It’s time to put Putin’s useful idiots on notice

Pro-Russian protest leader Simeon Boikov (centre) demonstrates in Brisbane during the G20 summit. Boikov, a Cossack, is accused of travelling to Ukraine to recruit support for pro-Russian rebels.

The term ‘useful idiots’, often attributed to Vladimir Lenin for non-communists who propagandised communism, is now a catch-all for those who ignore a regime’s excesses and outrages, preferring to clamber up onto a soap box to extol its virtues.

Putin has so many useful idiots, it’s hard to know where to begin. Some from the left, others from the right. Many are academics obsessed with dubious neo-Marxist constructs about western imperialism.

NYU’s Professor of Russian Studies, Stephen F. Cohen who died in September 2020, maintained the leftist fiction that Putin’s hand was forced when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

Cohen wrote that “media malpractice” had resulted in the “relentless demonisation of Putin” who was “not an autocrat.” It was all the West’s fault. The West had humiliated Russians in the post-Soviet era, wantonly threatening the Federation by extending invitations to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to join NATO. Ukraine, Cohen argued, was the point in which Putin was obliged to say, thus far and no further.

Since the start of the century, populists on the left and the right have clamoured around Putin. Those on the right have done so because they see Putin as standing up to the European Union. Those on the left are drawn to the despot because they see anybody who opposes the West as a kindred ideological spirit.

In 2020, when the Russian Federation held its constitutional referendum which would allow Putin to remain as President for 16 more years, 60 foreigners from 29 countries were flown into Russia to act as Putin appointed election “observers.” Some were members of the European parliament, including Thierry Mariani from the French far-right party National Rally (National Front) and Prussian separatist, Volker Chapke.

Liberal-turned independent MP Craig Kelly at the Canberra Freedom rally this month.

The informal observers were wined and dined across Russia before declaring the vote was free and fair. Save a few minor administrative mistakes, the votes when counted were a fair expression of the people’s will, they reported.

Genuine independent observers were far from impressed. Senior associate at the German Institute for Security and International Affairs, Janis Kluge, tweeted that “the dimension of fraud in the 2020 constitutional vote” was “simply staggering.” A physicist and data expert who has monitored Russian elections for the past two decades, Sergei Shpilkin, published statistical evidence that up to 22 million votes were fraudulent.

Perth man Anthony Maslin had lost his three children when flight MH17 was downed over Ukraine. In 2018, Maslin condemned Donald Trump as “kissing the arse of Vladimir Putin”, after an awful performance at a summit in Helsinki where the 45th POTUS sided with Putin ahead of his own security services over the issue of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. On Sky News, Craig Kelly responded to Maslin’s comment published on Facebook, lapsing if not into apologism then a sort of amoral realpolitik.

“I’m sure that any father that’s lost three kids would be absolutely devastated but the reality is nothing is going to bring those three kids back,” the then Liberal MP, now independent, said.

“So, what is best for the continued future of the world? And it is best, in my opinion, that the leader of the USA and the leader of Russia at least have a good talking relationship.

“And if that means some of the things that Russia have gotten away with in the past have to be slightly looked over, well, I’m sorry, that’s the price that we have to pay sometimes to have good relations going forward.”

In total, 283 passengers and 15 crew were killed when a Russian built surface-to-air missile was fired at the Boeing 777 by what was found to be Russian-backed separatist fighters. Thirty-eight of those killed were Australians.

On 8 February, Kelly invited a group of protest leaders from the Freedom Movement into his parliamentary office. Much was made about vaccination status and how those opposed to mask wearing felt obliged to wear them. What was genuinely surprising was the appearance in Kelly’s office of Simeon Boikov.

Boikov is a Sydney-born pro-Putin Russian ultranationalist who calls himself the Aussie Cossack. Perhaps unkindly, some have described the self-branded Aussie Cossack as Putin’s man in Australia if Putin knew who he was.

Simeon Boikov, a Russian nationalist activist from Cabramatta in Sydney.

In 2018, told a Russian media outlet, “We have a unique opportunity to support Russia from within an enemy state.” The enemy he alluded to is Australia.

Boikov, who has more than 12,000 followers on Instagram, is unashamed about spreading a pro-Putin, pro-Russian message by lobbying politicians.

In August 2020, Russian Opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent and evacuated to Berlin where he recovered. Navalny accused Putin of being responsible for his poisoning, and an investigation implicated agents from the Federal Security Service (FSB) the successor to the KGB, Putin’s alma mater. He returned to Russia in January 2021 and was jailed for two and a half years in February 2021.

Protesters gathered worldwide to call for his release. In Sydney a group of a hundred or so protesters did the same and Boikov assembled a counter-protest.

“We’re here with our President Vladimir Putin,” Boikov said, pointing to a poster of Putin toted by one of the counter-protesters, supporting Vladimir Putin, supporting the President against this opposition scum.”

Boikov, right, with Craig Kelly and a group of anti-vax protesters in his parliamentary office in Parliament House. Picture: NCA Newswire/Gary Ramage

When asked by Four Corners journalist Sean Nicholls if he supported the idea of murdering political opponents, Boikov replied, “I wouldn’t say murdering. I would say liquidating. Murdering is a bad word.”

As the Morrison government sanctions Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, some big questions need to be put to political candidates who overtly have endorsed Putin’s conduct.

Our security agencies will be on full alert. Putin has useful idiots everywhere.