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, 100 years after the October Revolution he led.
Ukraine’s Friend of the Week: Kurt Volker
In a war in which lies are fired off almost as frequently as shells, it’s refreshing to hear some truth for a change.
U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker quite truthfully pointed out on Aug. 12 that the Kremlin is keeping its war in Ukraine going by maintaining tight control over a section of Ukraine’s border with Russia. Russia refuses to allow the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine to monitor all but two crossing points, while another 400 kilometers of border are completely open.
Russia has denied fomenting war in Donbas, and sustaining it for the last four years. But it has always been obvious that the Kremlin was responsible for the fighting by arming groups of criminals and separatists, sending in its own special forces to capture security infrastructure, and encouraging Russian volunteers to join the fray.
Vehicles that could only have come from Russia, such as certain types of tanks, armored cars, and electronic warfare units, have been spotted, photographed and videoed in the parts of the Donbas now controlled by Russia.
And of course there was the dreadful case of the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, when Russia’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade sent a BUK surface-to-air missile launcher from its base in Kursk, Russia, south to Ukraine. The launcher was sent clandestinely across the border into Ukraine, where it later shot down the civilian airliner, killing 298 people.
All this has only been possible because Russia controls, and refuses to allow the monitoring of, a section of Ukraine’s border with Russia in the Donbas. As Volker said in a thread of tweets posted on Aug. 9, according to Point 9 of the Minsk II protocol, Ukraine is to regain control of its border with Russia on the day after local elections are held in the Russian-occupied zone.
But points 1 to 3 of the protocol stipulate measures to sustain a ceasefire and withdraw foreign fighters and their weapons, which should certainly include international monitoring of the border, under the mandate of the OSCE, to ensure fighters and weapons are indeed crossing the border, but only in one direction – out of Ukraine, and back to Russia.
Yet Russia still refuses to allow the vast majority of the border to be monitored. Thanks to a long-range unmanned aerial vehicle operated by the OSCE, it is now quite clear why that is.
The OSCE on Aug. 9 released a report in which it said one of its UAVs had spotted two convoys of military-style trucks crossing the Ukrainian-Russian border (one leaving, one coming in) in the dead of night, at an unmarked border crossing. It subsequently released video of the incident.
While the contents of these trucks are unknown, it is almost certain that they were carrying arms, ammunition, supplies and probably fighters. Even if these trucks were carrying humanitarian aid, why illegally cross Ukraine’s border in the middle of nowhere, in the dead of night?
The Kremlin has not commented on the OSCE’s report. How could it? If it denied sending the convoys, it would be obvious to everyone it is lying. If it admitted to this breach of Ukraine’s border, it would be admitting to violating Ukraine’s territorial integrity. So it says nothing. But given its past lying about its military’s involvement in the war in Ukraine, that is also a kind of lie.
Volker is Ukraine’s Friend of the Week and a winner of the Order of Yaroslav the Wise for telling the truth about the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine. In this, the most “uncivil” war in history, truth will always be Ukraine’s chief ally – unchanging, and increasingly obvious despite the Kremlin’s attempts to obscure it.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week: Jarosław Kaczyński
That the Kremlin should abuse Interpol’s Red Notice system to persecute its political foes is to be expected, but that the government of a European Union country should likewise abuse the Schengen Information System to bar a critic from the EU is shocking.
But that’s what Poland has done. On Aug. 13, on arriving in Brussels, Belgium, Ukrainian human rights activist Lyudmila Kozlovska was informed at passport control that Poland had requested that she be deported from the EU. When the Belgian border police contacted Poland for confirmation, they received a response in two hours – it normally takes 12, according to Ukrainian human rights activist Halya Coynash, who wrote about the case on Aug. 16.
Kozlovska, who is married to a Polish citizen and who has lived in Poland for 10 years, is now banned from entering not just Poland, but all EU states. She apparently earned the ire of Poland, or more accurately its ruling Law and Justice party, because of her activism in opposing the party’s attacks on the independence of Poland’s judiciary.
Jarosław Kaczyński, the chairman of the Law and Justice party, is thus Ukraine’s Foe of the Week and a winner of the Order of Lenin for this outrageous attack on a Ukrainian civil activist. While Kaczyński, a member of the Polish Sejm or parliament, currently holds no high office in Poland (he is a former prime minister), he is widely seen as one of Poland’s most influential politicians.
And it is undoubtedly Kaczyński who has set Poland on its present anti-democratic course. He is considered the de facto ruler of Poland, giving orders to the country’s president and prime minister – which of course smacks of authoritarianism. Law and Justice, a right-wing, nationalist party, has indeed attempted to boost its control over the country’s judiciary – one of the first steps authoritarians take when they attempt to seize power.
Another step budding authoritarians take is to undermine, muzzle and control the press, and Law and Justice has been doing that too: last year, the U.S. democracy and freedoms watchdog Freedom House cut Poland’s press freedom status from “free” to “partly free.”
According to Freedom House, “Poland’s status declined from Free to Partly Free due to government intolerance toward independent or critical reporting, excessive political interference in the affairs of public media, and restrictions on speech regarding Polish history and identity, which have collectively contributed to increased self-censorship and polarization.”
It is ironic that the Law and Justice party under Kaczyński seems to be bent on abusing EU laws and shackling Polish justice. It is also ironic that Poland, a country that many Ukrainians had seen as an example of what Ukraine could become – a member of the EU, respecting human rights and freedoms under the rule of law – could have already strayed so far from the democratic path as to persecute a Ukrainian civil activist.
Shame on Kaczyński for bringing Poland to such a state that it has started to ape the tactics of authoritarian states like Russia, Ukraine’s chief foe. Let’s hope the EU finally flexes its legal muscles and punishes the Polish government for breaching Poland’s commitments as a member of the union. The outrageous banning of Kozlovska from Poland and the EU should be cancelled forthwith.
