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: Jens Stoltenberg
The NATO flag was raised for the first time over a government building in Skopje, Macedonia on Feb. 12. The small Balkan state began formal talks on joining the alliance only on Oct. 18 last year, and the agreement on its accession was reached on Feb. 6. The agreement still has to be ratified by other NATO member states, but that is a formality.
Although it only took Macedonia a few months to go through the formal process of joining NATO, the beginning of that process was stalled for a decade after Greece vetoed an invitation to Macedonia to join the alliance at NATO’s Bucharest Summit in 2008.
Macedonia emerged from the wreckage of the former Yugoslavia and was officially recognized by the United Nations in 1993. Greece objected to the country’s name. because it is the same name as a northern province of Greece. Athens, with some justification, argued that the country’s name implied a territorial claim on a part of Greece. The matter was only resolved when Macedonia agreed to change its name to North Macedonia, which it is now doing. The country will also soon enjoy Article 5 protection, which entails that the promise that other countries in the alliance will come to its aid if it is attacked.
While Ukraine would also like to have such protection, there is little chance Ukraine will achieve NATO membership anytime soon, even as nobody objects to the country’s name, and its parliament on Feb. 7 approved changes to the Ukrainian Constitution that officially set the goal of joining the alliance.
So it was good to hear NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg on Feb, 12, as the NATO flag was being raised in Skopje, affirm that Ukraine remains an important partner for the alliance, even if he was careful not to mention Ukraine’s membership prospects.
“We continue to work with Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Feb. 13-14. “Ukraine is our partner, whom we appreciate and support in many areas. We have different trust funds, different programs, we help Ukraine to modernize its defense and security institutions, we assist in training (troops) and enhancing the capabilities of the Naval Forces. We do a lot of things with Ukraine.”
Stoltenberg can do no more than hold out the prospect of membership to Ukraine. For a more realistic vision of Ukraine’s future relationship with NATO, Kyiv should probably look north – to Sweden and Finland. These Nordic states are not members of NATO, but their militaries are entirely interoperable with NATO forces; they regularly train together with the alliance, and as liberal democracies, they comply with all the political requirements for NATO membership. They are effectively members of NATO – just not in name.
Why? Because that would annoy Russia. For the same reason, Ukraine’s NATO membership is a distant prospect. For Ukraine to join the alliance, it would require the fall of the Kremlin system of government in Russia, and that country becoming a democratic, law-abiding state.
There is little prospect of that in the near future.
In the meantime, Stoltenberg, Ukraine’s Friend of the Week and a winner of the Order of Yaroslav the Wise, is quietly pointing to the path Kyiv should follow – like Sweden and Finland, it should become a member of NATO in all but name. That’s a reasonable, achievable goal, to which the country is already well on the way.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week: Grigory Karasin
Russia is waiting for an explanation from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) for the ban on Russian observers at Ukraine’s upcoming presidential election, Grigory Karasin, the deputy foreign minister of Russia said in an interview with Russian media on Feb. 11.
Ukraine’s parliament on Feb. 7 passed a law banning the accreditation of Russian observers at Ukraine’s elections. The next day, the Kremlin itself decided not to send observers to take part in the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights monitoring mission in Ukraine.
The OSCE expressed regret over Ukraine’s decision to ban Russian observers from the country.
Karasin, Ukraine’s Foe of the Week, and a winner of the odious Order of Lenin, need not wait for an explanation from the OSCE. He should listen to what Ukrainian officials, like Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, have said:
“Official observers from Russia – the aggressor state – have no place in observing the elections in a country who is a victim of such an aggression. Even trying to suggest it is politically, morally and legally wrong. Full stop,” Klimkin tweeted on Feb. 8.
Indeed, it is absurd Russia, which is an authoritarian police state, verging on fascism, should be put in a position to pass judgement on the conduct of elections in a democracy like Ukraine.
What can the Kremlin, which organized a sham referendum in occupied Crimea in a vain attempt to legitimize its grubby land grab of the peninsula, teach Ukrainians about democracy? What does a country which has effectively had the same leader since the last day of 1999 know about the democratic transition of power?
And what did the OSCE itself conclude from its monitoring of the last presidential elections in Russia, in March 2018? According to its report, the OSCE found the alleged election was held in “an overly controlled legal and political environment marked by continued pressure on critical voices.”
There were “restrictions on the fundamental freedoms of assembly, association and expression, as well as on candidate registration,” during the campaign, and “the extensive and uncritical coverage of the incumbent as president in most media resulted in an uneven playing field,” meaning that the so-called election “lacked genuine competition.”
On top of that, “a number of activists who questioned the legitimacy of the election were detained,” and “instances of pressure on voters to take part in the election were reported” to the OSCE’s monitoring mission.
These “violations contravene a number of OSCE commitments and other international obligations regarding freedom and equality in the campaign,” the OSCE concluded.
Russia’s own “democracy” is a sham.
Yet the Russian media are already raising doubts about the legitimacy of the upcoming presidential elections in Ukraine, egged on by Kremlin functionaries of the likes of Karasin. On a recent talk show, the Kremlin propagandist Olga Skabeeva made the ludicrous but still threatening suggestion that Moscow should refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the next Ukrainian president if its observers are not allowed into Ukraine.
Whether the OSCE recognizes it or not, Russia has been waging a war of aggression on Ukraine since Feb. 2014, attempting to undermine and de-legitimize Ukraine using military action, propaganda, subterfuge, cyberattacks, and political and economic pressure. Any opinions given by Russian observers about Ukraine’s elections would certainly be biased, and negative. The credibility of any OSCE observer mission that included observers sent by the Kremlin would be damaged, both in the eyes of Ukrainians and by many others around the world.
Meanwhile, Ukraine should be asking for some explanations from the OSCE as well, namely: Why does this organization allow itself to be played so easily by Moscow? And why has Russia, which has violated its commitments to the OSCE far more grievously than Ukraine – by invading and occupying its neighbor’s territory, and by committing acts of war such as cross-border shelling and attacks on Ukrainian naval vessels – still not had its OSCE membership suspended, or more appropriately, revoked?
