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: Donald Tusk
European Council President Donald Tusk said on Feb. 6 that he thought “a special place in hell” awaited the politicians in Britain who had pushed for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union “without even having a sketch of plan” of how to do it.
The comment provoked howls of rage from the Brexiteers – those UK politicians who indeed used lies to sell the UK electorate the impossible dream of a “successful” exit from the EU for the United Kingdom after 40 years in the union.
But many people in the UK – those not encumbered by party-political ideologies – were not “dismayed” by Tusk’s comment, as UK Prime Minister Theresa May presumptuously claimed: They recognized it to be an honest statement, born of Tusk’s frustration with the Brexiteers – a shower of liars, charlatans, Europhobes and pompous dimwits who were either too stupid to realize what chaos Brexit would cause, or too mendacious to tell the public the truth.
Nevertheless, some of Ukraine’s politicians may have been slightly nervous ahead of Tusk’s address on Feb. 19 to lawmakers, government ministers and the president in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament. They too have been guilty in the past of promising voters the unattainable.
They need not have worried: On this occasion, the five-year anniversary of one of the darkest days in Ukraine, a day when the EuroMaidan protests were on verge of being snuffed out by the brutal security forces of former President Viktor Yanukovych, Tusk was much more diplomatic.
“There can be no just Europe without an independent Ukraine. There can be no safe Europe without a safe Ukraine. To put it simply: there can be no Europe without Ukraine!” Tusk, speaking in Ukrainian, told Ukrainian leaders and lawmakers, to loud applause and a standing ovation.
But Tusk, Ukraine’s Friend of the Week and a winner of the Order of Yaroslav the Wise, also had some honest truths to share with his hosts, which bear repeating:
First, Ukrainians should try not argue too fiercely during the upcoming elections, Tusk said. There are those outside the country, both to the east and to the west who would seek to use internal conflict in Ukraine to drive a wedge between Kyiv and Brussels, he warned.
Second, no doubt alluding to the shambles and chaos of Brexit, Tusk said Ukrainians should reject nationalism and populism, which threaten the political communities both in Ukraine and Europe.
Third, Ukrainians should continue to defend the fundamental values of democracy – human rights, freedom of speech and thought, and rights for minorities – for which more than 100 Ukrainians died during the EuroMaidan Revolution.
Fourth, Ukrainians should continue to fight corruption, Tusk said, even though it might be painful for some. Government must be honest and transparent, he said.
And fifth, believe in the youth of Ukraine, who, after all, are the future of the country, Tusk concluded.
These are wise words from a good friend of Ukraine. Let’s hope Ukraine’s leaders never conduct themselves as badly as the UK’s dismally incompetent political class, and never earn some scathing comments from the formidable Donald Tusk.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week: Sergey Lavrov
Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister used to be a respected figure a long, long time ago.
But that was before his master in the Kremlin launched Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine, and Lavrov was reduced to the role of foot soldier on the diplomatic front. Taking questions at the annual Munich Security Conference on Feb. 7, 2015, Lavrov was laughed at by the audience when he said “territorial integrity and sovereignty must be respected,” after saying Russia’s invasion and annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea was an example of people “exercising the right of self-determination.”
Later, Lavrov was booed by the audience when he said that the Soviet Union, which caused the partition of post-war Germany into East Germany and West Germany, was “against the splitting of Germany.”
Four years later, Lavrov, Ukraine’s Foe of the Week and a winner of the Order of Lenin, is still spouting nonsense. Speaking at the 2019 Munich Security Conference on Feb. 16, he absurdly described the EuroMaidan Revolution – the 2013-2014 popular uprising against the corrupt regime of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych – as a “military coup.”
But more seriously, this year Lavrov was able to take advantage of the obvious weakening of the trans-Atlantic alliance that has occurred since the election of U.S. President Donald Trump in 2016, using it to push an old, false prospectus on his audience.
“We see new cracks forming and old cracks deepening, and in these conditions, it’s timely to go back to the idea of building a pan-European home – however strange that may sound in the current conditions,” Lavrov slyly suggested to his audience in Munich.
It is undeniable that the trans-Atlantic alliance is under strain. If anyone in the United States was under the impression that Europeans, after two years, have retained much respect for their oafish, bumbling president, that would have been dispelled by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence’s speech to the conference in Munich. Conveying Trump’s greetings to the audience, Pence paused for applause, but was met with five long seconds of stony silence.
Probably, visions were flashing through the heads of all present (except Pence, of course), of Trump’s appalling, shambolic, bullying performance at the July 2018 NATO Summit in Brussels, Belgium, during which he managed, blunderingly, to insult several European leaders and even threatened to pull the United States out of the alliance – a dream come true for the Kremlin.
Another dream of the Kremlin is the idea of building a common European political and economic space, “from Lisbon to Vladivostok,” and this vision is recalled regularly by the Kremlin as a way to entice unwary and unwise European politicians into cooperating with Russia. But cooperation with Russia, in the Kremlin’s understanding, essentially means bowing to Moscow’s demands.
And Lavrov, in calling for unity between Europe and Russia, is calling for an impossibility – a democratic, rule-of-law-based, human-rights-respecting political and economic bloc like the EU cannot be fused to an authoritarian, imperialistic, near-fascist police state like Russia. True cooperation between Europe and Russia will only come if that country can rid itself of the parasitical system of government, the Kremlin, and Russia joins the family of civilized nations that respect the rule of law, and that do not invade chunks of their neighbors’ territory in order to bully them into political submission.
In the meantime, nobody should believe Lavrov’s lies about the Kremlin wanting to cooperate together with Europe “in transparency and under the rule of law” – that’s as false as his lie about the EuroMaidan being a “coup.” Moscow’s real aim is to split the United States away from Europe, undermining NATO, and to break up the European Union by supporting extremist, populist politics, and by eroding public trust in Western institutions and media.
With NATO and the EU so weakened, a path will open to Russian domination of Eastern Europe – something Kremlin rulers have sought for centuries. That is the real aim of Lavrov and his sinister master in the Kremlin.
