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
When NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg tweeted on March 6 “#Crimea is Ukraine. Five years on, #NATO Allies do not & will not recognize Russia’s illegal annexation. We continue to stand by Ukraine with political & practical support,” Russian internet trolls were soon firing back the standard propaganda tropes.
These involve comparing Russia’s invasion and occupation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea to NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999, branding the government in Kyiv Nazis, and claiming the sham referendum the Kremlin held at gunpoint on the peninsula legitimizes the Russian occupation.
Stoltenberg’s press team did not stoop to replying to the Kremlin’s trolls of course. Instead, NATO issued a far more fulsome statement on March 18, the 5th anniversary of the formal start of Russia’s occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea.
In it, the alliance reiterates its full support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders. Even if Google has been bullied by Russia into altering the maps it displays to users in Russia to show Crimea as part of Russia, the truth is that Crimea is still within Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders.
The alliance’s statement also draws attention to brutal human rights violations carried out against Crimea’s indigenous Crimean Tatar population, who have suffered extrajudicial killings, torture, kidnappings, harassment, legal persecution, the outlawing of their representative body, the Mejlis, and the imprisoning and exiling of Crimean Tatar leaders. Crimea may be part of Ukraine, but it is being subjected to the kind of human rights abuses that the population of Russia proper suffers.
Importantly, NATO also calls on the Kremlin to halt its attempt to change the demography of Crimea by settling Russian citizens in the peninsula. It also condemns Moscow for forcing Russian citizenship on the population of Crimea, and conscripting the population of the occupied territory into its army – clear breaches of the Geneva Conventions.
NATO also calls on the Kremlin to halt its militarization of the occupied territory, which obviously has no military goal other than to threaten Ukraine (Ukraine is hardly in a position to regain control of Crimea militarily) and put economic pressure on Kyiv by effectively blockading Ukraine’s ports on the Azov Sea.
Lastly, NATO again states that there can be no return to “business as usual” with the regime of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin until the Kremlin comes back into compliance with international law, and its international obligations and responsibilities.
The Kremlin under Putin is hardly likely to heed these demands, but it is important to restate them, and stand firm on sanctions, until there is a change in political circumstances in Russia. The West held firm for 50 years on the issue of not recognizing the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States. The Kremlin should understand that the case will be the same for Crimea as well.
Stoltenberg is Ukraine’s Friend of the Week and a winner of the Order of Yaroslav the Wise for telling the truth about Crimea, supporting Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO, standing firm on the issue of sanctions, and refusing to recognize the Kremlin’s land grab.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week: Viacheslav Volodin
The first rule of dictatorship is “Accuse your enemy for your own sins.” So it was hardly a surprise to hear a top official from the aggressive dictatorship to the northeast, Russia, accuse Ukraine on March 15 of “annexing” Crimea for 25 years, and, ludicrously, demand compensation for it.
The official was Chairman of Russia’s State Duma Viacheslav Volodin, who visited Crimea (presumably illegally, as it’s doubtful he asked for permission to enter Ukraine) on March 15 ahead of the 5th anniversary of the formal beginning of Russia’s occupation of the Ukrainian territory.
“Ukraine treated Crimea very, very dishonestly, the fundamental rights of citizens were violated: the right to language, the right to education in their native language, the economy of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol was destroyed, in fact, it was an annexation,” the Duma press service told Ukrainian news service UNIAN, quoting Volodin.
This extraordinary statement is the truth stood on its head, and turned inside out. It is exactly what Russia, not Ukraine, has done to Crimea over the last five years – not 25 years. The claim that Ukraine somehow “annexed” Crimea from Russia is also preposterous, as anyone acquainted with the facts of the situation knows.
Volodin went on to demand compensation for these imagined sins from not only Kyiv, but from the European Union, whom he said was complicit in damaging the social and economic situation in Crimea because of its support for the government in Kyiv.
That is nonsense, of course, as the EU is hardly responsible for the economic situation in Crimea for the last 25 years. Volodin is in fact complaining about the EU’s support for Ukraine since Russia invaded and started to occupy Crimea – support given in the form of imposing sanctions and refusing to recognize the Kremlin’s illegal land grab.
As the occupying power, Russia is now responsible for the general welfare of the population under occupation in the Ukrainian territory. If the social and economic situation in Crimea is in a bad way after five years of Russian occupation, it is largely the fault of the Kremlin, not Ukraine or the EU.
But seasoned Ukraine watchers will of course be very familiar with this kind of rhetoric from a senior Russian official. When the EuroMaidan Revolution ousted wannabe dictator Victor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s runaway former president, now convicted in absentia of treason, the Kremlin called it a “coup,” and not a popular uprising that it in fact was. When the new government in Kyiv came to power, the Kremlin said fascists had taken over the country, whereas Russia has long fitted the description of a fascist state far, far better than Ukraine has ever done. When Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down by a BUK missile launched from a Russian-occupied part of the Donbas, the Kremlin blamed Ukraine. The list of such statements is tediously long.
So bearing in mind the first rule of dictatorship, and its adjunct “Don’t believe anything until the Kremlin denies it,” Volodin’s statement can be read correctly as an admission of guilt. The statement, of course is so absurd that it obviously is not meant to be taken seriously in either Kyiv or Brussels.
Rather, Volodin, who is Ukraine’s Foe of the Week and a winner of the Order of Lenin, was sending a message to the domestic audience in Russia and the occupied population of Crimea. The gist of it is “Yes, things are not going so well in Crimea – but it is the fault of our enemies, not the Kremlin.”
And that is a lie as well.
