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.
Bill Browder – Order of Yaroslav the Wise
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, U.S.-born British businessman Bill Browder saw opportunities. Setting up the investment company Hermitage Capital Management in 1996, he and his partners planted seed capital of $25 million and, over the next 11 years, saw it grow by a staggering 2,697 percent during the period of corrupt and chaotic privatization.
While ordinary Russians saw their savings wither, wages plunge and life expectancy plummet amid the gangster capitalism of Russia in the late 1990s, the company was also fighting the country’s ubiquitous corruption.
But by 2005, Hermitage’s efforts to disrupt the flow of money from businesses to corrupt Russian bureaucrats had become too successful for the regime of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to ignore. Browder was banned from the country (rather cynically as a “threat to national security”). The state began to bring the pressure of its state-controlled judiciary to bear on Hermitage.
Hermitage lawyer and auditor, the Odesa-born Sergei Magnitsky, died in a Moscow jail on Nov. 16, 2009, at the hands of his jailers, a year after his arrest in 2008 for exposing a major theft scheme by top Russian officials. Human rights activists in and out of Russia have concluded that he was tortured by prison staff and denied medical treatment, killing him.
Since Magnitsky’s death, Browder has worked to punish the Putin regime. This resulted in the 2012 passage by the U. S. Congress of the Magnitsky Act, which sanctions senior Russian officials for human rights abuses.
This infuriated Putin. Russia has four times tried to issue Interpol arrest warrants for Browder, and on Oct. 19 — the same day Canada passed its version of a Magnitsky Act — Putin attacked Browder in public comments. Then, on Oct. 22, Russia used a legal loophole to issue an Interpol “diffusion notice,” which resulted in the United States automatically revoking Browder’s U.S. visa.
That mistake was quickly fixed.
But Putin’s enmity and desire for revenge shows how much the dictator hates Browder and how much the Kremlin leader fears international sanctions on his cronies.
Browder is now in the front ranks in the fight against Putin, although he started out only as a businessman looking to make money. The enemy of our enemy is our friend — and Browder is Ukraine’s Friend of the Week, easily winning the Order of Yaroslav the Wise.
Carter Page – Order of Lenin
In a March 21, 2016 interview with the Washington Post, then presidential candidate Donald J. Trump listed five people as being his among foreign policy advisers. One of the names he gave was that of Carter Page, a little-known U.S. oil industry consultant.
Yet six months later, by late September 2016, members of the Trump campaign were denying that Page played any significant role in the Trump campaign, and claiming that Page had “never met Trump, never briefed him,” and that he had “zero influence.”
The denials came after Page resigned from the campaign due to his name appearing in media reports linking the Trump campaign to the Russian government. According to a report by Yahoo News published on Sept. 23, 2106, U.S. intelligence had earlier started investigating whether Page had set up private communications with Russian officials.
Page had appeared on U.S. intelligence radar when he visited Moscow in early July 2016, ostensibly to give a lecture at a think tank, but also, it appears from testimony Page gave to the U. S. House Intelligence Committee on Nov. 2, 2017, to meet with Russian government officials.
And, according to a transcript of his testimony, Page admitted to sending an e-mail to several other Trump campaign staffers on July 14, 2016, in which he wrote: “As for the Ukraine amendment, excellent work.”
That was two days before the Republican National Convention on July 18, 2016 officially altered its policy stance on Ukraine, softening wording that included “arming Ukraine” to providing “appropriate assistance.”
It would be easy to infer from this congruence of facts that Page, during his visit to Moscow, where according to his own testimony to the U. S. House Intelligence Committee he met with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, had helped arrange a deal that resulted in the softening of the Republican Party’s policies on Ukraine.
There is plenty of other evidence to earn Page the title of Ukraine’s Foe of the Week, and pin him with an Order of Lenin. He has spoken in support of the murderous Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, Ukraine’s chief foe. He has criticized U.S. policies and praised those of the Kremlin. He is regularly quoted by Kremlin propaganda media. Judging by some of his testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, the term “useful idiot” applies
But we may have to wait for fresh criminal indictments from U. S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller to know for sure whether Carter Page is as bad a foe of Ukraine as he appears to be at the moment.
