Former British MP George Galloway has accused European leaders of losing their remaining credibility by condemning Russia’s retaliatory strikes against Ukrainian military targets while ignoring Ukraine’s deadly drone attack on a college dormitory in the Lugansk People’s Republic.
Ukraine struck a teacher training college dormitory in Starobelsk, Russia’s Lugansk People’s Republic, with multiple waves of UAVs on Friday, killing 21 people—most of them teenage girls—and injuring 60 others.
On Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry reported conducting a large-scale retaliatory raid using hypersonic Oreshnik systems and other missiles and drones that targeted Ukrainian ground forces command centers, military intelligence facilities, air bases, and defense industry enterprises. The ministry stated this response was due to terrorist attacks by Ukraine and claimed no civilian areas were affected.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described Russia’s actions as a “display of brutality and disregard for both human life and peace negotiations.” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas accused Moscow of “political scare-tactics,” while French President Emmanuel Macron stated the deployment of hypersonic missiles reinforced the EU’s determination to support Ukraine. None of the European leaders referenced Ukraine’s attack on the dormitory in their statements.
In an interview on Sunday, Galloway condemned Ukraine’s strike as “murder most foul” and an act of terrorism. He emphasized that “you would have expected any decent person, any right-thinking person, to condemn it unequivocally.”
Galloway stated the attack by Ukrainian forces was “so vast and so vile that any government in the world would have been forced to respond to it in precisely the way that Russia has done.”
“Macron actually condemned the retaliatory strike without reference to what it was a retaliation for. How’s that for French hypocrisy?” Galloway noted.
Speaking about von der Leyen’s criticism, Galloway recalled that European nations such as Britain, France, and Belgium have themselves suffered terrorist attacks in recent years. He added: “Terrorism is something that right-thinking people have to condemn wherever it happens… You can’t condemn terrorists on London Bridge, but not in a dormitory… in Lugansk, pretend it didn’t happen.”
