V. Zhirinovsky: "We must recognize TRNC on North Cyprus"

"The rebel regions of eastern Ukraine are ready to rush hundreds of thousands of volunteers from across the country, Caucasus, Ossetia, Abkhazia, I don't know, Turkey.

Let's recognize the 'Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus' and hundreds of thousands of Turks volunteers will sweep across this junta of Kiev" he said in a moment of elation and beyond his quaintness he remains one of the pillars of the so called "institutional" opposition of Russia.

And perhaps we should think hard about this new turn of representatives of the Russian elite of admiration for Turkey... Very often Zhirinovsky acts as a "hare" of the Russian leadership, formulating recommendations, passing a sort of test, without of course believing that Kremlin is preparing to proceed in a similar decision to revise the established Russian line on the Cyprus issue.

We must consider:
1-Turkey follows and continues a much more flexible and "smart" policy in relation to us in the case of Ukraine and Crimea in particular. Behind the superficial keen interest of Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the Crimean Tatars hid an indirect support for the selection of Vladimir Putin at a critical moment for the Russian president.

Friends, who appear in difficult moments, remain... On contrary, we will be forgotten, as we made no political movements, something that probably irritated the Russian leadership, as if we had no good reason and if anyone was interested in what we say about Ukraine. We "lost" the unique "opportunity" and had the sole obligation, resulting from the fact that in the area of slaughter of the leadership of Kiev lives homogeneity of several tens of thousands, who asked for help, but never got it, except for few hasty photos with Greek envoys, forgotten quickly.

Even when we learned that there are dead and wounded among our expatriates, as a country we didn't provide any humanitarian aid, didn't make a suspicion of criticism that it's not possible for democratic countries to bomb residential areas and kill civilians, despite any differences you have them. Even the Church of Greece and the Ecumenical Patriarchate didn't say a single word about the resounding fact that in an Orthodox country like Ukraine, a bloody civil war is in progress, though among the slaughtered were Christians, especially Orthodox.

Greece could incessantly say and repeat that it prays and grieves for what is happening and call for peace with compromising negotiations, a diplomatic and peaceful solution, but hastened to show and tell a lot worse and unneeded things.

It's a question how we ask for investments and tourists from Russia when we fail to observe the elementary or "neutrality", while we didn't rush to distance ourselves from two well-known Russian philhellenes, the president of the Upper House Valentina Matviyenko and the Head of Russian Railways, interested in TRAINOSE and Thessaloniki Port, Vladimir Yakunin. We should be ashamed that we didn't mumble a few words different from the ignominy of diplomatic hypocrisy of EU sanctions, but who lost the shame and prudence, so we could find it...

2-It would be interesting to know, if the Foreign Minister and our government were ever informed for the extreme statement of Zhirinovsky. We didn't rush to write anything, to give them time. We are ready to bet that none of our Embassy in Moscow heard the statement, because even the manning of our diplomatic mission in recent years is indicative of how much importance the government gives to the almost non-existent Greek-Russian relations.

Not only we sent a controversial skills Ambassador, Koumanakou, who stirred with the manner in which she used the diplomatic office of the President of the Republic as a trampoline for good transferm but also overlooked the fact that she is known for behavior problems and cooperation in any low-responsibility positions taken in her career.

Today that the central office of Foreign Minister revokes her, just a half year after taking office, due to retirement, as if you had to load the Greek-Russian relations, among other things, half a year of gaps and lags, with which her short tenure were accompanied. For some of these hysteria and other tragicomic stories that accompanied our ambassador, we will speak soon, as we expect the official results of the investigation of Inspector-Auditor of Public Administration, which was interested in the strange CVs of ambiguities about her degrees.

3-Zhirinovsky is one of the protagonists of Russian political life for many years. Once, as many other factors of the Russian elite, he had hastened to "acquire" a Greek passport, if we believe some photos and stories.

The Greek passports granted to repatriates homogeneous turbulent 1990s and are issued on the initiative of active diplomatic officials of our embassy in Moscow with the subsequent cooperation of other services in Greece, in some cases over a rough fee. Occasionally some surveys were done, but only in isolated cases of tens and hundreds of cases with illegal passports aof notorious Greek citizenship as their logical end: the punishment of perjury employees and cancellation of the passports. On Zhirinovsky, for a while we denied his entry visa in our country, although traditionally the "hysterical" Russian political scene, he only spoke positive for Greece and visited the Embassy in receptions.

Now there is no more money for receptions, so maybe we need more brains, more contacts and knowledge of Russian reality, more flexibility, not only missing from our diplomatic officers, but are punished when displayed. Most Schengen countries understand the Russian peculiarities and make foreign policy and public relations with visas in Russia, grant free visas to journalists, comfortable long issue visas to anyone who meets the minimum requirements, especially of course to businessmen, dignitaries, artists and shapers of public opinion. Something that Samaras, Prime Minister, and Kefalogiannis, Tourism Minister, occasionally promised, who have even mentioned five-year visas to Russian citizens.

When the Embassies of "tourist" countries, such as France, Spain, Italy and Finland grant visas easily, we unfortunately got back to the logic of "embassy-fortress" the consulate, which humiliates the behavior of those who visit, because all potential criminals and gives excessive "sparingly" lengthy considerations, though it should "encourage" those who keep coming back to Greece.

Tens of complaints from expats and Russians, which are addressed to us, but rather than seizing the last dynamic growth in our tourism and to multiply this year, despite the arrogant statements, we are stagnant or declining trend of tourism from Russia. Who comes out a winner? Our competitors in tourism, who removed from us the title of affordable and fast consulate in Moscow with the black market visas alone, that "delights" and ejects prices every time, where the prohibitory logics dominate...