The Dissident (printed with permission)
EU States Continue To Silence Pro-Peace Voices.
Written By: Justin K.P.
EU states have continued to crack down and silence voices calling for an end to the proxy war in Ukraine.
In the most recent case, Latvia is attempting to silence Leonid Ragozin- a Putin-critical Russian journalist living in Latvia since 2014 who has previously worked for mainstream Western outlets like the BBC, Bloomberg and POLITICO- over his advocacy for diplomacy and ending the Ukraine proxy war.
Latvian Minister of the Interior Jānis Dombrava is calling for Ragozin to be labeled as “Persona non grata” in an attempt to have him deported for his anti-war reporting.
Responding to this, Ragozin said:
What I am observing at the moment is a threat of very severe extrajudicial punishment for speaking my mind and providing original opinions and analysis.
The reason they opt for persona non grata status is the desire to deny me justice in the court system where the case – as senior politicians involved in attacking openly admit – won’t hold water. This is why I interpret the situation as an instance of political persecution.
The threat is accompanied with a character assassination campaign involving far right infowar and fake news outfits which deliberately distort my views on the conflict.
The goal of the attack is to destroy my life and to put a gag on me as a notable voice in public debate on the Russo-Ukranian war.
Despite Leonid Ragozin having a long record of reporting critical of the Russian government, Latvia’s interior minister has labeled him pro-Russia because he supposedly “‘blamed the West’ for the war, ‘criticized the West and Ukraine,’ ‘discredited’ Ukraine’s politicians and armed forces, called the anti-Russian sanctions ineffective, and questioned if simple imperialism was really the only motivating factor behind Putin’s invasion, as Western politicians tend to insist.”
As journalist Branko Marcetic noted, “In other words, he has done reporting, voiced opinions, and highlighted information that are politically inconvenient for a hawkish Latvian elite”.
This is far from the first time EU states and the EU itself have used lawfare in an attempt to silence critics of the proxy war in Ukraine.
The EU officially placed sanctions on the former Swiss Army Colonel Jacques Baud and the journalist Hüseyin Doğruexplicitly in retaliation for their reporting and analysis that was critical of EU foreign policy and the proxy war in Ukraine.
The EU similarly ruled that the independent outlet Traugott Ickeroth was guilty of violating economic sanctions simply because it occasionally shared content from the Russian broadcaster RT.
More recently, the Ukrainian regime itself put sanctions on Iuliia Mendel, the former press secretary for the Zelenskyy government, who has been a proponent of peace and ending the proxy war in Ukraine.
These sanctions were seemingly placed on Mendel at the behest of the EU, which used them to block Mendel from giving a pro-diplomacy speech on the war in Ukraine in the European Parliament.
The lawfare against Leonid Ragozin seemed to be part of a broader lawfare campaign from the EU to silence proponents of peace who want to end its proxy war against Russia using Ukraine.
