MEPs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace should resign says Fine Gael Senator

Senator Barry Ward accused Ms Daly and Mr Wallace of a “campaign of disinformation” after Ms Daly gave a speech at the Roger Casement Summer School this week, where she said that Ukrainian politicians made themselves “puppets of another power” by voting to end their country’s neutrality.

She also said that EU militarism and NATO are two sides of the same coin and the arms industry is profiting hugely from the war in Ukraine.

Senator Ward said that the two MEPs should resign for the part they have played in the spread of false information in relation to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“The Dún Laoghaire speech amounted to victim blaming of the worst kind,” said Senator Ward.

“Ukraine is not responsible on any level for the Russian invasion, and to make such a statement is to propagate Russian disinformation and promote pro-Russian propaganda.

“This kind of victim-blaming would not be tolerated in any other criminal context and it should not be tolerated here,” he said.

The Fine Gael Senator this week visited Ukraine and said that the country should be allowed to join “international alliances as its government and parliament decide, and it is never the right of another state to interfere in that process by violent aggression and invasion”.

Ms Daly has previously said that Russia is “100pc responsible” for invading Ukraine.

“We have six million people forced to flee, thousands dead, the disruption of Ukraine, a food security crisis and an economic crisis, plunging the EU into a deep recession — and unambiguously Russia bears responsibility for this. They invaded and violated Ukraine’s integrity,” she told the summer school.