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.
Hal F. Foster, Jr.
By BRIAN BONNER
Ukrainian American Marta Kolomayets’ death on Aug. 16 reminded us of people we failed to honor while they were living. So we posthumously awarded Kolomayets, a former journalist who was head of the Fulbright Program in Ukraine at the time of her death at the age of 61, the Order of Yaroslav the Wise as Ukraine’s friend of the week.
This week, we honor another veteran journalist who died this summer. Hal Foster Jr. was a talented member of the craft who died of a heart attack on June 10 at the age of 75.
Foster spent considerable time in Ukraine and in the former Soviet Union. He described it best in his application to become business editor of the Kyiv Post, a year before he died:
“When the war in Ukraine broke out in 2014, I did several stories about it for USA Today. The newspaper asked me to do this because I was familiar with the country – since I had been a Fulbright journalism professor in Lviv and Odesa and had trained Ukrainian journalists in both the U.S. and Ukraine for IREX and other American press-support organizations.”
He teamed up sometimes with Berdyansk, Ukraine journalist Tatyana Goryachova, for whom he led a GoFundMe campaign to pay for her eye surgery after she had acid thrown in her face in 2002, “when her writing offended powerful people in Berdyansk, the city where she lived.”
Foster decided to end his career not with the Kyiv Post, but rather teaching journalism students as a media professor at the University of Idaho in Moscow, a decision he made to be closer to his daughter, Angela Foster, in Portland, Oregon. He also has a son, Dan.
His career was varied and outstanding. He was a true globetrotter. He worked for the Los Angeles Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Stars & Stripes, the Asahi Evening News in Tokyo, Focus in Kazakhstan and the Krakow Post in Poland.
He stayed in contact with Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner, with whom he commiserated about the changing landscape in journalism, and even his early days as an intern for the Minneapolis Tribune, where he got to meet the late legend Molly Ivins.
“I’m a better writer and editor than ever and my health is good, and I want to work. But the news world has changed. Not much fun for me any more,” Foster wrote in one message to Bonner in the summer of 2019. Neither the news business nor teaching is what I remember and loved. I have adapted to the digital world in both news and teaching, but I dislike a lot of it. I love story-telling, and you can’t do that as well with some of the digital limitations.”
His aim at the time was saving up enough money to buy a condo in Thailand and finally retire, but, at other times, journalism was too much in his blood to quit.
His family asks that any donations in his honor be sent to the Freedom Forum Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that advances First Amendment freedoms.
Peter Debbins
By ILLIA PONOMARENKO
Sometimes people do unbelievably stupid things for reasons no sane mind could ever understand.
This was particularly the case with Peter Debbins, the former U.S. Army Special Forces operator who was on Aug. 21 indicted on charges of spying for Russia for years.
His story contains many details that could make a pretty decent movie plot— or, more precisely, a parody spy comedy.
According to U.S. authorities, his mother was born in the Soviet Union, which prompted his interest in Russia. Debbins traveled to Russia and met his future wife there (her father was a military officer).
As a student, he was recruited by Russia’s GRU intelligence agency in 1996. During his secret rendezvouses, he asserted he was a “son of Russia” and was willing to “serve Russia.”
He later joined the U.S. Army to spy for Moscow.
Under the codename “Ikar Lesnikov,” Debbins leaked sensitive information on U.S. military activities worldwide. And, encouraged by the GRU, he managed to build a career as a Green Beret officer, despite his persistent desire to leave.
The indictment materials allege that Debbins assured the Russian operatives he wasn’t a double agent, and just acted out of love and commitment to Russia.
The documents particularly mention that he accepted incredible $1,000 in cash, a bottle of cognac and a Russian military uniform as presents from the GRU. In exchange for that, Debbins exposed personal information on his fellow U.S. Special Force service members.
This continued for years, even after Debbins was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army in 2005. He was “angry and bitter” about his time in the military and told the Russians that America “needed to be cut down in size.”
What’s interesting: During his last visit to Russia in 2010, Debbins asked his old friends from the GRU to help him with setting up a business — but they gave him a kiss-off.
Ultimately, what was done in the dark was brought to the light: In cooperation with Britain’s MI-5, Debbins, now 45, was eventually busted for his old sins. And now he faces spending the rest of his life in prison.
This weird story actually offers a lot of food for thought.
In their memoirs, many intelligence veterans noted that, during the Cold War and afterwards, the glamor and seductiveness of Russian culture and national spirit were used to recruit interested foreigners.
Many of them, like Debbins, foolishly and naively thought they served this idealistic Russia painted for them, a better alternative to the West. But, in fact, they all voluntarily succumbed to a far greater evil.
No matter what Debbins might think of himself, he actually betrayed his country and his fellow servicemen to a grand clique of the power-holders of Russia, not its people. This mafia of FSB and GRU secret agencies, as well as the military and the police, is headed by dictator Vladimir V. Putin and the inner oligarchic circle of the Kremlin.
It is this giant parasite that monopolizes power in Russia for riches, leaving the majority of the country’s population in endless poverty and brainwashing it with aggressive propaganda.
This clique continues unleashing dirty wars for money and power, it assassinates and poisons its enemies around the world and it relentlessly suppresses freedom and justice in Russia and its satellites. This is basic knowledge to anyone reading the news today — but Debbins failed to understand this somehow.
The United States is far from ideal — but his betrayal in favor of a secretive authoritarian mafia up to its elbows in blood says it all about this story.
Useful idiots like Debbins helped strengthen KGB rule in Russia, undermine the West and pave the way for the Kremlin’s aggressive actions against its neighbors, particularly Ukraine, which continues fighting a Russian invasion since 2014.
He made himself an enemy of the values Ukraine believes in as it combats its way toward the future. So the Kyiv Post cannot help but designate Debbins as Ukraine’s Foe of the Week — hoping that after he is sentenced, more people in the West will think twice before succumbing to sweet proposals from the Kremlin.
After all, Debbins betrayed the United States — Ukrane’s biggest ally in the war against Russia’s aggression.
