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: Heather Nauert
Those following Russia’s war on Ukraine will know the name of Nadia Savchenko, the Ukrainian pilot and volunteer fighter who was abducted from Ukraine in June 2014. Savchenko was held hostage by Russia for nearly two years and subjected to a sham trial before being released in May 2016 in exchange for two Russian soldiers captured in Ukraine in May 2015.
Also well-known outside the country is Oleg Sentsov, the Ukrainian filmmaker from Crimea, who was captured by Russia occupation forces in Crimea, and subjected to bogus terrorism charges in another sham trial. He was sentenced in August 2015 to 20 years in prison, and has been kept as a political prisoner in Russia ever since. Russia refuses to extradite Sentsov to Ukraine, falsely claiming he is a Russian citizen.
But few will have heard about the plights of the other 65 Ukrainian political prisoners held hostage by Russia, including that of Volodymyr Balukh, a Ukrainian citizen in Russian-occupied Crimea jailed for flying a Ukrainian flag over his house. Balukh was arrested in December 2016, accused of “possession of ammunition” – a charge he denies. He was jailed for three years and seven months. On March 19, he declared a hunger strike, which as of the time of writing is in its 45th day. Doctors have been denied access to him, according to human rights activists in Crimea.
It important that cases like that of Balukh do not go unnoticed in the West. Russia’s lie that the people of Crimea voted willingly to join Russia must not go unchallenged – in reality, the referendum was a sham, held at gunpoint, observed by a motley collection of European fascists and leftist extremists, and its turnout and result are highly dubious. Many Ukrainians in Crimea oppose the Russian occupation, and a few are willing to die rather than submit to the Kremlin’s police-state rule.
Given that Russia, under its sinister dictator Vladimir Putin, is now a repressive authoritarian state, it is not surprising that very few people under its rule openly defy it. More surprising is that some people, like Balukh, still have the courage to do so. They must not be forgotten.
So U.S. State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert is Ukraine’s Friend of the Week and a winner of the Order of Yaroslav the Wise for calling on May 2 for the Russian occupation authorities to release Balukh, and for highlighting the plight of the Ukrainian political prisoners being held in Russia.
“(It is) unacceptable for Russia to jail a Ukrainian citizen for flying a Ukrainian flag in Crimea and deny him medical care,” Nauert wrote on Twitter on May 2.
But while Ukrainians should thank Nauert and the U.S. State Department for raising awareness of the issue internationally, they should also be pressing the Ukrainian government to do more to help those of their compatriots that have been jailed by Russia, or who now find themselves trapped in the vast prison camp that Russian-occupied Crimea has become.
According to the families of those who have been captured by the Kremlin’s police state, and the civil activists who support them, the Ukrainian government is doing too little to free the hostages. At the very least, a law should be passed that gives the hostages a legal status, like that of the prisoners Russia has taken in the occupied part of the Donbas, so that there is a process that can be followed to obtain their release.
Otherwise, there is the horrible prospect of yet more Ukrainians dying as a result of Kremlin aggression – not on the battlefield, but in the jails of a hostile state.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week: Jean-Claude Juncker
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, known for his gaffes and unconventional political style (he slapped Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban in the face, rather hard, by way of greeting at one European Union summit), has done it again.
Speaking with the Dutch daily newspaper Trouw on April 28, Juncker breezily declared that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was his “friend,” and that “we need to re-establish contact with Russia,” according to a report of the interview by Politico.
Juncker went on to say that “we must learn to talk to Russians on an equal footing, at eye level.”
No, we must not. Russia is not the equal of the EU. Russia’s gross domestic product is the same size as the combined GDPs of two EU members – the Netherlands and Belgium. Russia’s population is barely a fifth of that of the European Union. Russian conventional defense spending in 2018 is expected at $47 billion, barely half the amount France and Germany plan to spend. Add in other big EU defense budgets and the union’s conventional defense spending is more than five times greater. (These figures are from the defense analysis website globalfirepower.com, and do not include spending on nuclear weapons.)
And of course, Russia can in no regard be considered the equal of the EU politically. Russia is a squalid police state, festering with neo-fascism, headed by a sinister tyrant whose enemies often wind up poisoned, or dead, or both. Political protests are crushed, elections are rigged, and the media muzzled in Putin’s Russia. The Kremlin is also a meddler in the politics of others, attempting to influence elections in democratic states, sowing discord on online media, and stealing data, then leaking it, in order to try to influence public opinion. Its propaganda channels, RT and Sputink, addle the minds of useful idiots in the West and beyond. It lies about its actions, or denies them.
Worse, it takes its quarrels beyond its borders, assassinating former spies and others who have fallen out with the Kremlin regime. It also starts wars in other countries, and invades and occupies parts of their territory.
Yet Juncker proposes that Russia is the equal of the European Union. This is a disgraceful, foolish comparison. The European Union is built on mutual cooperation; Russia is built on imperialism. The European Union enforces the rule of law; the Kremlin bends the law to its will. The European Union espouses democracy; Russia is effectively a dictatorship. The European Union stands for equal rights for all, regardless of gender, race, or sexual orientation; The Kremlin despises such liberalism.
What Russia does have is the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world, and this is what elevates it from being a regional, to a world power.
But being a nuclear state does not make Russia great, or the equal of the European Union, or its superior. That’s like saying armed muggers are equal or superior to their victims.
To make matters worse, as well as unjustifiably talking up Russia, Juncker denigrated the European Union, the political grouping he is supposed to represent.
“We Europeans sometimes think that we are the boss of the world,” Juncker told Trouw. “We forget that we are a small and weak part of the universe. We are losing economic power. We are slowly but surely falling from 25 percent of global gross national income to 18-16 percent.”
“We are on the losing side also demographically,” he said, adding: “We exist culturally, but we are not dominant. So I always invite everyone here to a more pronounced modesty. We must indeed listen to the rest of the world.”
Talk like that is manna for the lie-hungry propagandists of the Kremlin, which likes nothing better than to see the leaders of its enemies appear weak and disunited – and disunited they will be, as there are lots of EU leaders that profoundly disagree with Juncker and can appreciate how foolish his sentiments are.
Juncker wins an Order of Lenin and is Ukraine’s foe of the week for giving succor to Ukraine’s chief enemy. It’s his third win. We hope there won’t be any more, but we wouldn’t bet on it.
