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: Chrystia Freeland
The world has changed with amazing rapidity since 2014, when Russia began its military aggression against Ukraine with the invasion and start of the occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea.
Since then, Russia has started a war on Ukraine in the Donbas, shot down a civilian airliner over eastern Ukraine, intervened militarily to prop up its client dictator Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and interfered in the U.S. presidential elections and, probably, in the “Brexit” referendum in the United Kingdom on leaving the European Union. The Kremlin’s attempts to interfere in presidential and general elections in France and Germany were apparently less successful.
Meanwhile, far-right populism, with Kremlin support, is on the rise in Europe, and the United States has a president that seemingly has more sympathy for murderous dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un than the leaders of long-time allies of the United States, like Germany and Canada.
One thing for which Ukraine can be grateful is that Canada has been unwavering in its support over the last four, difficult years. That is in no small part due to the work of Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, Ukraine’s Friend of the Week and a winner of the Order of Yaroslav the Wise.
Freeland, who is partly of Ukrainian descent, is fully aware of the nature of the threat Ukraine, and the world in general, currently faces from the Kremlin. She is the author of two books, one of which is on Russia’s transition from communism to authoritarian kleptocapitalism, and the other on the rise of the super-rich, including Russia’s oligarchs.
Before entering politics in 2013, Freedland was a journalist, working in Kyiv and Moscow for top publications, such as the FT and the Economist. She was in a unique position to gain understanding of the issues facing the countries in the region, and can speak with authority on their problems, and solutions to them.
Addressing the Ukraine Reform Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark on June 27, Freeland rightly pointed out that what happens in Ukraine will be a litmus test for the whole of the civilized world. If Ukraine, facing the brunt of the Kremlin’s assault on the rules-based world order, fails to achieve success, then the writing could be on the wall for the liberal democracies, as Freeland well understands.
The Kremlin knows who are its foes, and in 2014 Freeland was banned from visiting Russia. While banning the foreign minister of another country from visiting Russia is almost unprecedented (former Romanian Foreign Minister Adrian Cioroianu has also been banned), it is typical of the Putin Kremlin’s spiteful and petty approach to foreign relations – Freeland’s love of the Russian language and culture, and of the country’s capital Moscow, is well known.
We hope Freeland is one day able to visit her old haunts in Moscow again – once the Putin regime is gone and Russia goes from a rogue, neo-fascist police state to a respected liberal democracy. Until then, Canada’s foreign minister is welcome in Kyiv any time, as a true and valued friend of Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week: Alexander Shulgin
The use of chemical weapons is on the rise in the world: In Britain, a former Russian spy, Sergey Skripal, and his daughter Yulia were poisoned by a “novichok” nerve agent in March. There have been multiple cases of use of chlorine gas and the nerve agent sarin against civilians in Syria in recent years, most likely by the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, while Islamist rebels in Syria have also been accused of using mustard gas.
With the use of these horrendous weapons becoming more brazen, it would seem the ideal time to increase the powers of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons or OPCW to name the perpetrators of these crimes against humanity.
At the moment, the OPCW is mandated to investigate possible cases of use of chemical weapons, but it does not have a mandate to indicate who is responsible for such attacks. But naming, shaming, and holding to account in the international courts those who use chemical weapons would have a powerful deterrent effect. What country could possible object to the OPCW, and independent watchdog, being granted increased powers to identify suspected criminals?
Russia, of course.
The world was subjected to a disgraceful display of Kremlin obstructionism on June 26 in The Hague in the Netherlands as the OPCW met in an extraordinary session, with Britain proposing to grant the chemical weapons watchdog the powers to name states it believes are responsible for illegal attacks.
From the beginning of the meeting, Russian Ambassador to the Netherlands Alexander Shulgin, who is also Russia’s representative to the OPCW, attempted to disrupt the gathering.
Shulgin, Ukraine’s Foe of the Week and a winner of the odious Order of Lenin, questioned whether some states had the right to vote, because some were behind on paying their dues to the organization. He then demanded answers to Russia questions immediately, rather than after the session as is usual.
Shulgin then proposed a ten-minute break. The meeting had already been going on for an hour, with nothing achieved. Next he claimed there was confusion over the voting rules.
There was none.
Shulgin again asked for clarification on which countries were allowed to vote. It had already been given by the meeting chairman.
Two hours into the meeting, and there still had been no vote on a provisional agenda. Russia’s loathsome allies, the brutal regimes of Iran and Syria, also raised the question of who was eligible to vote, and whether the vote would be private.
And so it continued, for hours more.
Russia’s aim was clear: to sabotage the work and undermine the legitimacy of this international institution. That is because the Kremlin was almost certainly behind the chemical weapons attack on the Skripals, and its client dictator Assad is undoubtedly to blame for the chlorine and sarin attacks on Syrian civilians.
More broadly, the Kremlin aims to undermine the legitimacy of all international institutions of the civilized world, as they work under the principle of the rule of law, which is anathema to Moscow.
It sabotages the work of the United Nations Security Council, preventing there being proper investigations into war crimes in Syria, its own actions in Ukraine, or the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17. It abuses Interpol to pursue political foes of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Ambassador Shulgin’s shameful performance on June 26 should be a wake-up call to the international community. Russia will continue to disrupt the work of all law-based international institutions until it is stopped.
Russia should be kicked out of all such organizations until a government comes to power in the Kremlin that will behave in a cooperative, civilized and law-abiding manner.
Until then, the civilized world can expect nothing but more poison from the Kremlin.
