'US is cheerleader of East-West tension'

Maintaining tension and making boldfaced accusations for decades has suited the US’ purpose to try to divide and rule in Europe and to put a split between Eastern and Western Europe, investigative journalist Tony Gosling, told RT.

The murder of Russian opposition activist Boris Nemtsov provoked a vast amount of comment in the West, some of which according to the Russian envoy to the EU Vladimir Chizhov was “politically motivated.”

RT:There was a special meeting in the German Parliament devoted to the Nemtsov murder where some scathing comments were made, and some accusations leveled at Russia and Vladimir Putin. What do you make of them?

Tony Gosling: I think what you have taken is a little sample there but I don’t think that’s the general feeling in Europe at all about this. This war of words, it seems, is completely inappropriate for something like this, I think everybody wants to make sure, and everyone wants to see that there is a proper investigation.

I noticed Lt. Col. Ralph Peters on Fox News talking to (host) Tucker Carlson. In fact both of them seem to be agreed, Peters was saying that Putin personally ordered the assassination while quite where the evidence comes from for this I think is anybody’s guess, and he’s saying at some point you’ve got to stop the hit list. These sorts of comments are not helpful in order to ease tensions between East and West.

And I noticed that the cheerleaders for these tensions and accusations are right from the other side of the Atlantic. I think actually for decades it suited the US purpose to try to divide and rule in Europe, to actually put a split between Eastern and Western Europe and that’s not in Europe’s interest at all. I noticed for example in Ukraine over the last few months there have been all sorts of austerity measures. Ukraine has now joined the fold with the disastrous economic policies of the EU and the European Central Bank, with millions of loans got from the IMF. But as a response to that, as a quid pro quo there have been massive cuts to the pensions of people in Ukraine and also big cuts to public spending. So the Ukrainians are not doing too well out of this. I think actually ultimately we need to have a rapprochement between Russia and Europe not the other way round which is what the Pentagon and the military industrial complex and Lt. Col. Ralph Peters who speaks for them seem to want.

READ MORE: Western media reaction to Nemtsov’s murder is ‘absolutely outrageous’

RT:It's been a massive story for the media although some are taking it to new lengths. So while the murder investigation is underway, Putin has been directly accused. Have they gone too far?

TG: We’ve had a big problem here in Britain of course with the Murdoch press - which Fox News is a part of - and this kind of propaganda is really inappropriate, and it’s completely biased when you’ve got presenters also weighing in on the side of what others call “fundamentalist extremists” like Ralph Peters. Actually, are they fit for purpose as broadcasters? I think, there is evidence that [they are] not. The key thing here is nobody minds if people are going to present some evidence. They are not presenting any evidence at all, these are just boldfaced accusations.

What worries me more than anything else is that we’ve seen this kind of things before with so-called weapons of mass destruction with no evidence and we’ve also seen the demonization of leaders. This is what’s now seems happening to Putin with some of these media organizations. I don’t think they at all reflect the actual view of ordinary people across the Western world nowadays. And we saw back in the days of the invasion of Iraq… the same kind of thing happening with Saddam Hussein, we saw the same thing happening with Gaddafi also President Assad. And I think this demonization by the media is really no good and I’m glad to say that’s not the sort of thing we have been seeing for example on the BBC anywhere near as much. The BBC’s motto by the way is “nation shall speak peace unto nation,” and of course the broadcastershave got an incredibly important role in keeping that peace and resisting pressure from the US to divide and rule across the European continent between East and West. I think we need to be calm, sensible, let’s have a proper investigation. I noticed for example that Nemtsov was tailed from the airport. If Putin was behind this he wouldn’t need to do that, he could use his authorities for example across Russia simply to follow mobile phones and to do it from a very high-tech angle, he wouldn’t need to tail him. So that evidence certainly points way from what Lt. Col. Ralph Peters was saying there.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.