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Julian Assange’s father expressed gratitude to Russian President Vladimir Putin in an interview released Oct. 20 with Russian state-owned news agency Ria Novosti.
“Your President Putin in 2012 was the first head of state to defend Julian’s interests as a publisher and a citizen at a time when Julian was receiving every smearing lie and calumny that the institutions of state and those hangers-on in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia could deliver upon his head,” said John Shipton, extending his affection to Putin for playing that role.
Shipton, co-founder of Australia’s now-defunct WikiLeaks libertarian political party, is in Russia for the annual summit of the emerging BRICS group of economies that takes place this week.
Stella Assange, the WikiLeaks founder’s wife, hit out at her father-in-law on X.
“My father-in-law John Shipton does not speak for my husband. As anyone who has followed Julian already knows, Julian believes in extreme skepticism when it comes to all states with large intelligence sectors [and] who have committed war crimes, engaged in censorship, or sought to imprison or assassinate journalists,” she said.
During the Ria Novosti interview, Shipton also praised pro-Russian leaders such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico for “fighting for the quality of their states against the EU.”
Assange’s father echoed Kremlin talking points in alleging that color revolutions across the post-Soviet world had been provoked by the West, and that “very few people were aware of the density of propaganda in the United States.”
“We can see clearly what can be done to a state by controlling the information that people get through a series of color revolutions [that occur] next door to Russia, in Ukraine, and almost happened in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Georgia,” Shipton said.
Shipton has previously been criticized for attending a pro-Moscow rally after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and for meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.
Julian Assange returned to Australia in June after striking a deal with Washington that secured his freedom while forcing him to plead guilty to violating U.S espionage law, ending a 14-year legal saga.
