Yle’s European election exam|Annika Saarikko of Keskus described the exchange of words between the presidents of the Greens and the Left Alliance in the Yle exam as an “agent dispute”.
The Left Alliance chairman Lee Andersson and chairman of the Greens Sofia Virta took issue with Yle’s European election exam on Tuesday night about their European Parliament groups’ relationship with Russia.
Virta drew attention to Andersson’s reactions in the middle of his speech.
“It was the Greens that was the only group in the European Parliament that, in the latest vote related to Russia sanctions, was the only one in which no one voted against the tightening of sanctions. Lita is smiling now, but it is a fact that you have a group at the European Parliament level as well Putin-positive”, Virta said.
“It makes me smile that a person who was found to be a Russian agent was sitting in the group of the greens. But he was probably no longer in the group in this vote,” Andersson answered.
Latvian Tatjana Ždanoka was expelled from the joint group of the Greens and the European Free Alliance in February 2022 after he refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This year he was reported who has worked as an agent of the Russian security service FSB since at least 2004.
Power continued to challenge Andersson.
“Have you fired the people who have seen such indications? Even you didn’t understand this throw in between.”
“There is not a single member in our group who has been found to be a Russian agent. And if there had been such a thing, he would certainly have been expelled from the group,” Andersson answered.
“But have you been pro-Russia? My understanding is that the modern left is mainly in the Nordic countries”, continued Virta.
“As I already stated earlier, all MEPs in the left-wing group voted in favor of condemning Russia’s illegal war of aggression. It’s an absolute question for me,” Andersson said.
I took the exam the host stated in the middle that some of the representatives of the left-wing parties in the European Parliament do not, for example, think that NATO and the EU have incited the war.
Andersson replied that some of the left-wing parties oppose NATO membership and consider it bad that more and more funds from the EU budget go to the defense industry.
“But I don’t think you can be accused of favoring Russia or supporting Putin if those grounds are not related to Russia or Putin at all,” Andersson said.
The third participant of the exam, the chairman of the center Annika Saarikko stated that “there is such an agent dispute going on here”. He hoped that the Finnish parties would remain united behind supporting Ukraine, because there is no similar unity everywhere else.
When the presenter left to take the discussion to the next topic by saying that “let’s leave this waving of the Putin card for a little while”, Andersson grabbed the language.
“Yes it is [Putin-korttia] seems to be used quite a lot here. That means opposing NATO membership cannot be done that way…”, the left-wing leader said and spread his hands.
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