the Verkhovna Rada.” Poroshenko said trying to provoke his opponents.
According to Poroshenko, the St. George’s ribbon is not a symbol of the Second World War but a symbol of aggression against Ukraine in 2014-2017 as “the separatists wearing these ribbons kill our soldiers day and night, Russia itself made this ribbon illegal through its policy towards Ukraine,” Poroshenko pronounced.
On May 15, 2017, the President signed a decree that put into effect the decision of the National Security and Defense Council to update the list of sanctions against a number of Russian companies, including Aeroflot, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, Yandex and others.The next day, the Verkhovna Rada or Parliament, passed the bill banning the manufacture and propaganda of the St. George’s ribbon in Ukraine.
Outside political experts worry that all of this anti-Russian activity comes at a risk. When the United States invaded Afghanistan, some of the reasons they cited, involve a lot of the very laws Ukraine keeps passing, that by any independent standard, look a lot like the elements of genocide, not law enforcement.
