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 — Kristalina Georgieva, managing director at International Monetary Fund
It’s a secret to no one that Ukraine is still very much dependent on foreign loans to keep afloat.
And what is even more obvious is that things with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Ukraine’s primary loaner, have not been running smoothly for quite a long time.
Ukraine is part of IMF’s standby program worth $5 billion that would hopefully help plug many holes in our economy. Yet, the Constitutional Court overruling important anti-corruption legislation or abolishing criminal responsibility for false declaration of assets by officials, and many other stunts, in fact, paved the way to IMF’s very real loan denial.
Yet, now the organization’s stance seems to be pretty tough though reasonably flexible regarding Ukraine.
On July 28, the IMF managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, had a phone conversation with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, which resulted on a positive note.
“Very constructive call with President (Zelensky) on Ukraine’s sound economic progress made under the IMF program,” Georgieva’s Twitter said. “Look forward to our productive engagement to advance our work on remaining issues during a mission in September.”
So we should welcome IMF envoys as soon as early this fall. Hopefully, their visit would bring us yet another much-awaited $2.5 billion bundle.
In the wake of what’s has happened over the last year to our anti-corruption grid, we should be thankful to Georgieva for giving Ukraine another chance.
It is true that our war on corruption is not always stacking up well and our adversary often hits hard. Yet, the train rolls on, slowly but steadily.
So Georgieva is our country’s friend of the week — for not giving up on us in this fight.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week — Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser
America’s recent shameful surrender to Nord Stream 2, the Russian-German gas pipeline project, is the first global diplomatic defeat for the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden.
Biden preached being tough and hard on the Kremlin, called his counterpart Vladimir Putin a killer. But when the moment came, he chose the easiest path and gave up, basically without a fight.
His recent deal with Angela Merkel of Germany indeed made the pipeline a fait accompli. The Kremlin is going to greatly amplify its political influence in Europe and make it more dependent than ever before.
No wonder that many observers call this deal “the Molotov-Ribbentrop pipeline pact.” Its influence on future power balance in Eastern Europe will be of historic scale.
Now we know a lot about who was among the architects of such an inglorious call.
Many American newspapers, including the Washington Post, say that there was a hard argument over what to do about the pipeline.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his team pushed for full-scale sanctions pressure on any individuals and entities involved in the construction. Meanwhile, many other, such as Biden’s advisor Jake Sullivan, pushed for a softer policy — as they did not want to “alienate” Germany over the pipeline that would certainly be completed anyway.
As the following events show, the do-nothing party prevailed.
It would be quite a difficult task to find a case in history when the easiest way of striking an easy deal with the devil was a good choice. Whoever doubts this, should fan through a World War II history textbook.
Yet, rulers and shakers around the world seem to never listen to this lesson.
So the U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan is Ukraine’s foe of this week. He gets the symbolic Order of Lenin as a personification of this weak, spineless, and hypocritical policy the Biden administration has embraced now towards Nord Stream 2.
