Elmar Brok – the Order of Yaroslav the Wise
Since this is the week that the European Union finally ratified visa-free travel for Ukrainians, it’s a good time to praise a long-time ally of Ukraine — Elmar Brok, a German member of the European Parliament who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee.
“He has been backing Ukraine and criticizing Russia for years,” Andrii Lavreniuk, Ukrinform’s staff correspondent in Belgium, told the Kyiv Post in 2013.
Brok in 2013 became the target of a smear campaign by discredited ex-First Ukrainian Deputy General Prosecutor Renat Kuzmin, who accused him of being “accompanied by escort girls and large volumes of alcohol at a nightclub in Kyiv’s Troeshchyna” neighborhood.
The political motive seemed clear, even at the time. Brok had been a forceful and outspoken opponent of the conviction and imprisonment of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, then-President Viktor Yanukovych’s biggest political enemy.
Brok took it in stride, denying the accusations and warning Kuzmin — who has since fled abroad along with other Yanukovych cronies — that he “and his friends cannot stop me from working against selective justice and for the freedom of opposition leaders.”
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko recognized Brok’s contributions on April 20 by awarding him the Order of Yaroslav the Wise.
According to the president’s official website, Poroshenko thanked Brok for supporting Ukraine for many years, especially noting his support during the EuroMaidan Revolution that drove Yanukovych from power on Feb. 22, 2014, the ratification of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement, reinforcement of democratic institutions in Ukraine and support for the visa-free regime for Ukrainians.
Brok, in turn, noted Ukraine’s progress in making internal transformations in recent years. The presidential website quoted him as saying that a “successful Ukraine is important for the whole European continent” and that the success of Ukraine “will mean the failure” of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempts to subjugate Ukraine and steer it way from closer integration with Europe.
And the other good thing about Brok is he doesn’t shy away from Ukraine’s need to battle corruption among its elites and establish rule of law.
“A country at war, which is going through a period of transformation, has no other opportunity to show its success to everyone, including Putin, than to successfully implement the reforms,” Brok said on April 20.
Brok also said Ukraine needs to reform the public authorities, calling it the aim of cooperation and dialogue between the European Parliament and the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament.
Dana Rohrabacher – the Order of Lenin
Thanks to an explosive allegation made by U. S. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy on June 16, and only revealed on May 17 by the Washington Post, the world now knows that even top Republicans were suspicious of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ties to two key party leaders — U. S. President Donald J. Trump and U. S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, called Putin’s “favorite congressman.”
“There’re two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Putin,” McCarthy said in a meeting with fellow Republican leaders. The Washington Post obtained a recording of the private talk and published a key excerpt of the transcript.
While later McCarthy tried to dismiss the remark as a joke, it’s no laughing matter to Ukraine.
Californian Rohrabacher, after being tough on the Soviet Union during the Cold War, has flipped and become a leading apologist in Congress for Putin’s dictatorship, human rights abuses and war against Ukraine. His remarks are offensive and often false.
Rohrabacher has tried to remove Sergei Magnitsky’s name from a global anti-corruption law. Magnitsky was murdered in 2009 while imprisoned in Russia after exposing a massive embezzlement scheme involving Russian officials.
Rohrabacher highlights corruption in Ukraine, which is fair enough, but it’s in the context of defending Russia’s war, which is indefensible.
What’s also interesting in the transcript for Ukraine is the conversation that involved separate talks that McCarthy and U. S. House Speaker Paul Ryan had earlier that day with visiting Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman. Part of that centered on the Kremlin tactic of financing populist politicians to undermine democratic institutions, according to the Washington Post.
“So we should not have Ukraine fatigue, we should have Russian fatigue,” Ryan told his fellow Republican lawmakers after hearing from Groysman how Russia is waging its war in various ways — troops, propaganda and cyberattacks — against Ukraine
“So he’s saying they’re doing this throughout Europe. This just isn’t about Ukraine,” Ryan says. And at another point in the conversation: “Russian is trying to turn Ukraine against itself.”
Groysman evidently had impressed Ryan with his pitch about how Ukrainians are defending themselves against Russia and fighting corruption at home. “This guy’s a pretty good guy,” Ryan said. “This guy’s like the anti-corruption guy.”
While Groysman has yet to show himself as the “anti-corruption guy,” the tenor of the Republicans’ conversation was very understanding and supportive of Ukraine. That’s all the more reason that Rohrabacher’s defense of Putin is inexcusable.
