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‘UK earmarking money for E Europe over Russia’

Sunday, 22 March 2015 2:10 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 22 March 2015 2:09 PM ]

British Prime Minister David Cameron has announced the creation of a UK fund for five eastern European nations against the Russian “intimidation.”

The so-called ‘Good Governance Fund’ is aimed at supporting the governments of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in carrying out political and economic reforms, said Cameron at the EU Summit in Brussels on Friday.

It will provide up to £20 million in its first year to the eastern European countries.

“UK expertise can play a crucial role in bringing about the reforms needed to build lasting stability in the region, especially in the face of Russian intimidation, and it is right that we step up our efforts alongside international partners,” Cameron said.

Now the former London Bureau chief of Voice of Russia, Dmitry Linnik, believes the UK’s move is an act of aggression.

“Well, it’s this new kind of aggression towards Russia from the West that is creating the problems that we are living through now and it’s a very worrying turn of events.”

The fund is based on the model of the program set up by former British PM Margaret Thatcher called the Know-How Fund which was set up in 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was developed to support countries that had been in the Soviet Union's sphere of influence, such as Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and East Germany.

Ex-British PM Margaret Thatcher and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev

“The interesting thing about that is that comparisons are not all together valid. This time the fund is aimed at isolating Russia, whereas back in 1989, the thinking was not along those lines. We know that Margaret Thatcher and the Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, maintained a very positive relationship and it was in 1991,” Linnik told Press TV’s UK Desk on Sunday.

“The similarity between the Thatcher plan and the Cameron plan is that the West, and Britain here, is only a tool, a bridgehead if you will, trying only to expand its own sphere of influence. It is not about limiting Russia’s influence. It is about expanding its own.”

Cameron’s announcement of the fund comes as EU have leaders agreed to maintain economic sanctions against Russia over the Ukrainian crisis until the Minsk-2 deal is “fully implemented,” said European Council President Donald Tusk on Thursday.

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