Ukraine’s Friend of the Week: Ben Hodges
Retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges is no longer the U.S. army’s frontline commander in Europe, tasked with countering an assertive and aggressive Russia, but he still has a lot to say about how to keep the Kremlin at bay.
Hodges, who retired as commander of U.S. army forces in Europe last year, has seen practically firsthand how Russia’s army has been rebuilt from a ramshackle Soviet-era force into a military that can combine conventional and special forces operations with cyberwarfare, drone surveillance, online propaganda and official disinformation to confuse and wrong-step opponents.
Russia deployed all of those capabilities during its surprise invasion of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in late February 2014, and its invasion in the Donbas in April the same year, a war that has now cost more than 10,300 lives.
And Ukraine faces these same capabilities to this day, as Russia’s war in the Donbas drags towards its fourth year.
“The [Russian] electronic warfare capability; again that’s something we never had to worry with that in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Ukrainians live in this environment,” Hodges said in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 24, at the Helsinki Commission, a U.S. government agency charged with monitoring human rights in Europe and elsewhere, RFE/RL reported.
“So you cannot speak on a radio or any device that’s not secure because it’s going to be jammed or intercepted or worse, it’s going to be found and then it’s going to be hit.”
Hodges said that in one case, the Russians, using their electronic warfare capabilities, had with surprising speed taken out with rocket fire a Ukrainian unit that was using U.S.-supplied radar.
Hodges’ outspoken views on the threat posed by Russia to NATO allies in Eastern Europe on occasion raised hackles in Washington, but was greatly appreciated by Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia – the countries of the alliance most likely to face interference by a revaunchist Russia.
And his appointment in 2014 came at exactly the right time: Hodges was able to convince his bosses in the Pentagon to halt the wind-down of U.S. forces’ deployment in Europe and get combat-ready tanks and equipment, as well as ammunition, sent back into the region. He also organized a study of the terrain along NATO’s eastern flank, sending convoys of equipment, nicknamed “Dragoon Rides,” zooming around the Baltics and Poland.
The Dragoon Rides not only had the purpose of practicing the army’s mobility and testing roads and bridges to find possible bottlenecks – they also had a morale-boosting effect for the peoples in the east; they were a visible reminder of the alliance’s presence and commitment in the region.
Hodges is Ukraine’s Friend of the Week and winner of the Order of Yaroslav the Wise in anticipation that he will continue to provide sound advice on the defense of Ukraine and NATO’s easternmost members. Lieutenant General Christopher Cavoli, who on Dec. 14 was selected as Hodges’ replacement as commander of U.S. army forces in Europe, has a hard act to follow.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week: Roger Beckamp
Who?
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week and winner of the Order of Lenin probably isn’t very well known outside North Rhine-Westphalia, where he is a member of the regional parliament for the far-right Alternative Fuer Deutschland (AfD) party.
But as one of a group of German regional parliamentarians from the AfD who illegally entered Ukraine on Feb. 3, visiting Crimea, Roger Beckamp represents the collective disregard for the laws of Ukraine among certain European politicians – especially those from the far right.
Apart from entering Ukraine illegally, Beckamp and the other eight AfD members who showed up in Crimea were there to support the Kremlin by calling for an end to Western sanctions on Russia for its war against Ukraine.
Obscure politicians like Beckamp from European far-right parties regularly appear in Crimea, brought there by the Kremlin to serve its goals of attempting to normalize its occupation of the peninsula, split political unity in the West, and undermine the sovereignty of Ukraine.
It is irksome that there are so many of these unprincipled “useful idiots” to be found among the ranks of European fringe and extremist parties on the far right, who are willing to break Ukrainian law at Moscow’s behest.
Irksome, but hardly surprising: those whose politics tend to authoritarianism and fascism have far more respect for power than the rule of law. But it must also vex Ukrainians, who fought for months in the EuroMaidan Revolution for a state based on the rule of law, to see politicians from supposedly law-respecting European states disregard Ukraine’s own laws so flagrantly. It smacks of hypocrisy.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely that politicians of the likes of Beckamp can be dissuaded from continuing to violate Ukrainian law by any personal sanctions. Ukrainian law typically imposes a three-year entry ban for such an offense, which cannot be enforced unless the person arrives in Ukraine at an entry point under government control.
They are unlikely to face justice at home: It is generally problematic to prosecute a person for an offense committed in another country, especially if the countries involved have not signed an extradition treaty, even for a serious criminal offense.
So what can be done?
First, we must realize that people like Beckamp are not visiting Crimea because they have suddenly developed such a strong fascination with Crimea, its people and culture, that they would break Ukrainian law just to go there. They are there as part of a Kremlin public relations campaign – visas, travel costs and accommodation are provided, and no doubt they or their parties get thirty pieces of Kremlin silver into the bargain.
In short, it is not these naïve, unprincipled, delinquent far-right politicians that are the true source of the problem, but the Kremlin’s manipulation of them.
The answer is thus to sanction the Kremlin: Every time the Kremlin provides a visa to a politician from the West, and that politician subsequently breaks Ukrainian law by illegally entering Ukraine from Russia, a Russian politician should be banned from receiving a visa to a Western country. The Kremlin would soon get the message.
Unfortunately, given the difficulty in getting European states to sign up and stick to the present weak regime of sanctions against Russia, it is unlikely that such a measure could be introduced.
But it shows that there are ways that European states could, if they only had the political will, act to dissuade Moscow from continuing to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty in this manner.
