Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who died on April 6, was a Russian ultranationalist politician and the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. He was a member of the Duma from 1993 to 2000 and again from 2011 until this year. He was an ally of Vladimir Putin.
Last December he said the following in the Duma:
“At 4am on February 22 you’ll feel [our new policy]. I’d like 2022 to be peaceful .... It won’t be peaceful. It will be a year when Russia finally becomes great once again, and everyone has to shut up and respect our country."
It was at the same hour and just two days later that Putin gave the order to invade Ukraine.
Zhirinovsky’s words are quite extraordinary. The 75-year old politician had been in hospital for three weeks from Covid complications by the time Vladimir Putin gave the order to invade Ukraine.
His mother was Russian and his father was a Jewish Ukrainian, who had been deported from western Ukraine.
When reporters tried to square his Jewish heritage with his anti-Semitic outbursts, he would joke: "My mother is Russian and my father is a lawyer.”
CNN reported yesterday that Russia has warned the US to stop arming Ukraine. The State Department has replied that nothing will stop the US sending weapons.
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