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, 100 years after the October Revolution he led.
Ukraine’s Friend of the Week: Michael Roth
In the dying days of the regime of runaway former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, his prime minister, Mykola Azarov, made the ludicrous and hateful claim that in order to receive a visa-free regime with the European Union, Ukraine would be forced to enact a bill legalizing same-sex marriages.
Azarov also referred to the European Union as “Gayropa,” a homophobic slur also commonly used by right-wing Russian politicians to denigrate the EU.
It was ludicrous claim, of course, because Ukraine now has a visa-free regime with the Schengen Area countries and no such requirement to enact a law on same-sex marriage was ever even mentioned, far less required. It was a hateful claim because Azarov felt Ukrainians should naturally oppose this form of equal rights for their fellow citizens, and attempted to stoke their fears and prejudices against a minority.
Ukraine has come a long way since those days (Azarov resigned on Jan. 28, 2014, fled to Austria, and then Russia, and is now on the international wanted list.) Kyiv held its biggest ever Equality March on June 17 to round off Pride Week, promoting equal rights for the country’s LGBTQI community. Around 3,500 people joined in a short march in central Kyiv, guarded by police and the National Guard. There was no violence at the event, though police arrested a few dozen far-right extremists beforehand as a preventative measure.
As is traditional, members of Ukraine’s diplomatic community attended the march to show their support, and visitors from the EU were also there. Michael Roth, a German politician from the Social Democratic Party, was one of them.
Roth is minister of state for Europe at the German Foreign Office, and a member of the Bundestag, the German parliament. Since 2014 he has also been the Federal Government Commissioner for Franco-German Cooperation. Only 47, Roth has been active in politics for 25 years, rising from an SPD youth activist to some of the highest offices in his country.
He is also gay, and married his long-time partner Michael Kloeppner on Aug. 28, 2012.
Roth is Ukraine’s Friend of the Week and winner of the Order of Yaroslav the Wise for supporting the cause of equal rights in Ukraine, and helping raise the visibility of Ukraine’s LGBTQI community.
Ukraine is still a socially conservative country, and has some way to go to reach European levels of tolerance and equal rights for all citizens. While acceptance of equal rights for all citizens has risen from 28 percent in a 2010 poll to 58 percent in a 2017 poll, the concept of marriage is still legally defined in the constitution of Ukraine as a union between a man and a woman only. There is little political will to amend the constitution, and opposition to such a change from the country’s churches.
At the heart of the problem is fear: fear of the unknown and unfamiliar, fear of the different. The same fears that underlie religious bigotry, racism and xenophobia.
The way to dispel that fear is simply to get to know the fear-inducing thing better. But there is a problem: according to some equal rights campaigners up to 90 percent of Ukrainians claim not to know any LGBTQI people at all, either personally or at work.
That’s not because the LGBTQI community is any smaller in Ukraine than in any other country – it’s because they still face intolerance and the threat of violence, and so keep a low profile.
So the day of the Equality March is vitally important for Ukrainian society in raising the profile of the LGBTQI community. It is the one day of the year where they can exuberantly, proudly, and very visibly, be themselves.
When an openly gay politician reaches high office in Ukraine, as Roth has done in Germany, representing their country abroad and setting an example of tolerance and respect in society, Ukraine will have truly earned its place in Europe. And the fears that the cowardly Azarov tried to peddle to Ukrainians will at last be defeated.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week: Vladislav Surkov
“Civil wars” in foreign countries take a great deal of organizing, as Vladislav Surkov would no doubt agree – if one could ever get him to talk frankly on the matter.
Through the leaking of a hacked e-mail inbox, we now know that Surkov, the aide to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin who oversees Ukrainian matters, was key in arranging the unrest in the Donbas that led to parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts slipping out of Ukrainian government control.
We also know from the hacked e-mails that Surkov is involved closely in the administration of the Russian-occupied territories – for example, he was even sent a message seeking approval of lists of officials that were to be appointed to the occupation administrations.
That Surkov was reappointed to his position on June 14 could thus be good or bad. Good, in that most of his and the Kremlin’s plans to split Ukraine have failed, and bad, in that he will probably keep trying to implement fresh schemes.
We also know something of a past plan (thankfully never put in motion) to create an uprising in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Oblast. The plan landed on Surkov’s desk in November 2014 – a couple of months after Russia was supposed to have started implementing the Minsk accords that were to have brought peace to the Donbas.
Code-named “Troy,” the plan, detailed in an encrypted document that was cracked by a team of hackers, gave a costed strategy for the takeover of Zaporizhzhya Oblast by Russia, with payoffs to spies, police and security service collaborators, and fake demonstrators all budgeted. The aim was to overthrow the regional government, as early had been achieved in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.
The Kremlin denies that the e-mails and documents hacked from Surkov’s accounts are genuine, but its denials are not credible. There is, in fact, little doubt that “Troy” is a genuine plan for staging a covert takeover of a Ukrainian oblast, modeled on previous operations.
That the Kremlin would want to gain control of Zaporizhzhya Oblast is obvious: it is one of two Ukrainian oblasts, the other being Kherson Oblast, that Russia would have to invade in order to establish a land bridge to Crimea, the Ukrainian territory the Kremlin invaded and occupied in late February 2014.
The odious “Troy” plan is instructive in that it sets out clearly the methods used by the Kremlin to destabilize neighboring countries. It should be studied carefully by Ukraine, and other countries at risk of such Kremlin interventions, such as the Baltic states.
The coming to light of the document should also at last put paid to claims that there is a “civil war” in Ukraine (a claim still repeated occasionally in the Western press). In fact, the war in Ukraine was created by the Kremlin, and the deaths of more than 10,300 people are attributable directly to the Kremlin and officials like Surkov.
Surkov is Ukraine’s Foe of the Week and a winner of the Order of Lenin. We wish him the very worst of luck in his further activities, and hope that one day he will answer for his crimes in The Hague.
