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: Brian Whitmore
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.”
That sage advice from the ancient Chinese General Sun Tzu is as true today as it was 2,500 years ago, when he gave it in his book “The Art of War,” which is required reading in many a modern military school.
In Ukraine’s case, at this point in history, knowing one’s enemy means knowing Russia, or rather the Kremlin, that parasitical power structure that Ukraine’s neighbor to the north and east has hosted for centuries.
So opaque is Russia’s system of government that the term “Kremlinology” was coined in the early years of the Cold War to describe the study of Russian (then Soviet) politics. And as, after a brief flirtation with democracy in the 1990s, Russia is back to being an authoritarian state run from that grim citadel in Moscow, the discipline of Kremlinology is again relevant.
And that’s where Brian Whitmore, Ukraine’s Friend of the Week and a winner of the Order of Yaroslav the Wise, comes in.
Whitmore is the author of the Power Vertical blog, formerly hosted by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and now hosted by the Center for European Policy Analysis, or CEPA, where he is a senior fellow.
The blog includes a podcast of the same name which is a weekly treat for Kremlinologists. Of course, with Russia waging an undeclared war on Ukraine in the Donbas, the insights Whitmore and his guests give on Kremlin goings-on are useful for Ukraine-watchers as well.
In particular, recent Power Vertical podcasts have focused on what Russia’s military thinkers might have learned from their country’s stalemated four-year war on Ukraine, how the West can respond to the Kremlin’s propaganda offensive on social media, and the implications of Russia’s militarization of the Azov Sea region.
While an expert on Russia, Whitmore, who joined CEPA in April 2018 to head its new Russia Program at its Washington D.C. office, is no stranger to Ukraine either, having previously worked as a visiting lecturer in the History Faculty at Mechnikov National University in Odesa.
Moreover, he will be back in the country on Dec. 11 for the Kyiv Post’s Tiger Conference at the Intercontinental Kyiv hotel, where he will be a speaker on the Innovations in Security and Defense panel. We at the Kyiv Post are looking forward to hearing what more insights Whitmore has about Ukraine’s deadliest foe.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week: Dana Rohrabacher
Vladimir Putin will have to find another favorite in Congress.
Dana Rohrahbacker, dubbed “Putin’s favorite Congressman” for his pro-Kremlin stance, in the early hours of Nov. 7 lost his battle for reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives from California’s 48th congressional district.
Rohrahbacker, a staunch supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump, lost to Haley Rouda, a real estate business and lawyer who switched from the Republican to the Democratic party to challenge the 71-year old Rohrabacher, who first entered Congress in 1989.
Before accepting defeat, and while he was still a few dozen votes ahead in the count, Rohrabacher gave a final, graceless speech to his supporters, accusing “billionaires” of being behind the campaign to unseat him.
That, of course, was a soft dog-whistle to neo-Nazi conspiracy theorists, who believe that the Hungarian-American billionaire financier and philanthropist George Soros not only funds protests against Trump in the United States, but is also the financial backer of the “caravan” of asylum seekers currently moving through Mexico towards the U.S. border. Trump used the “caravan” as a political vehicle to stoke up anti-immigrant feeling ahead of the U.S. mid-term elections, sending soldiers to the border as a political stunt even though the asylum seekers are still weeks from reaching the United States.
Why Soros? Because he’s Jewish.
Rohrabacher has long been an advocate of closer relations with Russia, even tweeting in April 2014 that “if the majority of people in Alaska want to be part of Russia then it’s OK with me.”
Being pro-Kremlin of course now equates to being anti-Ukrainian following the Kremlin’s attack on Ukraine in the wake of the EuroMaidan Revolution. Rohrabacher defended Russia’s invasion and occupation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, absurdly claiming that the sham referendum the Kremlin carried out in Crimea accurately reflected the will of Crimeans.
And in a vote in the U.S. Congress on March 27, 2014, soon after Russia’s invasion of Crimea, Rohrabacher was one of 17 Republicans who opposed a bill to grant aid to Ukraine. Earlier, he said that the United States shouldn’t take sides in the dispute between Ukraine and Russia.
Rohrabacher has been so fawningly pro-Putin that even his fellow Republicans became suspicious of him: House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, in a private conversation on June 15, 2016 on Capitol Hill, speaking with his fellow Republican leaders, even claimed Rohrabacher could be in the pay of Putin.
“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in the conversation, which was recorded and later verified by The Washington Post.
Meanwhile, Rohrabacher is Ukraine’s Foe of the Week and a winner of the odious Order of Lenin. We hope we never hear of him again, but, having lost his job in the U.S. Congress, he could even turn up soon as a guest presenter on RT, the Russian propaganda outlet that masquerades as an international news channel.
But that’s the kind of place he belongs, anyway – not in the U.S. Congress.
