Zarah Sultana has received a barrage of critical comments, mainly from Ukrainians and Eastern Europeans, after the new left-wing party leader sharted her communist perspective about President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In a remark worthy of a champagne socialist, Zarah Sultana said she’d concluded President Zelensky isn’t a friend of the working class, after being inspired by perspectives she heard at a conference in Paris.
Zarah Sultana attended an anti-NATO Conference in Paris earlir this month called “Contre La Guerre Paris”. One of the speakers that she was referring to is, Andrey Konovalov, a Ukrainian who lives in Europe who gave a speech during the conference without once condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Other speakers included Lisa Smirnova, also a Russian living in Europe; Chilean-Swedish far-left politician, Lorena Delgado Varas, who was expelled from the Left Party in Sweden for saying that Zionist Jews control the world, and John Rees, a known communist and organsier of the Stop the War Coalition.
Ukrainians explained to Zarah Sultana that her kind of class-politics is irrelevant to Ukraine which has a dichotomous political scene mainly between the pro-European Ukrainians and the pro-Russians. Support for President Zelensky gas grown significantly since Russia invaded Ukraine while support for Russia has also dwindled dramatically as Russia killed Ukrainian civilians. An article by Ukrainian journalist by Svitlana Moronets described Zarah Sultana’s views as pompous and described her as a politician who would do everything for the working-class except for listening to them.
Ukrainians are being bombed on a daily basis by Russia and just last night, Russia bombed Zaporizhzhia and Poltava with cruise missiles and drones.
One of the problems with Sultana’s views on Eastern Europeans is that it is inherently racist nd removes all agency from them as they are merely reduced to theoretical subjects of higher forces instead of recognising their free choice to join NATO and the European Union. Sultana’s world-view is also a very simplistic and is inherently biased in favour of Russia as it strips away the legitimate right of the Ukrainian people to choose to defend themselves against Russian conquest.
Zarah Sultana has also persistently called for Britain to cut ties with Israel but has a different position with regard to Russia as she advocates for peace negotiations with Russia.
On the other hand, Zarah Sultana’s comments were welcomed by the far-right which are aligned with her views over NATO. In Europe, we are currently seeing a divergence of views between the far-right and the far-left over Russia and NATO with both of the political extremes blaming the EU and NATO for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Ultimately, Zarah Sultana’s position is also similar to Jeremy Corbyn’s and both pander to an old constituency of socialists who are still nostalgic of the Cold War days when socialist and communist movements were more pervasive.
Zarah Sultana has formed a new party called Your Party with Jeremy Corbyn with whom she is co-leader. The party started off with a dispute between Sultana and Corbyn over the collection of funds, which Sultana did without the prior approval of her party colleagues. The money she collected with her friends is now being held up by its custodians and a potential legal battle is brewing to release the funds.
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