The Russian invasion of Ukraine according to the pro-Russian Podemos party: an American M4 tank

This week the crude electoral propaganda that the pro-Russian party Podemos is sending to Spanish homes has been in the news.

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The evil message of Podemos on the murder of a Spanish woman by the Russians in Ukraine

Podemos's favors to Putin's Russia

First of all, I make a point: in November 2014, the Russian pro-government media Pravda.ru described Podemos as a "party pro-Russian", highlighting his hostility to NATO and the United States and his attacks on the Ukrainian government. For two years now, Podemos has been repeating the slogans of Russian propaganda, stating that Ukrainian resistance is useless and that Ukraine must give in to Russia. Podemos also defends imposing neutrality on Ukraine that prevents it from joining NATO as other countries neighboring Russia have done, an accession that has prevented those countries from being invaded.

Since the beginning of the invasion, Podemos criticized the sending of military aid to Ukraine and the sanctions against Russia. In October 2022 the NGO VoteWatch Europe issued a report analyzing which European parties voted most in favor of Russian interests. In Spain there turned out to be two communist parties: Izquierda Unida and Podemos, the first with only 15.77% of positions contrary to Russian interests and the second with 28.25%. According to that same study, Vox is the Spanish party most opposed to the Putin regime: 93.71% of votes against it in the European Parliament.

Podemos talks about the war in Ukraine without citing Russia or Putin as culprits

That said, in addition to being propaganda aimed at people with the mental age of a 5-year-old child (the images and arguments are so crude that only an idiot would be able to swallow them), There is one thing that draws a lot of attention in Podemos's crude electoral propaganda: the images used. In the letter included in the Podemos envelope there is a terrible comic in which it is implied that due to layoffs, privatizations and job insecurity, war has returned to Europe.

Podemos uses an American WWII Sherman tank to symbolize the invasion of Ukraine

Curiously, Podemos does not cite either Putin or Russia. The pro-Russian party wants to convince us that anyone (capitalism, the right, the US, NATO...) is to blame for the war in Ukraine less than the invaders who attacked a neighboring country without provocation. To reinforce that idea, Podemos avoids showing Russian planes or weapons when symbolizing that war. In the Podemos comic, the Ukrainian war is captured in an American M4 Sherman tank and British Avro Lancaster bombers from World War II.

It is astonishing to see that in Spain no media has drawn attention to this detail. Since others do not do it, I will do it and give some more details. The tank in the Podemos comic is a Sherman Firefly used by the British Army. An American Sherman tank was combined with a British 76.2 mm Ordnance QF cannon, more effective against German tanks (in this photo by Picryl we see a British Firefly in Normandy in the summer of 1944).

Podemos characterizes that allied tank with emblems used by the nazis

Podemos is still capable of falling lower, as seen in its propaganda envelope, in which along with the images of Hitler and Stalin we see a Sherman Firefly tank with three Balkenkreuz, the emblem of the army of the Third Reich. I don't know if Podemos has done this out of simple ignorance or in bad faith, but I want to remember that the Sherman Firefly began production at the beginning of 1944 and was used in the Normandy Landings, whose 80th anniversary will be celebrated in a few days.

In addition to the British Army, the Firefly was used by Canadian and Czechoslovak armored units in northwestern Europe, and by units from Poland, New Zealand and South Africa in the Italian campaign.

In short: Podemos has characterized a tank used to fight the nazis as a nazi tank. That pro-Russian party is a lie from top to bottom.

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Main photo: NARA. A Sherman tank preserved as a monument at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania.