‘West siding with Ukraine neo-Nazis may backfire with extremism in Europe’

Western validation and support of neo-Nazism in Ukraine may backfire with right extremism rising in Europe, political commentator Aleksandr Nekrassov told RT. He says threats of sanctions against Russia will not work, partly because China opposes it.

RT:Now that Russia's blocked the UN resolution, what do you see as the next step from the West?

Aleksandr Nekrassov: Well of course the west has expected that Russia would veto the resolution on the Crimea referendum. Now we are going to see the West monitoring carefully the referendum in Cream and trying to find any reason to claim this is not legal referendum that the rules have been broken, that people could not vote and so on and so on. And that will continue for some time. Obviously the West will not accept the results of the referendum, even if 90 percent of the voters vote for becoming a part of Russia. And Kiev obviously, the interim regime in Kiev, will not accept the referendum as well. And then will come the talks of sanctions and that is where the West is very weak, because it does not really know what to do and it’s not united. And the West by the way, an important point as well, was quite upset by the way China took a position which they claim initially, that it was an anti-Russian position, when it absented. But actually it is not. China has been supporting Russia. Official statements coming from the China media point to the fact that the Chinese government is supportive of Russia, does not approve of any economic sanctions. And I even read one of the official comments that said that the West by meddling in affairs of the Ukraine discredited itself.

RT:Western countries call the upcoming referendum unconstitutional. Do they have a point?

AN: The Western countries are saying that the referendum is unconstitutional but of course this is just a war of words and political posturing, because this is the will of the people. This is not something that Russia has imposed on Crimea. Actually the people of Crimea have asked Russia to support them, to help them, and it was their decision. So any talk by the Americans and other Western countries that this referendum is illegal, basically does not hold water and the future of Crimea will be decided by its people, not by president Barack Obama or some officials in London, or even Brussels, or the UN. So it is up to them to decide what status the peninsula should have.

RT:The US and EU have warned of sanctions against Russia, if the referendum goes ahead... But would that achieve anything?

AN: The problem with sanctions that the US and some of its allies are talking about is that the West can’t really afford to introduce drastic sanctions against Russia because they will damage themselves as well. There is no united front. They pretend, some of the Western leaders that they are united on the question of sanctions but they are not. Germany is very reluctant to do anything dramatic, Britain is very reluctant to do it as well, Italy, Spain – no- America has basically found itself alone. It is making one diplomatic mistake after another and I think really what we are witnessing is that America has misjudged dramatically the effects of what has happened in Kiev, and misjudged the response coming from Russia. I think they are now in a very week position and all these calls to punish Russia and say that it is isolated, they are not really reaching anyone.

RT:There's been a complete breakdown of law and order, and military arsenals have been looted.... This is right in the EU's backyard, shouldn't Europe be worried about this?

AN: I think the W. European generally should worry about the situation getting out of control across the Ukraine. And the feeling is at the moment that the Crimea is the only stable part of Ukraine because we see so much violence everywhere. We see that the Kiev regime does not really have any influence in most of the areas in Ukraine. And what is even more appalling, and that has been picked up in most of the Western European countries is that America and some of the Western nations are actually siding with neo-Nazis and racists and anti-Semites. And I think this this is not going to go down well among the Western public. And I actually believe that the rise of neo-fascist, neo-Nazi in Ukraine will trigger the same effect in some of the Western countries, Western Europe. And I think the Western public is very concerned with what is going on.

RT:The US and EU have threatened 'consequences' for Russia, if Sunday's referendum takes place... But can Russia prevent it from happening if it doesn't control Crimea?

AN: I don’t think that all these warnings to Russia of consequences and costs, I don’t think the West really believes in what it says because it has got more to lose than to gain by introducing any serious sanctions against Russia. And I think that in a sense they understand that President Putin knows this. They also know perfectly well that China is not supportive of this intervention, this meddling into the affairs of Ukraine that China is totally against any sort of economic sanctions. And I think this is why the propaganda in the US is trying to portray China’s abstention from the vote as – oh, China is critical of Russia- no it is not. China is not critical of Russia and I think they are quite upset with what happened at the Security Council.