Just to clarify, are you alleging the Crimean referendum was rigged and that Moslem Tatars have been murdered by the Russian government?

Of course. Crimea did have an autonomous government : one which was commandeered at gunpoint by Russian stooges at the time of the annexation. Before a hastily organised referendum which presaged the ethnic cleansing of Moslem Tatars
As for this being a tour of ‘Crimea’ it was actually a tour of Russia with Crimea thrown in at the end. Plainly this band were willing participants in a propaganda coup by the real ‘fascists’ here . It’s disappointing that they have refused to respond so far to any of the dissenting voices that have been raised.

Yours most sincerely
Mikhail Simonyan

Surely you mean Brits of a right wing hue, who indeed would count neo-nazis like Nick Griffin as their friend?

Please don’t take this as patronising, but I think you may have a fundamental misunderstanding about left-wing politics and right-wing politics.

Left wing politics is predicated exclusively on a class/power based understanding of the world and sees ethnic hatred and xenophobia as a function/effect of capitalism, power and control.

Right wing politics is slightly more complex as the spectrum takes us from the ‘corporatism’ of Italian fascism to the race based ideology of Nazism (with extreme forms of right wing Nationalism borrowing from both ideologies)

All the comments in this page are directed towards the fascist, neo-nazi and extreme nationalism of elements in the Kiev regime along with a critical view of its financial and military support by NATO and various western countries.

The opposition to the current Ukrainian regime (as expressed in the comments on this page) is predicated on its political structure and ideology, not upon a xenophobic analysis regarding the ethnicity of its people.

I imagine most of the people who have written comments view the attempt by the Ukrainian state to stop a Welsh brass band from playing in Crimea as an outbreak of the fascist mind – a complete over-reaction and see Crimea as part of the Russian Federation (based upon the wishes of the vast majority of its citizens) and as such, completely entitled to invite anyone it chooses into their country (including Welsh brass bands).

The irony of course is we are discussing a regime that completely tolerates ethnic hatred (such as the treatment of the Romani people), that banned the Russian language in its schools (which would suggest at least a modicum of xenophobia at play) and has rehabilitated the genocidal fascist Stepan Bandera into a moderate nationalist and has passed a law that makes it illegal to show a ‘disrespectful attitude’ towards the WWII Ukrainian Fascist groups the OUN and UPA – two groups that practiced ‘ethnic hatred’ on a vast scale.

The fact that you see ethnic hatred and xenophobia in a comments section written by people like myself who have spent a lifetime opposing fascism, racism and the politics of extreme nationalism, may say more about your own ontology than mine or others who have written to condemn the attempts by the Ukrainian regime to suppress the sound of brass.

“Once upon a time US Presidents came to visit Kiev. At the dawn of Poroshenko’s reign the vice-president regularly came. Then the Secretary of State occasionally appeared. And now its the turn of the .. second echelon figure of the U$ administration – John Bolton, national security adviser. Moreover, since .. such guests became a rarity, Ukrainian politicians, while longingly waiting for any important guest from Washington….”

“Palmerston was eventually persuaded that Jihadi support often backfired. The Church of England pointed out that the groups being funded had only one clear interest – killing Christians wherever they found them”.

Palmerston showed more intelligence than Camoron followed by St.Theresa of Westminster. Not hard.