George Galloway is a British politician and author. He has been head of the Workers Party of Britain since he launched it in 2019 and was an ex-leader of the Respect Party. Recently, Galloway has blamed the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the Western nations.
In 2014, Galloway resisted Western military action against Islamic State, which he dubbed a “death cult”, and instead advocated military measures from the regional powers. In 2016, he defended Russian military action against Islamic State, stating:
“I support the decision of the Russian government to come to the aid of the government in Syria because whatever faults it [the Syrian government] may have, whatever crimes it has committed, they are considerably fewer than the crimes committed by IS or would be committed by IS were they to come to power”
From 2013 to 2022, Galloway performed on the Russian state-controlled television network RT. Galloway called the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution a “coup” and a “foreign-financed invasion of the sovereignty of Ukraine”. He acknowledges Russia’s annexation of Crimea was legitimate because he expressed the disputed 2014 Crimean status referendum revealed that
“the huge majority of people in Crimea wanted to leave Ukraine”.
In a 2016 interview with Nigel Farage, Galloway stated
“I respect Putin and I think he’s very popular in Russia”.
When Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned in August 2020, Galloway asserted on RT that Navalny was a white supremacist.
In early 2022, Galloway disregarded claims that Russia was about to invade Ukraine, noting
“I told you it wasn’t. You were wrong. I was right”.
When Russia plagued Ukraine ten days later, he expressed the invasion was “not what I wanted”, but he condemned the invasion on “the West” and blamed it for “Pumping Ukraine full of NATO spears, mercenaries and propaganda”.
He indicated that the Bucha massacre was staged. Galloway was indicted of being an apologist and propagandist for Russian president Vladimir Putin by the bigger political parties. Jamie Blackett concluded their political alliance All for Unity over their dispute on Ukraine. The Scottish Liberal Democrats head, Alex Cole-Hamilton, called Galloway “an apologist for Russian expansionist aggression” and stated that Galloway’s
“relationship with RT has lent legitimacy and leverage to the propaganda apparatus of a hostile power”.
Concerning the Crocus City Hall attack in Russia, Galloway expressed he had
“four pieces of proof that lead [him] to believe that the United States, its NATO partners, and their instrument stump state Ukraine are, in fact, accountable for this massacre”.
