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Two articles by two British writers signal a growing shift towards more realistic reporting of the Ukraine by the British media. Writing respectively in the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail British right wing columnists Christopher Booker and Peter Hitchens both speak out against British policy and blame the crisis on the west.

Booker, a co-founder in the 1960s of the British satirical magazine Private Eye and a longstanding columnist for the Daily Telegraph, pinpoints the cause of the crisis in NATO’s and the EU’s misguided attempt to win Ukraine from Russia by inciting anti-Russian elements there.

He calls the Maidan protesters a “mob” who overthrew a democratic government. He says this provoked Russia and the east Ukrainians. He describes the Crimean referendum as “democratic” and the revolt in eastern Ukraine as foreseeable.

He argues that there is nothing NATO and the EU can do as Russia and the rebels carve out a buffer state. He condemns an ill thought out policy and complains about the waste of EU taxpayers’ money.

Peter Hitchens, former Daily Express correspondent in Moscow and Washington DC, brother of Christopher Hitchens and columnist for the Daily Mail, says the same but goes much further. In a wide ranging attack on British liberal interventionists which also takes in Libya he calls the Kiev government a “junta” (something the Russian media also does) which seized power by force. He condemns its “indiscriminate shelling” of Donetsk and Lugansk and lambasts the silence of British liberals and collusion of the British leadership in this.