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: Dr. Benjamin L. Schmitt, Harvard fellow and energy security expert
Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that snakes its way under the Baltic Sea into Germany is not only a commercial venture, but a political one too.
With the backing of strategists in the Kremlin, it aims to destabilize and weaken Europe while directly injuring Ukraine, too.
The pipeline is intended to pump copious amounts of cheap gas into the heart of the European Union at a profit for Moscow and state-owned Gazprom, but it is also designed to further undermine efforts to diversify Europe’s energy infrastructure and strengthen its energy independence.
It’s a modern day Trojan Horse for Europe. It will needlessly and painfully feed a growing addiction to dirty Russian energy, which fuels that dictatorship’s oppression of its own people and its aggression against countries like Georgia, Syria and Ukraine.
The $11 billion project is of particular concern for Ukraine, a country that Russia invaded in 2014 and that now acts as a strategic eastern flank for NATO in Europe, even though it’s not a member of that alliance. Nord Stream 2 will hurt the country financially by allowing Russia to bypass its gas transit system, depriving Kyiv of billions in annual transit fees to the EU.
The pipeline (which is already 94% complete) will double the Kremlin’s toxic influence in European capitals like Berlin and Paris as it will double Russian gas transit to 110 billion cubic meters per year. Some 55 bcm are already being pumped into Europe through Nord Stream 1 each year.
Hungry for cheap Russian energy, France and Germany have, for the most part, been blindly or naively led into this trap set by Moscow. European voices in opposition to the project have largely been drowned out by its financiers, Big Energy and politicians with vested interests.
The loudest voices in opposition have, instead, been heard across the Atlantic in Washington D.C., where U.S. lawmakers slapped sanctions on the Baltic Sea pipeline project and have halted its construction, raising questions about whether Moscow has the equipment and technical know-how to complete it.
New proposals spearheaded by U.S. senators Ted Cruz and Jeanne Shaheen seek to expand and strengthen those sanctions, by extending them to a larger array of companies involved in pipeline laying activities.
What makes these sanctions so important is that they appear motivated by a genuine concern for European security, the integrity of the Atlantic alliances, and efforts to draft and pass the sanctions are bipartisan at a time of such bitter political division in the United States. But the sanctions have also been informed and guided by evidence and expert analysis, and that matters too, particularly when it comes to the question of European energy security and independence, and Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
One of the loudest and strongest (but also informed, rational and most reasoned) voices that stands in opposition to the Nord Stream 2 project has belonged to Dr. Benjamin L. Schmitt, a Harvard fellow and former European Energy Security Advisor at the U.S. Department of State.
He told the Kyiv Post that the new pipeline is “an affront to the energy and national security interests not only of Ukraine, but of Europe and the Transatlantic community more broadly” and a threat to the continent’s security and energy independence.
Schmitt added: “The security impacts on Ukraine remain the most immediate and grave. Not only would the project do immediate damage to the Ukrainian economy through the loss of gas transit revenues that represent a significant component of national GDP, but the pipeline could provide an opening for increased Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine.”
In recent months and weeks, as COVID-19 has dominated headlines, Schmitt has continued to be a stalwart voice on the issue of Nord Stream 2, and remained a cogent, calm and convincing expert on the subject.
On June 10, he reminded his followers on Twitter: “The Kremlin is advancing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to harm Transatlantic security and Ukrainian strategic stability, which is why that project is not just a commercial deal, and has had strong bipartisan opposition since Putin announced it in 2015.”
It is so important to have academic voices, the input of rational, reasoned experts who use objective truth and common sense in support of Ukraine. It can’t always be politicians and journalists who point fingers at Kremlin hybrid aggression. We also need researchers, specialists and professionals who are authorities in their field to highlight the bad ideas, flawed peace plans and Trojan horses as they appear, which is what Schmitt does masterfully with his research and writings on Nord Stream 2.
Because of this tireless dedication to truth and evidence, his scientific approach to exposing ideas and plans that are objectively bad and wrong, we think that Schmitt is a friend to Ukraine and a deserving recipient of our Order of Yaroslav the Wise.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week: Russian actor Mikhail Porechenkov
When Russian actor Mikhail Porechenkov returned to Ukrainian screens this week, some viewers here may have hoped that it was a news broadcast showing his arrest for alleged crimes against Ukraine.
Instead, he was seen unshaven in an armchair in a video apparently filmed in his own living room, and hunched over a little bottle of watery yogurt drink.
The scruffy actor was being featured in a TV advert for the Actimel brand of fermented milk drink, produced by the French dairy company Danone.
The 51-year-old film actor, born in Soviet Leningrad, is famous in Ukraine, but not for promoting French yogurts. He was also filmed in October 2014 in the war-torn Ukrainian city of Donetsk, alongside a large gang of heavily-armed Russian-led militants that had closed in on Ukrainian soldiers trying to protect the city’s airport.
Cameras operated by ‘media’ with ties to Russian-backed forces captured Porechenkov, wearing a ‘Press’ labeled blue helmet, sharing motivational words with militants, before finding a target in the sights of a Russian-made 50-caliber machine gun and opening fire in the direction of Ukrainian soldiers.
Ukraine started criminal proceedings against Porechenkov for “participation in terrorist activities of the so-called DNR,” an acronym referring to the Russian-backed proxy forces in the occupied parts of the Ukrainian region of Donetsk.
Two battles were fought over Donetsk Airport between Russian-led fighters and Ukrainian forces, with hundreds of soldiers and civilians killed and wounded, many left with life-changing injuries.
The fighting here in Ukraine is not a game for tourists to come and participate in, regardless of how famous they are in their home country. Russia’s war has claimed more than 13,000 lives here since it started with the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of the Donbas.
The battles at Donetsk Airport were some of the darkest chapters of Ukraine’s modern history, culminating in what some observers called a “devastating victory over Ukrainian forces” that led to the withdrawal of Ukraine’s military from Russian-seized areas and ultimately a stalemate at a contact line dividing Russian-held territory from the rest of Ukraine.
We don’t know if the dozens of 50 caliber rounds that Porechenkov fired off into the distance toward Donetsk Airport wounded or killed any Ukrainians. They may have. Regardless, it was a violent, criminal act that wouldn’t be accepted in any kind of lawful, normal country.
The actions of this man, who opened fire on Ukrainian forces in support of Russian-backed militants, go some way in revealing just how broken and corrupt modern day Russia is. Instead of facing justice for his unlawful act of interstate aggression, Porechenkov is comfortably continuing his career and advertising French yogurts.
At the same time, instead of properly sanctioning Russia for its overt and covert aggression against other states, most European leaders are trying to do even more business with the Moscow mafia, especially in the field of energy.
Danone has not taken responsibility or apologized, but it did take the advert off the air.
But this isn’t enough and the company needs to own up to its mistake and say sorry to the Ukrainian people.
And as for Porechenkov, he should not be allowed to enter any civilized country without facing arrest for his alleged crimes in Ukraine. And why have Ukrainian law enforcement not issued an Interpol Red Notice arrest warrant against him?
Porechenkov is a man of little talent, little consequence and dubious politics, but he is also a fiery and outspoken propagandist for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
He also entered Ukraine and fired a weapon against Ukrainian soldiers, making him an alleged criminal, a foe to Ukraine, and a recipient of our Order of Lenin. We hope he faces fair and impartial justice in answering for his actions.
