Editor’s Note: This feature separates Ukraine’s friends from its enemies. The Order of Yaroslav the Wise has been given since 1995 for distinguished service to the nation. It is named after the Kyivan Rus leader from 1019-1054, when the medieval empire reached its zenith. The Order of Lenin was the highest decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union, whose demise Russian President Vladimir Putin mourns. It is named after Vladimir Lenin, whose corpse still rots on the Kremlin’s Red Square, more than 100 years after the October Revolution he led.
Ukraine’s Friend of the Week: Edgars Rinkēvičs
Less than two months have passed since Russia attacked and captured three Ukrainian navy ships in international waters in the Black Sea, along with their 24 crew members. On Jan. 15, a Kremlin-controlled Russian court in Moscow extended the detention of the Ukrainian sailors until April 24 – the Kremlin plans to prosecute them for “violating Russia’s borders.”
After the regular expressions of “grave concern” from Western leaders, a fog of amnesia about Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine seems again to have settled on Western politicians and media. Newsweek on Jan. 15 did cover the court proceedings against the Ukrainian prisoners of war, but in its reporting used language that matches Russia’s propaganda positions, describing Russia’s war on Ukraine as a “civil war,” and the Russian-led forces in the Donbas as “separatists.”
So it was good to hear Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs reaffirm the support of his country, and other countries in the region, for Ukraine and call for Russia to respect international law.
“Russia’s aggression in the Kerch Strait and the blockade in the Sea of Azov is an unacceptable violation of international law,” Rinkēvičs said, speaking during a visit to Ukraine on Jan. 15 with his Estonian, Lithuanian and Polish counterparts.
“Russia must release, immediately and unconditionally, the arrested Ukrainian sailors and the seized ships, as well as respecting international commitments and allowing freedom of navigation in the Sea of Azov,” he added.
The West could go further, however: As prisoners of war, under the Geneva Conventions the Ukrainian servicemen captured by the Russians are entitled to certain protections. The International Committee of the Red Cross should have access to the prisoners to ensure that they are being detained in a properly appointed prisoner of war camp, as detailed in the Third Geneva Convention. They should not be in prison, and the outside world should be up-in-arms at their being detained in a Russian jail, which in no way meets the requirements of international law for holding prisoners of war.
In the meantime, Rinkēvičs is Ukraine’s Friend of the Week and a winner of the Order of Yaroslav the Wise for his strong support for Ukraine.
“Latvia and the Allies will actively side with Ukraine in international organizations,” Rinkēvičs said.
Hopefully, that will include pressing the International Committee of the Red Cross to ensure the Ukrainian prisoners of war the Kremlin has captured are properly treated. Russia should not be allowed to get away with treating these prisoners of war like common criminals, parading them through a kangaroo court for the benefit of Kremlin propaganda media.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week: Victor Lenta
“Royalist at heart and revolutionary in the soul,” reads the Twitter biography of French national Victor Lenta, a former French paratrooper who joined Russia’s proxy forces in the Donbas in 2014 to fight against Ukraine.
The Twitter account, which has several photographs of French and Serbian mercenaries in the Donbas, has been inactive since July 14, 2014 – three days before a Buk missile that Dutch investigators have shown was fired from Russian-held territory shot down a civilian airliner, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17.
While the account may be inactive, Lenta himself has been keeping busy, and lately showed up as the “head of security” for the Yellow Jacket anti-government protest movement in France.
For those who believe Russia has a hand in every anti-government protest or adverse event in democratic countries, Lenta’s involvement is further proof of the Kremlin’s all-out assault against the West.
However, Lenta simply fits the profile of a typical useful idiot, whose political ideas and goals align with those of Moscow: anti-Western, anti-EU and NATO, and pro-“traditional values.”
For people like Lenta, those traditional values are embodied in royalty – the earliest authoritarian form of government that is the antipathy of the progressive, liberal-democratic idea.
That makes him a natural ally of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, also an authoritarian, and whose goals include the weakening of the West, the European Union, and NATO. The Kremlin hardly needed to “recruit” Lenta, train him, or support him – he’s a plug ‘n play useful idiot, up and fighting straight out of the box for causes that match Kremlin goals, whether it be undermining Ukrainian statehood, working with anti-Western Serbian nationalists, or being involved in a violent anti-government protest in a NATO country.
But how does the “revolutionary” descriptor sit with Lenta? Speaking in an interview in November 2014 with the pro-Kremlin Slavyangrad.org website, Lenta spoke of what motivated him, and his mercenary colleagues, to fight for Russia’s proxy forces.
“All of us are members of an organization I founded in Belgrade in January 2014. Its name is the Continental Union. We all consider ourselves to be not only volunteers, but also revolutionaries. The Continental Union is a geopolitical movement, based on Alexander Dugin’s works in many ways, as well as on respective principles of resistance.
“Our organization has three primary concepts: a geopolitical concept—proclaiming support for a multipolar world, anti-mondialism – the protection of traditional family and civilization values – and the third concept includes revolutionary purposes where a revolution is truly public, aimed against the world oligarchy.”
He goes on to add that capitalism is no less an evil than fascism.
So Lenta is a revolutionary only in the sense that he wants to revolve the hands of the clock back to earlier, less progressive times, times of authoritarianism, patriarchy and imperialism, as per his ideological mentor Dugin. He’s the perfect type of revolutionary for the Kremlin – a regressive, not a progressive.
The irony is that while the Kremlin has long falsely claimed that the West has been behind the “color revolutions” that swept former Soviet states, moving them away from Moscow’s influence, Russia itself is now in the business of encouraging “revolution” in the West – whether it be anti-government protests in France, UK voters’ idiotic desire to take their country out of the European Union, vandalizing their economy and country’s global position via Brexit, or seeking to influence national elections from Estonia to the United States.
Lenta, who remains at liberty in France, is this Ukraine’s Foe of the Week and a winner of the odious Order of Lenin for aiding the Kremlin, Ukraine’s chief foe, in achieving its goals. Let’s hope he can be captured and put on trial in Ukraine, if, as it seems, the French judicial system will not prosecute him for his crimes.
