He keeps thousands of bumblebees in his Kyiv backyard so that they can pollinate the apricot, cherry and magnolia trees in the neighborhood. He’s a trained legal expert as well as an archaeologist, specializing in Roman wall paintings and decorations. He’s also a military veteran. He’s studied classical languages and speaks eight languages – including Ukrainian.
His assignments have taken him to Tanzania, Russia, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Afghanistan, and the United Arab Emirates, where he served as the Dutch ambassador for about 15 months. When he speaks of his duties in the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which he joined in 1993, he describes the good ones as fascinating. And, for him, even the tough ones, have been great learning experiences. Working as a civilian during the war in Afghanistan a decade ago, where Dutch soldiers still serve, may have changed him the most. “We lost people there. So all of a sudden you come to understand what freedom means, what the sacrifices are, what loss means, what is really important and what is not.”
But for the next three years at least, since arriving nine months ago, Jennes de Mol is the Netherlands’ ambassador to Ukraine. It’s a place he chose.
“Ukraine is very much the essence of what is going on in Europe,” de Mol told the Kyiv Post in an April 22 interview at the ambassador’s residence in the Pechersk neighborhood. “It’s important that I can tell Dutch citizens that I can make a difference for them. With this country, I can make a difference for them – with dry eyes, speaking language, having experience in this part of the world. I know what I can do and what people expect from me.”
MH17 experience
He visited Ukraine in 1996, traveling around Crimea. He returned again in 2014 to be part of a task for assisting the investigation into the July 17, 2014, downing of Malaysian Airlines MH17 flight, killing all 298 people on board. The Netherlands lost the greatest number of people, 193, on the flight but people from 10 countries were killed. The Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur flight was shot down by a Buk missile fired from eastern Ukrainian territory under control of Russian-backed militants.
The four indicted defendants – three Russians and one Ukrainian – went under trial on March 9. The proceedings have been adjourned until June 8 as the investigation continues.
The verdicts will be eventually decided by a District Court of The Hague. The suspects are being tried in absentia. While they face life imprisonment if convicted on the murder charges, they are unlikely to be extradited from their hideouts, believed to be in Russia or Kremlin-occupied territory in Ukraine.
The defendants include Russians Sergey Dubinsky, Oleg Pulatov and Igor Girkin, and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko. They all allegedly held senior posts in Russian-backed militias fighting in eastern Ukraine.
Developments can be followed on a government website and the proceedings are broadcast, but the public has not been allowed inside because of coronavirus restrictions.
‘Truth, justice, accountability’
Although the crash took place nearly six years ago, it’s on the minds of the people of the Netherlands constantly, de Mol said.
His main job in 2014 was to help investigators gain access to the crash site, in Russian-controlled parts of the Donbas, “and get them safely outside of the crash site. After 2 and a half weeks, it was nearly impossible to continue working. It became so dangerous that we had to stop. We didn’t want extra victims.”
He said that “MH17 has had an impact on my life ever since that day. I do understand that it also means for something for the people here in Ukraine. Some of them saw body parts coming out of the sky.” All were innocent victims, from scientists to tourists and many other professions, “people suffering because the conflict which was going on in the Donbas. From an emotional point of view, it is still an open nerve in Dutch society.”
When Iran shot down a Ukraine International Airlines flight in January near Tehran, killing all 176 aboard, the incident rekindled painful memories in the Netherlands and sympathy for Ukraine. One difference is that Iran admitted its involvement, while the Dutch are still trying to prove its case involving MH17.
Five nations – Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Ukraine and Malaysia – are involved in the Joint Investigative Team.
“We are going to do all that we can as a government to have truth, justice, and accountability,” he said. “It’s not going to be easy, but we are committed. We are going to go for it.”
While most Dutch people “think there’s a link with Russia, it still has to be proven. We have rule of law. The prosecutor general will have to prove it in courtroom.”
Strong ally of Ukraine
His first assignment to Russia came during the wild 1990s, when Boris Yeltsin ruled, and society was changing quickly. “For me, as a young diplomat, I felt I was in a rocket. Every time I looked back, we were thousands of kilometers further away. There so much going on and it was such a vibrant time.”
By the time he returned for a St. Petersburg, Russia, assignment in the early 2010s, he felt the chill of Russian foreign policy towards the West and deeper control of society by Vladimir Putin.
The Netherlands’ position on Russia’s war against Ukraine is that sanctions should remain in place until the Minsk peace agreements are fulfilled, meaning an end to Russia’s war, withdrawal of troops, and the return of the eastern border to Ukraine’s control. “The sanctions hurt Russia and they also hurt our own business,” he said. “But that’s the price we have to pay.”
2016 Dutch referendum
A Dutch vote rejecting closer European Union ties with Ukraine, specifically a political and trade association agreement, left Ukrainians feeling rejected. But de Mol said the vote had more to do with Dutch politics than with Ukraine. He said many people were skeptical about the speed with which the EU had enlarged, particularly for Eastern European nations. They registered their disapproval in the advisory vote on Ukraine.
But Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte ratified the association agreement anyway and it has now been in place since 2017, bringing Ukraine and the EU nations closer together. “If you look about the realities of the referendum it was about ourselves and Euro-skepticism and about fear for EU enlargement.”
Coronavirus
Thus far, the coronavirus has hit the Netherlands much harder than Ukraine – more than 4,000 deaths there compared to under 200 deaths in Ukraine as of April 24; more than 34,000 infections, compared to less than 10,000 in Ukraine. The Dutch tulip industry and other sectors have suffered. Mass events have been canceled. And quarantine restrictions are in place through May 19.
“As a country, we’re united and committed to solving this,” he said.
He’s watching how Ukraine combats the pandemic. For him, it’s curtailed his personal style as a diplomat. “Unfortunately, it’s changed my life from three-dimensional to two-dimensional contact with the world, which I now see through a screen. But I want to be touching you. That’s my work. I have to dig into the deeper layers of society. It’s difficult when you are limited to the world of the screen. That’s what I miss.”
Building democracy
Besides the Netherlands’ involvement with EU assistance programs to Ukraine, the Dutch have kept a separate bilateral aid program that has spent 55 million euros since 2014. They’ve supported Hromadske public television, defense reform, and initiatives in civil society, ProZorro to make public purchases more transparent, human rights, and judicial reform, among other areas of involvement.
“For people to come in and invest, predictability and rule of law are important in our programs,” the ambassador said.
He said that economically, Ukraine and the Netherlands would be a “match made in heaven” if they forged deeper agricultural ties that combined Dutch technologies and ecological sensitivities with Ukraine’s black-earth fertility. As it stands, trade approaching $3 billion annually is quite robust – and in Ukraine’s favor.
He would like to see Ukraine follow the Dutch example of using inland waterways for greater volumes of transportation, rather than roads. He noted that Ukraine used to carry 60 million tons through inland waterways in the 1990s, but that has dropped to 7 million tons in recent years. “It’s peanuts.”
Small economic superpower
While the Netherlands has a powerful economy, it has only 17 million people, yet “we have our own relationship with this country.” He said high-level meetings and visits take regularly, including Rutte with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Davos in January. He’s satisfied with his access to officials, especially Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. High-level visits challenge nations to think about what they want from each other and the relationship, “what are the deliverables.”
‘Change is there’
So far, the Dutch government has responded favorably to Zelensky’s first year in office.
“We are optimistic about the reform process and we support the president in his efforts,” the ambassador said. “The challenges are huge. He woke up in a perfect storm. It started with being in the eye of an American political tornado (involving the impeachment of U.S. President Donald J. Trump). The coronavirus. The beginnings of an economic crisis. The need to pass a banking law to get International Monetary Fund loans. And we still have the oligarchs.
“At the same time; change is there,” de Mol said. “And I think that people understand the need to have to change. People will change.”
