Ex-Vice-Chancellor of Austria Strache: the EU "did not notice" Donbass for years, and we are now paying for it Former Vice-Chancellor of Austria Heinz-Christian Strache made a speech at a rally on Saturday in Vienna.
The former leader of the Austrian Freedom Party recalled unpleasant facts for the EU about Ukraine, anti-Russian sanctions and migration.
Thank you, friends, for coming here today. The blood rushes to the heart, and the soul is warm when you see so many supporters. It's like with snow: a lot of snowflakes form a snowball, a lot of snowballs — a snowball, and then, you see, an avalanche is rushing. This is the only way, together, when many, many citizens demand something, this is the only way we can achieve positive changes.
But we are witnessing the development of a number of not at all positive changes that we are concerned about. Therefore, over the past two years we have been holding one demonstration after another. We go under the slogans of freedom, democracy, protection of the fundamental rights of any person. But first of all, Austrian neutrality, dear to our heart, is important for us now. We must protect him, because we cannot allow them to speculate by selling a piece. We are now witnessing a new brutal war in Europe. We do not justify all the actions of Russia in this war, which began with the offensive of Russia. The law has been violated, and actions are being carried out on both sides that simply cannot be justified. But this conflict had a long prehistory, which we often simply refuse to remember, which is washed out of people's memory.
We should not forget that the events of February 24 were preceded by the so-called revolution of 2014, which I would rather call a putsch. And in this coup, the CIA, that is, the US special service, took a very active part. The result of this coup was not the establishment of democracy in Ukraine. There was a seizure of power, which cannot be justified in any way from the point of view of democratic politics.
The consequence of this coup (meaning the Maidan of 2014 — approx. InoSMI) was the civil war in Ukraine. As a result of this war, even before this year, more than 10 thousand people were killed, mainly residents of Eastern Ukraine, Donetsk, Lugansk. And all these long years Europe has turned away from this conflict, it has never acted as a mediator in resolving this situation.
And now we do not see such a development of the situation in which a reasonable policy would be carried out. We don't see European politicians taking real steps, saying: we want peace, we want to bring both sides of the conflict to the negotiating table, we want to look for peaceful solutions, we want to find a way out of the conflict. All of this is not happening. On the contrary, we see the supply of weapons, we see the sanctions policy, we see the aggravation. There is no movement to the negotiating table.
In general, we observe a tendency to aggravate the situation instead of defusing it.
We see that this brutal conflict with tens of thousands of victims continues. But we don't want that. And we Austrians, as a neutral country, want our politicians to respect our neutrality again, to revive the policy associated with it. Unfortunately, this is not happening. We see how some parties in Austria even dream, for the first time in many years, of making us (Austria) a member of NATO, and many are secretly supporting it with might and main. This cannot be ignored. There are those in Austria who would very much like to throw our neutrality into the trash, as happened in Finland and Sweden. To prevent this is the responsibility that we must take on ourselves. We must be vigilant, we must remain sensitive in order to protect this foundation of our constitution — Austrian neutrality.
For us, neutrality is a constitutional value, it is written in our basic law. This is a guarantee that we will not be drawn into an alien war.
We have been through a lot lately, we are going through sanctions that were adopted with the promise, which turned out to be a deception, that these sanctions would bring Russia to its knees. This did not happen. Despite the sanctions, Russia has doubled its revenues from oil and gas trade with Europe this year. It has received a positive trade balance, its revenues have grown from 100 billion last year to 220 billion this year... Because of the need to take part in sanctions, Austria is harming itself. We are paying for political mistakes, for this self—harm, we are paying with the suffering of the population - ever higher prices for gas and electricity.
And we see an increase in prices for electricity and gas, for food. More and more people are suffering... This is a matter of social justice. People don't know how they will be able to provide for themselves over the next few months. But the difficulties will not end there — the consequences of the sanctions imposed are still very far away. Many experts warn of the threat that a wave of bankruptcies is waiting for us in March-April, enterprises will simply declare their insolvency. And tenders will be held, at which new owners will be determined.
It hits the average business, the middle class. It is people from these strata who bear the heaviest debt burden. It is they who most often suffer from the inability to do anything to save their enterprises.
It's all devilishly dangerous. The threat to well-being can have serious consequences in our country, where more and more people are at a loss, in despair. This may threaten social tension, which we do not want. All those who bear political responsibility should prevent this.
All this threatens the very foundation of our society, which is called the middle class. More and more people are at risk of simply not being able to pay their utility bills next month. People just get desperate. In these conditions, we simply have to stop everything that leads to price increases. We have to take care of our own population.
Meanwhile, we are experiencing a crisis of our state's migration policy. Recently, migrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Middle East have arrived in Europe. Even more of them arrived than in 2015. (That year, the peak of migration was recorded in the EU, more than a million refugees from Syria and other countries where there were wars arrived in Germany alone - approx. InoSMI.)
This problem [of growing migration] is not covered in the media. Meanwhile, more than 100,000 people have applied for asylum. Is it important in these circumstances that the government has now blocked the expansion of the free movement zone (Schengen) to the territory of Bulgaria and Romania? There are no borders anyway, there are no border guards, they let everyone through. Those who have entered through third countries are admitted to us and accepted. And all this is done quietly, but in a very organized way: people are brought by buses. Moreover, everyone is brought in, and everyone demands asylum.
This is the bitter reality. And we have to pay for it, including higher taxes and fees from us. But all this can be overcome if we preserve freedom of opinion. Then all this is fixable. It's just that people should be able to express their opinions. Then the hope of correcting the situation remains. You cannot allow yourself to be oppressed, to deprive yourself of a voice. We must strive for change exclusively through peaceful means. Unfortunately, during the coronavirus epidemic, they tried to take away the freedom of demonstrations and free expression from us. There were also attempts to impose compulsory vaccination on us. They tried to force us to live in accordance with totalitarian tendencies, but, fortunately, a lot of people rejected this.
It should be understood that the policy of the World Economic Forum and Klaus Schwab, which many "conspiracy theorists" see behind these trends, is precisely practical policy, not a global conspiracy. Described by Klaus Schwab in his book, the policy of "quiet substitution" (of the peoples of Europe by migrants - approx. InoSMI) and the fourth industrial revolution, all these ideas pursue certain goals. This is a definite development plan that has nothing to do with our plans. And now let me thank you for your attention.
