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.
Meryl Streep – Order of Yaroslav The Wise
Meryl Streep attends the red carpet arrivals at the 19th Costume Designers Guild awards presented by Lacoste at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills, on Feb. 21, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / CHRIS DELMAS
It’s not every day that a Hollywood superstar lends a hand to Ukraine and free speech, but such was the case on April 25 when Meryl Streep, the Academy Award-winning actress, called on Russia to free Oleg Sentsov.
Sentsov is the Ukrainian filmmaker imprisoned for three years already for speaking out against Russia’s military invasion and illegal annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014.
Streep attended the ceremony in New York at which Sentsov received the 2017 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write award to call attention to persecuted writers. She and Ukrainian lawmaker Mustafa Nayyem posed for a photograph with a “Free Sentsov” sign.
Nayyem said that Streep cried during a video about Sentsov shown at the award ceremony.
Russia arrested Sentsov in May 2014 and fabricated charges of terrorism against him in August 2015. He is serving a 20-year prison sentence in Yakutsk, Russia.
Since the launch of the award in 1987, PEN America has honored more than 50 writers, while 37 out of 41 imprisoned writers who won the award were ultimately set free.
Sentsov “has shown unflinching courage in the face of Putin’s brutal treatment,” according to the committee that honored him, citing a passage in a letter he wrote from prison: “If we’re supposed to become nails in the coffin of a tyrant, I’d like to become one of those nails. Just know that this particular nail will not bend.”
World Press Freedom Day on May 3 took place during an increasingly repressive environment globally, according to Reporters Without Borders upon the April 26 release of its annual Press Freedom Index. Ukraine ranked only 102nd out of 180 nations.
“Since the 2014 revolution, the Ukrainian authorities have adopted a number of reforms, including media ownership transparency and access to state-held information, but more is needed to loosen the oligarchs’ tight grip on the media and encourage editorial independence,” the advocacy group wrote. “In 2016, the authorities again proved powerless to protect media outlets from attacks such as journalist Pavel Sheremet’s murder, the publication of the personal data of thousands of journalists accused of ‘treason,’ and an arson attack on Inter TV’s headquarters. In the lawless separatist-controlled areas in the east, there are still no critical journalists or foreign observers.”
All the more reason that the world needs people like Streep.
Viktor Medvedchuk – the Order of Lenin
Viktor Medvedchuk is sometimes called the “Prince of Darkness” in Ukraine.
Viktor Medvedchuk, 62, has been a cynical cancer on Ukraine for far too long. He should move to Russia, where he would fit in with his war criminal friend, Vladimir Putin, and the rest of the Kremlin mafia.
As we wrote in a Nov. 26, 2008, editorial: “Does this ‘Prince of Darkness’ deserve to be in prison? If not, how long will it take before he gets the message that he deserves no respect?”
The lawyer acquired a fortune during the corrupt 1990s, when he and associates gained control over media outlets and energy utilities. Medvedchuk used the nationwide reach of Inter TV station to shamelessly promote the “oligarch’s party,” which flopped because Ukrainain voters can spot self-serving frauds when they see them.
He sank to greater depths as 2002–2005 chief of staff for ex-President Leonid Kuchma, when “temnyky” orders dictated how journalists covered news. He arrived after the release of hundreds of hours of recordings of Kuchma’s conversations from 1999–2000, made by a former presidential bodyguard. The tapes showed Kuchma running the nation like a mafia godfather. Of course, nobody was ever prosecuted. Some believe Medvedchuk’s duties included ensuring that Kuchma’s chosen successor, Viktor Yanukovych, got elected in 2004. Others think he wanted to keep Kuchma in power. Fortunately, both efforts failed. The electon rigging in 2004 triggered the Orange Revolution that brought Viktor Yushchenko to power.
He remains under U.S. sanctions for “threatening the peace, security, stability, sovereignty or territorial integrity” of Ukraine. The U.S. Treasury Department in 2014 said he was “involved in the development of the scenario that led to clashes outside the Presidential Administration in Kyiv on Dec. 1, 2013” during the EuroMaidan Revolution that drove Kremlin stooge Yanukovych from power on Feb. 22, 2014.
Yet somehow he’s kept his role as a negotiator on behalf of Ukraine’s interests in Russia’s war, along with special permission to fly directly to Moscow from Kyiv.
He says he’s a patriot acting in Ukraine’s interests. But if he’s not Putin’s agent, he acts like it. Putin is the godfather of Medvedchuk’s younger daughter.
In 2013, his Ukrainian Choice campaign lobbied against Ukraine’s Western integration. He told the Financial Times in a recent interview that “Ukraine doesn’t need” NATO. Wrong as usual. Russia’s war shows Ukraine how dangerous life is without membership in NATO or the European Union.
