This is both a new, shameless, low in what passes for Britain’s diplomacy these days and another example of the absolute disconnect Western politicians, (especially British ones), have from reality. In this report the Guardian reports on British Prime Minister Keir Starmer managing to blame Putin and Russia for Israel’s war crime of starving Palestinians in Gaza.
Keir Starmer has accused Vladimir Putin of disrupting food supplies to Gaza after British intelligence suggested Russia had stepped up its attacks on Ukrainian ports.
Starmer said it was clear the Russian president was “willing to gamble on global food security” after several grain ships en route to developing countries were damaged by Russian strikes.
Military intelligence published by the UK government overnight concluded that Russia had increased its attacks on Ukrainian port infrastructure in the Black Sea.
Between 5 and 14 October at least four merchant vessels were struck by Russian munitions, according to the intelligence assessment. The strikes are believed to have delayed a vessel carrying vegetable oil destined for the World Food Programme in Palestine.
Ships loaded with grain destined for Egypt, two vessels carrying corn and WFP shipments bound for southern Africa were also affected, in some cases as collateral damage in strikes on port infrastructure.
Once you strip away the propaganda narrative overlay supplied by the Guardian’s Defence Editor it appears that the only connection to Gaza was that one ship carrying vegetable oil for Gaza was delayed. (We aren’t told for how long).
Anyone is who paying the slightest attention to what multiple NGOs and the UN are saying is that the problem with aid getting into Gaza is that Israel is blocking aid from entering [1] and, even when they allow it in, their campaign of bombing, including deliberately killing policemen who might oversee the secure distribution of aid, destroying infrastructure and so on, has made distribution extremely hard. The reason that civilians are starving in Gaza is not because one ship carrying cooking oil to Gaza, which may not have been allowed in anyway by Israel, was delayed. Starmer is attempting to attribute the starvation in Gaza which is caused by Israel blocking humanitarian aid to civilians, to Russia! It is extraordinary. Even the most deluded of propagandists in the Foreign Office and Cabinet Office must know that this is a pure fabrication. That they even try reflects the desperately low level of the media in the UK. The Guardian – a relatively (emphasis, relatively), thinking newspaper, transmits this lie without comment. I can only imagine how the (even) less critical media is transmitting it. In the popular mind they are trying to build up the idea that Putin is evil and, at the same time, slip away from the uncomfortable fact that the UK, as a direct result of Starmer’s policies, is directly complicit in Israel’s war crimes. The UK supplies weapons, trades with the illegal settlements in the West Bank, and provides diplomatic cover at every opportunity. It is the UK government who is dripping with the blood of Palestinian children, not Putin. (Who, as anyone who is paying any attention at all to actual geopolitical currents can see, is becoming increasingly critical of Israel). Western leaders do not deal in geopolitical reality anymore. They deal in preferred narratives.
This is a wheeze (if you can call it that, given that we are talking about the blood of children), thought up by some PR adviser in the Cabinet Office. Oh, look, here we can dupe people that Putin is responsible for the starving children in Gaza, remind them that Putin is “evil”, and, at the same time, bury our responsibility for the starvation and other war crimes in Gaza. A double-win. He will probably get a high-score in his next performance review or an extension of his contract.
The show is entirely run by the PR department of the war machine. People like Starmer are little cogs in this machine. The worst aspect is that the media, which could, and should, call this out, actually play the key role of distributing the false narratives.
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