EU lawmaker quits after suspension over Ukraine stance

Dutch MEP Marcel de Graaff has publicly quit Identity and Democracy, the right-wing parliamentary group that last week handed him a three-month suspension and denounced his “outrageous” comments against Western involvement in Ukraine.

De Graaff on Monday in turn denounced the group’s “attempt to silence me about NATO/Ukraine.”

“There is no room for a different opinion in the ID group,” he lamented in a press release posted to Twitter. “Members are now forced to follow the position of the parties ruling in their own countries. They have sacrificed their principles for power, but I am not prepared to do that.” 

“I am in favor of de-escalating the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and I distance myself from the extremely belligerent position of the ID group,” he said. “We are waging a war that is not ours and our citizens are paying the price.”

De Graaff suggested like-minded MEPs form a group with him based on common points like “ending sanctions and de-escalating the Ukrainian conflict, respect for the autonomy and identity of the EU members states, and no vaccination coercion.”

He claimed that while there are others in ID that feel similarly to him, they do not speak up out of “fear that the dominant parties in the group will sanction them.” Those parties include Italy’s La Lega and France’s Rassemblement National, both of which have been inching toward the mainstream Western position on Ukraine.

De Graaff's tweets regularly skewer fellow EU nations and the US. In an infamous “Go Putin!” post, he took the bloc and its overseas ally to task for their alleged role in building a “communist world dictatorship where citizens are digitally controlled.” The rest of the world, he wrote, is cheering for the demise of the US empire. 

He has also accused the US of blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, and NATO of plotting a first nuclear strike.