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: Yonet Can Tezel
There are at least 100 foreign diplomatic missions in Ukraine, including 77 ambassadors. Ukraine is losing one of its brightest stars in this community this month when Turkish Ambassador to Ukraine Yonet Can Tezel takes up a new position in Ankara. As a testament to his popularity and the respect that people have for him, the Zoloti Vorota room in the Intercontinental Kyiv hotel was packed with admirers and friends during a Nov. 22 farewell appreciation dinner.
He arrived in Kyiv in Febuary 2014, about two weeks before the climactic and violent end of the EuroMaidan Revolution. Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych fled the country for Russian exile on Feb. 22, 2014, days after police snipers gunned down at least 75 protesters on the streets.
Amid the turmoil, Tezel gave his government an accurate reading of public sentiment, calling it a genuine revolution and successfully countering Kremlin nonsense that American-backed neo-Nazi Ukrainians were engineering a coup. He also articulately expressed Ankara’s condemnation of Russia’s war on Ukraine, including the 2014 invasion and annexation of the Crimean peninsula, which he says Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will never accept.
“We sympathize with the Ukrainian position morally and in international law,” Tezel told the Kyiv Post in October 2017. “We support them because that’s the right thing to do. Strategically and geopolitically, we need Ukraine to be strong and stand on its feet and have democratic, inclusive politics, rule of law, successful reforms and a successful fight against corruption.”
The multilingual Tezel used his charm, diplomatic skills and openness with everyone — including journalists — to smooth out the rough spots in the Ukrainian-Turkish relationship and to answer international criticism of Erdogan’s authoritarian rule and human rights abuses. In fact, Tezel would sometimes record interviewing journalists, not because he distrusted them, he explained, but so that he could review with the aim of improving his future performance.
Among the rough patches: Ukrainians are chagrined that Turkey doesn’t support economic sanctions against Russia and continues to strengthen its economic ties with Moscow, through such investments as the TurkStream pipeline, another undersea natural gas transit route that will carry 31.5 billion cubic meters of gas annually, bypassing Ukraine’s land-based pipelines. But while Ankara has not joined the West in imposing sanctions on Russia, it has banned ship and air traffic between Crimea and Turkey.
Tezel has also taken Ukrainian leaders to task for undertaking reforms too slowly and too half-heartedly, warning that the nation is running out of time, and that business and politics are still too intertwined.
As for Erdogan’s excesses, Tezel resolutely defended the president’s record, saying Turkey remains a democracy, but one with challenges because of the failed violent coup attempt against Erdogan on July 15, 2016. His nation remains disappointed by not receiving stronger support from the West during this crisis. He also never stopped expressing disappointment with journalists who, in his opinion, failed to understand the failed coup the same way that official Ankara does.
Turkey’s importance to Ukraine, not to mention the rest of the world, is crystal clear.
Record amounts of Ukrainians travel to Turkey yearly on vacation while hundreds of Turkish businesses are located in Ukraine. These two factors alone give the relationship between the Black Sea neighbors a rich, deep and nuanced character.
Turkey, as a NATO member, has been also been at odds with Russia’s military intervention in Syria to prop up Bashar al-Assad, the murderous dictator of Damascus. Turkey’s intervention has kept the northern Syrian Idlib province out of Assad’s hands, while Turkey has opened its borders to more than three million Syrian refugees. Importantly, Turkey believes Assad could have been contained — or even defeated — with stronger Western military action, something two successive U.S. presidents have been unwilling to do.
Tezel is Ukraine’s Friend of the Week and a winner of the Order of Yaroslav the Wise for many reasons: the demonstrable improvements t hat have taken place in Ukrainian-Turkish ties under his watch, his resolute stands on the side of right vs. might and, importantly, his shining example of what an ambassador should be.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week: Dmitry Peskov
Lying is part of the job for a Kremlin spokesperson. But Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s personal spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, is a true master of falsehood, who can make his lies achieve more than mere deceit.
For instance, speaking on Dec. 3, a week or so after Russia seized three Ukrainian navy vessels as they attempted to pass through the Kerch Strait from the Black Sea into the Azov Sea, Peskov said Ukrainian accusations that Russia was preparing to seize a land corridor to Crimea along Ukraine’s south coast, taking the cities of Mariupol and Berdyansk, were “absurd.”
“Russia has never seized anything,” he went on.
In the mendacious rhetoric of the Kremlin, lies can be told not merely to deceive: in juxtaposition with denials, they can also be used to issue veiled threats.
Unpicking Peskov’s statement, we can see how it works. First, Peskov says that the possibility that Russia could seize a land bridge to Crimea from the part of Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast it has already occupied, down through Mariupol, across Zaporizhia and Kherson oblasts to Crimea, is absurd.
This is arguably not a lie. While many military experts, both in Ukraine and abroad, have warned since the beginning of Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine in 2014 that the Kremlin might seek to secure its invasion of Ukraine Crimea with just such a land bridge, the prospect still seems remote. Peskov’s characterization of the threat as “absurd,” understates the likelihood of the move, but it is not a lie but an opinion – although perhaps one intended to mislead.
Had Peskov confined his comments just to this statement, it could have been written off merely as standard Kremlin misdirection. But he followed up with an obvious lie (“Russia has never seized anything”), which converted the entire statement into a threat – since Russia has indeed already seized parts of Ukraine, is it really so absurd that it might try to seize some more?
The context of the statement underlines its purpose as a threat: Russia’s slow but sure takeover of the Azov Sea, which has been going on since the Kremlin opened its bridge from Russia to Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimea in May, makes an amphibious assault on Ukraine’s Azov Sea much more doable. Russia’s determination not to allow Ukraine to reinforce its meager naval forces in the Azov Sea, for which the Kremlin was willing to risk some more international outrage, also points to its intention to take full control of the sea area. Ukraine would probably not be able to withstand an amphibious assault on its Azov Sea coast combined with a thrust by Russian armor west from the part of Donetsk Oblast it occupies – the most likely scenario for a military operation to build a land bridge to Crimea.
That said, Russia – fought to a standstill in eastern Ukraine, and bogged down in a military adventure to support a client regime in Syria – may not have the strength to launch a further invasion of Ukraine for the moment.
Most likely Peskov’s mischievous lie/threat was made to stoke nervousness and instability in Ukraine, taking advantage of the ham-fisted way Kyiv introduced martial law in 10 oblasts for 30-days, a measure that arguably produced more anxiety in the country than reassurance.
For that reason he is Ukraine’s Foe of the Week and a winner of the Order of Lenin. Let’s hope that the more people understand how Peskov constructs his false statements, and why, the fewer will be deceived by the Master Liar of Moscow in future.
