Mick Hartley

Sometimes the lies – aka fake news – just leave you speechless at the sheer brazenness. At MEMRI TV, for instance, we have Russian Ambassador to Egypt Georgiy Borisenko expounding on the Ukrainians who are out in force to welcome the Russian troops as they seek to throw off the chains of the "neo-Nazi and pro-Hitler" Zelensky regime.

Or there's Luna Chebel here – former Al-Jazeera journalist, now advisor to Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad – speaking on Russia Today TV:

"Damascus supports this [Russian] military operation, because when a country's national security is being threatened, it cannot remain silent and stand idly by. […]

"In the past decades, the Western countries have turned this world into a jungle. The law of the jungle says that only the strong survive, and this mean that Russia has the right to defend its national security. […]

"Who will suffer more [from the sanctions]? The West or Russia? Let me give you a simple example. Now, they have banned Russian flights over the entire EU. In return, Russia banned flights by all the countries that had banned it. Russia is the largest country in the world. So when it bans all these airlines from flying in its airspace, it hurts those who were banned, and not the other way around.

"This brings to mind a British saying – and Britain plays a major part in this anti-Russian hysteria… This reminds me of the British saying: 'Cutting off my nose to spite my face.' This is exactly what the West is doing with these sanctions. […]

"Usually in politics, there is no such thing as a 'point of no return.' This 'return' always takes place when one of the sides is victorious. So when Russia emerges victorious, you will see the West come running back to Russia. If you remember, this is what happened in the World War. Everybody supported the Nazis, but when Russia was drawing close to a victory, they reversed course and came to share in Russia's victory.

"So I believe that the point of no return has to do with Russia's victory."

And what of Syria? This from the latest Private Eye, issue 1568, out today: