As the Conservatives flail about their voting against the Ukraine trade agreement, they are throwing out a number of excuses in order to double down on a stupid position that is backed by the lie that the agreement imposes a carbon price on Ukraine. It doesn’t, they’ve had a carbon price since 2011, but that doesn’t seem to matter. They insist that nothing they’re doing jeopardises the agreement, which is true—it’s already signed, and every other party is voting for this enabling legislation, but what the Conservatives seem to be forgetting is that all of this performance they’re doing for their domestic audience is being noticed aboard, and in particular by the Ukrainian government, and it’s not leaving a good impression.
To that end, they kept moving amendments at committee to include language about weapons sales, which is stupid because nothing precludes them currently, but that kept being out of order—again, because the deal is already signed. This is enabling legislation. And they kept trying to either remove the carbon price references or delay the bill until they could force the government to remove it, but they lost that gambit as well. But again, they’re sending signals to the people paying attention that they are deeply unserious and are going to be untrustworthy allies, and that’s going to do more damage in the long run, all for the sake of trying to score some cheap domestic points right now.
This is such a stupid stunt. The agreement is already signed. This is enabling legislation, so it’s not actually up for negotiation. https://t.co/Tr8mQD0hOS
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) November 28, 2023
Ukraine Dispatch:
The death toll from the severe snow storm in southern Ukraine has reached ten, with more injured as a result of accidents and power loss. During this, Russians struck a residential building and a coal mine in Nikopol, killing four and injuring ten others. The wife of Ukraine’s head of military intelligence is being treated for heavy metals poisoning, but no one will say if he was the intended target. Some in Ukraine are calling for defined ends to deployments, which are currently open-ended (as though the country were not in an existential war for its survival).
⚡️Stoltenberg: NATO's European members, Canada providing half of military support for Ukraine.
NATO's European members and Canada provide almost 50% of the military support Ukraine receives to repel Russian aggression, said NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg.https://t.co/issrvjqDLG
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) November 28, 2023
A collection of gold artifacts from Crimea, known as the Scythian Gold, which was on loan to a Dutch museum when Russia seized Ukraine's peninsula in 2014, was returned to Ukraine after Dutch courts decided that the collection cannot be returned to Moscow-annexed Crimea.
Source:… pic.twitter.com/A8iKJn2LkP— UkraineWorld (@ukraine_world) November 28, 2023