Jeremy Corbyn’s failure to condemn Putin for the Sergei Skripal poisoning should be no surprise given the Labour leader and his top team’s previous support for Russia
The veteran leftie has surrounded himself with Kremlin apologists and much of his shadow Cabinet have happily appeared on propaganda channel Russia Today
JEREMY Corbyn sparked uproar this week with his repeated failure to condemn Vladimir Putin for the Sergei Skripal poisoning - but it should be no surprise given the Labour leader and his top team’s previous support for Russia.
The veteran leftie has surrounded himself with Kremlin apologists and much of his shadow Cabinet have happily appeared on propaganda channel Russia Today, so we take a look the party's chequered past on Putin.
Jeremy Corbyn himself
The Labour leader has often blamed anyone other than Russia when it comes to aggression by Moscow, usually directing his ire towards Nato.
In 2005 he said Nato was “the father of the Cold War”, shifting blame away from Stalin and the Soviet Union, and said it should have “shut up shop in 1990”.
In 2015 he also blamed the violence in the Crimea on the west, saying: “I am not condoning what Russia has done and is doing [in Ukraine].
“But everything has an equal and opposite reaction and so the more you build up Nato forces, the more of an excuse the Russians have.”
In 2014, as Russia invaded the Crimea Mr Corbyn wrote in an article for the communist newspaper the Morning Star: “On Ukraine, I would not condone Russian behaviour or expansion.
"But it is not unprovoked, and the right of people to seek a federal structure or independence should not be denied.
“And there are huge questions around the West’s intentions in Ukraine.”
Seumas Milne, director of communications
His views are closely echoed by his most senior and trusted adviser Seumas Milne, a former associate editor at the Guardian.
He has previously said Britain and its Nato allies were guilty of “anti-Russian incitement”, which was a “dangerous folly”,
He caused anger among Labour MPs yesterday for appearing to compare the evidence collected by the police, army and security services which pointed to Russian involvement in Salisbury with the case for war in Iraq.
But Mr Milne has long been on Russia’s side when it comes to such matters, and back in 2014 even appeared at an event with Mr Putin.
He was pictured shaking the Russian leader’s hand at the conference in Sochi after the invasion and annexation of Ukraine, which he defended as “clearly defensive”.
Mr Milne asked Mr Putin if Russia’s “actions in Ukraine and Crimea” were simply “a response to [a] breakdown of rules and a sort of example of a ‘no-rules’ order”.
He also wrote a series of pro-Putin articles before being hired as the Labour leader’s top spin doctor.
One, published in March 2015 just months before he started working for Mr Corbyn, complained how “Putin has now become a cartoon villain and Russia the target of almost uniformly belligerent propaganda across the western media”.
And he also appeared to claim Stalin was not to blame for as many deaths as were attributed to his barbaric regime, saying there is “controversy” over the true number.
Another column, this time from 2006, saw the 59-year-old says the Soviet Union “helped to drive up welfare standards”.
Links to Russia Today
Mr Milne has also appeared numerous times on Russia Today, the Kremlin-funded TV channel which has been censured by the broadcast regulator Ofcom on multiple occasions.
Mr Corbyn himself was a regular guest on its programmes when he was a backbench MP, and a number of his shadow cabinet members have appeared on it too.
In 2013 Mr Corbyn went on and said the West should refrain from using “unconfirmed reports” about the use of chemical weapons in Syria to attack the Kremlin.
He also suggested viewers stop watching mainstream broadcasters and give Russia Today, now known as RT, a chance instead.
In 2011 he tweeted to another user: “Try Russia Today. Free of Royal Wedding and more objective on Libya than most.”
Last year it spent more than £300,000 on adverts on the London Underground with provocative messages such as “watch RT and find out who we are planning to hack next”.
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A study in October last year found shadow ministers have featured at least 26 times since Mr Corbyn became Labour leader in 2015.
One of his key lieutenants, the shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon, has appeared 11 times.
The 37-year-old ex-trade union lawyer was a guest speaker at a meeting of the Leeds branch of the Communist Party celebrating the 1917 Russian Revolution.
And he was also listed as a tutor at the “Communist University of North 2011”, illustrated with the Soviet hammer and sickle emblem.
Other shadow ministers who have appeared on there include Barry Gardiner and Peter Dowd, the leading Corbynista and ex-shadow minister Chris Williamson, as well as longstanding allies George Galloway – who had his own show on RT, and Ken Livingstone.
John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, has also been on – but this week said he won't be making any more appearances, saying its coverage "goes beyond objective journalism".
He said it was "right", after events in Salisbury that Labour MPs did not appear on it, opening another split on Labour’s left.
Labour leader's advisers
Mr Corbyn has other people close to him who have shown support for Russia, with senior adviser Andrew Fisher allegedly using his position in the leader’s office to remove a reference to tackling “Russian aggression” from a briefing for it MPs on benefits of EU, saying: “We want a positive line.”
Mr Fisher, who wrote Labour’s 2017 manifesto, has a long-term association with Marxists and communists.
Another advisor, Andrew Murray, also has a history of supporting the Russian regime through his leadership of the Stop the War coalition, which Mr Corbyn has been chair of and a longstanding supporter.
The group was named as official UK partner of an organisation funded by the Kremlin to undermine the West in 2016.
Stop the War also organised at least three rallies in Britain for Boris Kagarlitsky, a Putin apologist paid by the Russian government, with Mr Corbyn and Mr Milne speaking at one of them.
The reported that the Labour leader even agreed to travel to Russia to address Mr Kagarlitsky’s Institute of Globalisation and Social Movements in June 2015, but his leadership campaign intervened and he didn’t attend.
Mr Murray, who was seconded from the Unite union to Labour headquarters for the 2017 general election, also reportedly joined Mr Kagarlitsky at meetings of an even more pro-Russian group, Solidarity with the Anti-Fascist Resistance in Ukraine, in 2015.
The four decade-long member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, wrote an article in the Morning Star in 1999 arguing Josef Stalin’s leadership was preferable to the West, as well as others praising the Soviet Union.
