Editor’s Note: Russia’s war on Ukraine, slowly simmering for most of the year, erupted in brazen, boiling Kremlin aggression on Nov. 25, with Russian coast guard ships attacking and capturing three Ukrainian naval vessels and 24 Ukrainians on board. The incident brought the war back into international headlines, and strong condemnation of Russia from various political figures worldwide. However, throughout 2018, Ukraine has been able to rely on strong voices of support from its friends in the face of continued Russian aggression that rarely makes international headlines, while suffering predictable slander from its foes. Here are the top five of the country’s friends over the past year, and those who have proved its five worst enemies.
Ukraine’s top 5 friends of the year
- John McCain
One of the strongest voices in support of Ukraine was sadly and prematurely silenced on Aug. 25 this year, when U.S. Senator John McCain died from a brain tumor at the age of 81. The senator had been a fierce foe of the Kremlin, and with his death Ukraine lost one of its best friends.
McCain had been a prominent supporter of Ukraine since the days of the Orange Revolution in 2004-2005, when Ukrainians first rose up in an attempt to shake of Kremlin domination of their country. He returned to Ukraine several times during the EuroMaidan Revolution of 2013-2014 to encourage Ukrainians to set the course of their country to the West, once and for all.
The Kremlin regarded McCain as a “Russophobe,” but that was false, or course. McCain was good friends with many figures in the Russian opposition. His true foe was Russian dictator Vladimir Putin: “(Putin’s) a thug, he’s a KGB agent and he’s a killer,” McCain told a CNN Town Hall meeting on March 1, 2017.
- Angela Merkel
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who stepped down as leader of the Christian Democratic Union and will remain the leader of Germany no longer than 2021, has been Ukraine’s staunchest friend since Russia invaded Crimea and launched its war on Ukraine in the Donbas in 2014. She understands Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and his authoritarian regime better than any other Western leader. That’s not only because she speaks some Russian: Although she was born in Hamburg in 1954, in then West Germany, her family moved to East Germany when she was three months old, and she grew up under authoritarian communism.
Because of it, Merkel knows the system that produced Putin. And as de facto leader of Europe, she has kept together the EU’s shaky solidarity over sanctions against Russia, despite opposition from Putin fans in Germany and abroad.
- Rebecca Harms
When Russia openly attacked the Ukrainian navy in international waters in the Black Sea on Nov. 25, German Greens Party MEP Rebecca Harms was one of the first foreign politicians to react: “The escalations in the Azov Sea are serious and need more of your attention,” Harms tweeted just hours after reports of the ramming of a tug by a Russian coast guard ship emerged. Harms tagged senior EU officials in her tweet to alert them to the fast-developing situation.
Harms is a long-time critic of the Kremlin, and has even been declared persona non grata in Russia for her opposition to Moscow’s aggression against its neighbor. She has repeatedly called for Europe to reduce its energy dependence on Russia, and has been a firm voice advocating a united European approach to sanctions on Russia. Unfortunately, she has announced she will not stand for reelection and will retire from active politics in 2019.
- Michael Carpenter
Michael Carpenter, senior director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, is an expert on relations between Russia and the West, and thus takes a broader view of implications of Russia’s war on Ukraine in the Donbas. He correctly sees it as not only as an effort by Russia to retain control over a prized imperial possession, but the first stage in a fightback by a revanchist Kremlin against what it sees as a unipolar world order dominated by the United States.
In fact, what Russian leader Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin cronies are actually fighting is the progressive, liberal-democratic order, government by the rule of law, human rights, and the democratic system. Russia is doing this by infiltrating and undermining the institutions of the civilized world, such as Interpol and the OSCE, and using social media in an attempt to influence democratic processes in the West. Carpenter points out that Ukraine is at the heart of what is now a global struggle for dominance between authoritarianism and liberal democracy.
- Kersti Kaljulaid
All too often Russia’s war on Ukraine is referred to as “the Ukraine crisis” or even “Ukraine’s civil war” in the Western press, and the Russian-occupied parts of the Donbas described as “separatist republics,” with the Russian-led forces that control them being called “rebels.”
Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid, in contrast, correctly described the fighting in Ukraine as a war when she visited the front lines in the Donbas this summer. Since taking over as president of her country from her predecessor Toomas Hendrik Ilves (also a great friend of Ukraine) in October 2016, she has shown she understands the scale of the challenge facing Ukraine, and the world, well:
“The rules-based, democratic, liberal world order can only survive if we stop pretending we’re not under pressure from those who believe the interests of the powerful are much more important than freedom of nations and people,” she has said.
Ukraine’s top 5 foes of the year
- Vladimir Putin
Ukraine’s chief foe, the architect of most of its current woes, is, of course, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. An arrogant, aggressive imperialist, who pines for the shabby glory of the Soviet Union, Putin does not even believe that an independent Ukraine has the right to exist. To him, Ukraine is Little Russia, and Ukrainians Little Russians. The country is not a state, but a collection of Russian oblasts that have temporarily slipped from Moscow’s control.
With Russia’s brazen attack on the Ukrainian navy in international waters in the Black Sea on Nov. 5, Putin has at last let his smirking mask slip, to reveal the open, snarling face of his aggression against Ukraine and its people. The lack of a firm response to his outrages against his neighbor will only egg him on to fresh attacks. As Russian dissident and former chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov says: “Dictators do not ask ‘Why?’ They ask ‘Why not?’”
Unless Putin is given a firm answer to why he should not seek to subjugate Ukraine and rebuild Russia’s empire, he will continue to attack Ukraine. Emboldened, he will increase his covert assault on the West and its progressive, liberal democratic order, which is anathema to him.
For as long as he is in power, Putin will be Ukraine’s foe. Let us hope that it is not too long.
- Dmitry Peskov
Dmitry Peskov could stand as a figurehead for the entire corrupt, mendacious, sinister Kremlin regime.
Corrupt: At his wedding in 2015, Peskov was pictured wearing a Richard Mille RM 52-01, limited-edition watch, one of only 30 made, with a price tag of $620,000 – four times his official annual salary, and never included in his official asset declaration. Peskov later said it was a wedding gift from his new wife, an Olympic ice-dancing gold medalist.
Mendacious: Peskov was caught lying most recently when the former lawyer of U.S. President Donald Trump, Michael Cohen, revealed that he had been in contact with Putin’s spokesman about a real estate project in Moscow during and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign. Peskov had initially denied responding to an e-mail from Cohen, but later said his office had called the lawyer.
Sinister: In recent comments, Peskov dismissed as absurd Ukrainian fears that Russia might be planning to seize a land corridor from the part of Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast that it currently occupies to Russian-occupied Crimea, across Zaporizhia and Kherson oblasts. He follows that up with a lie that Russia had never sized any territory – turning his lie into a threat.
- Sergey Lavrov
Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s long-serving foreign minister (over 14 years in the job) used to be a respected figure in international circles.
But his defenses of the aggressive wars waged by his boss, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, have left his reputation in tatters. At the 2015 Munich Security Conference, for instance, he was subjected to mocking laughter when he defended the Kremlin’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea by invoking language from the United Nation’s charter on “the rights of peoples to self-determination.”
In his latest comments on Ukraine on Dec. 17, Lavrov repeated ludicrous propaganda claims that Ukraine is planning a “provocation” against Russian forces in the north of Crimea in the last 10 days of December. He also dredged up another old, absurd and insulting Kremlin propaganda trope, by calling the government in Kyiv “Nazi, or neo-Nazi.”
And like other senior figures in the Kremlin regime, Lavrov employed the tired tactic of “projecting” – accusing your enemy of your own sins. “(The Kyiv) regime … is currently in power thanks to the West’s betrayal of international law and international behavior,” Lavrov whined hypocritically.
- Gerhard Schroeder
When the history of the late-20th and early 21st centuries is written, the name of Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder could well live on in a word coined by former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves – “Schroederization.” Its definition is “the corruption of a political elite by another country.” Schroeder himself has been schroederized by the Kremlin, which has co-opted him into supporting Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Schroeder’s presence at events like Putin’s pompous inauguration after winning a rigged election last March lends a sheen of respectability to the Russian leader.
But more importantly, Schroeder is the chairman of the shareholders’ committee of the NordStream project, Russia’s undersea gas pipeline scheme that aims to pipe natural gas straight to Germany, bypassing Ukraine. The Kremlin’s project aims a twin blow at its foes, hooking Europe on cheap Russian gas (which, however, comes with pricey hidden political costs, and the threat of corruption), and depriving Ukraine of $2-3 billion in gas transit fees a year. Schroeder is helping the Kremlin achieve its goals.
- Eduard Basurin
As tensions between Ukraine and Russia rose in the wake of Russia’s unprovoked attack on three Ukrainian navy ships in international waters in the Black Sea on Nov. 25, the Kremlin’s propaganda machine started churning out lies to muddy the waters.
With a nervy Ukraine switching to war footing and introducing martial law in 10 oblasts amid fears that Russia might attack on land, Eduard Basurin, the “defense spokesman” for the part of Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast that is currently under Russian occupation, made the bizarre counter-claim that Ukraine was preparing to go on the offensive. Basurin, who has a history of making false and ludicrous claims about Ukraine, said that the offensive would start on Dec. 14 with a “false flag” attack on an industrial plant in Mariupol, with deadly chemicals being released. The incident would be used as a pretext for Ukraine to launch an attack on Russian-led forces, he lied.
No such incident came to pass, of course. Basurin has now started to lie that an offensive is planned by Ukraine on Dec. 24-25.
