The RMT, and in particular its assistant general secretary Eddie Dempsey, have long-standing sympathies with pro-Putin separatists who have been fighting government forces in the east of the country for almost a decade.
Dempsey visited Ukraine’s Donbas region in 2015, where he posed for a photo with Alexei Mozgovoy, the leader of the pro-Russian “Ghost Brigade” of rebels in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic.
Mr Dempsey was also one of the most prominent signatories of the Coalition to Stop the War statement, which criticized NATO for showing “disregard for Russian concerns” in Ukraine at the start of the war.
Brendan Kelly, the RMT’s regional organizer for South Wales and South West England, was also reported in May to have spread Kremlin propaganda about the invasion.
Although he said the Ukrainian government was not fascist, he argued that “what they have done is to unleash, or were ready to unleash, some of these fascist groups to embed themselves in the state forces.”
In his interview with the New Statesman, Mr Lynch was also skeptical of the prevailing narrative about China. “I don’t know if what I’ve been told by the Telegraph and American political writers [about China] it’s true,” he said.
“We were told that Saddam Hussein was the greatest threat to the Western world that had ever existed … what he actually had was a very oppressive regime against his own people and a collection of pots and pans that he strung as the so-called Scud missiles.
“We were told all this by the same analysts who are now telling us that China wants to carry out all this aggression against all these people. We need to stop being so belligerent towards countries.
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