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: Michael Carpenter
Ukraine, which has been under near constant military attack by Russia for the last five years, has long since slipped from the top headlines.
The daily grind of Russia’s low-intensity war on Ukraine in the Donbas is no longer newsworthy. Now Ukraine only gets the attention of the international news media if something exceptional happens.
Such exceptional events included Russia’s aggressive act of piracy on Nov. 25, when Russian coast guard ships rammed a Ukrainian military tug and then chased down and seized it and two accompanying Ukrainian navy patrol boats as they attempted to flee. The Russians fired on the Ukrainian vessels, injuring three sailors, and taking 24 crewmen into captivity.
Still, the incident only made the headlines for a few days, and then Ukraine sank into media obscurity again.
Ukraine was last briefly in the spotlight on April 1 and on April 22 – the days after the comedian and businessman Volodymyr Zelenskiy won the first and second rounds of the presidential election.
Zelenskiy’s story was interesting because it was a rare case of fiction becoming fact – he has appeared in a television series in which he depicts an ordinary Ukrainian “accidentally” becoming the president.
But the election is now won, and the media circus is packing up and preparing to leave town. After a week, the outside world will have forgotten Ukraine again.
But “Ukraine fatigue” isn’t just a problem in the media: Ukraine doesn’t just have to fight of Russian-led forces in the east: It has to battle on the diplomatic front to maintain the support of its friends in the West, some of whom are bearing economic and political costs for opposing the Kremlin and refusing to accept Russia’s occupation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea. If politicians abroad get tired of supporting Ukraine, Kyiv’s battle against the Kremlin will get a lot tougher.
The comments by Michael Carpenter, senior director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in an April 22 opinion piece in the Washington Post are a welcome reminder of what is at stake. With the ongoing changeover in power in Kyiv, now is not the time for the West to lose interest in Ukraine – quite the opposite: “Western leaders should take Zelenskiy under their wing, provide strategic and technical advice, and offer to lend policy advisers who can offer their professional recommendations on defense reform, international diplomacy, legal questions and economic issues,” Carpenter wrote.
This is especially true now that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, as expected, has started to “test” Ukraine’s new leader. On April 24 Putin signed a decree to make it easier for the Kremlin to issue Russian passports to Ukrainians living in the Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. This is a tried-and-tested method used by the Kremlin to exert more influence on areas that it has occupied or hopes to occupy in the future.
However, Putin will not only be observing how Zelenskiy rises to the challenge, but gauging to what extent the West supports the new Ukrainian leader. If there is no strong reaction from the West, Putin, going by his past modus operandi, will escalate tensions further. Putin has in the past justified his aggression in terms of “protecting Russians in other countries.” Issuing passports to Ukrainians in the Russian-occupied parts of the Donbas is thus obviously a dangerous development.
Carpenter is Ukraine’s Friend of the Week and a winner of the Order of Yaroslav the Wise for his past support for Ukraine and for pointing out the need for the West to continue supporting Ukraine at this critical time. Let’s hope his message gets through to Western leaders, because Putin has already made his first move against the new Ukrainian administration.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week: Dmitry Medvedev
In contrast to other world leaders, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin declined to offer new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy any congratulations on his election.
And Putin doesn’t have a personal social media account, as far as is known, so on Twitter at least it was left to Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to give a personal view from the Kremlin of the presidential elections in Ukraine.
Democratic elections are an exotic and intimidating concept for the denizens of the Kremlin, so wisely Medvedev kept clear of that topic. Before Ukraine’s historic vote, which has seen a peaceful transfer of power after a bitterly fought campaign, the Kremlin was snidely suggesting that the elections would be rigged (as they are in Russia) and that Moscow would not recognize them as legitimate.
That propaganda line has been quietly dropped by Kremlin-controlled media, with the elections having been pronounced free and fair by international monitors. It is not now in the Kremlin’s interests to continue carping on about the elections in Ukraine, particularly as many Russians are probably wondering why they aren’t allowed to freely choose their leaders in the way Ukrainians obviously now can.
Additionally, Russian propagandists are faced with the problem of explaining why Ukraine’s government, which they have sneeringly painted as a neo-Nazi junta brought to power in a coup, would allow a Jewish president to be elected in a free and fair vote.
So, with the topic of the election itself off limits, Medvedev stuck to simply throwing some shade on Ukraine and its new president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“…There is still a chance for Ukraine to improve its relations with Russia,” Medvedev tweeted on April 22, the day after Zelenskiy’s historic victory.
“What will it take? Honesty, and a pragmatic and responsible approach with due account for all the current political realities in Ukraine, primarily the developments in Ukraine’s east,” he went on.
Medvedev’s chutzpah in suggesting that Ukraine and Zelenskiy adopt honesty in relations with the Kremlin is quite something. For it, he is Ukraine’s Foe of the Week and a winner of the Order of Lenin.
Russia has for five years waged a covert war in the Donbas, denying at every turn its actual role in creating, commanding and supplying the forces that currently occupy about a third of the two Donbas oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk. Russia has lied about the involvement of its 53rd Anti-Missile Brigade’s (probably accidental) shoot down of Malaysia Airline’s Flight MH17 on July 17, 2014, and its sending its regular forces into Ukraine to fight – particularly a company of T-72B tanks of the 5th Separate Tank Brigade of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (Ulan-Ude, military unit 46108), which were spotted multiple times by several independent sources during the Battle of Debaltsevo in February 2015.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has filmed from the air Russian military supply convoys covertly crossing the border into Ukraine in Donetsk Oblast, and frequently seen in Ukraine military equipment, such as electronic warfare units, that could only have come from Russia.
If Medvedev and his Kremlin master really wanted more honesty in their relations with Ukraine, they would start with withdrawing Russia’s armed forces from the Donbas, and begin talks on paying war reparations for their illegal war of aggression on Ukraine. They would also end the occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea, and release the Ukrainian prisoners of war Russia have falsely arrested as criminals.
The Kremlin’s idea of how relations with Ukraine should be “repaired” is clear: It wants Ukraine to give up its claim to Crimea, and accept the Russian-occupied parts of the Donbas back into Ukraine – but as “autonomous” regions that Moscow would use to cause political mischief within the country. It also wants to get Ukraine hooked again on cheap Russian natural gas, which the Kremlin can use as a way to corrupt and pressurize Ukraine’s political elite.
But until the Kremlin shows willingness to acknowledge its responsibility for its crimes against Ukraine and its people, President Zelenskiy should take the same firm stance against Moscow that his predecessor did, and keep the Kremlin at arm’s length. Ukraine does not need “a chance to improve its relations with Russia,” as Medvedev said – rather, Ukraine is the wronged party. Russia would do better to take this chance to come clean about its illegal war on Ukraine, return Crimea, and start working to repair the damage it did itself to its relations with Kyiv.
