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.
Jan Pieklo – Order of Yaroslav the Wise
Back in 2013, only four years ago, it would have been difficult to predict the state the world has now entered. Ukraine: four years at war, with no end in sight; Europe: far-right parties on the rise, the leader of one even challenging for the French presidency; Britain: writhing in a spasm of economic vandalism and reputational self-harm though its absurd Brexit; and the United States: the office of president occupied by a man who says some neo-Nazis “are good people,” and who tweets fake hate videos from a far-right group.
Russia, of course, started the war in Ukraine and is the source of many of the country’s troubles, and given the fact that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and there are rising suspicions it also interfered in the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, it is tempting to blame this sudden deterioration of the state of the world on Vladimir Putin, the Russian dictator.
But Putin is no cat-stroking super villain. His policy in Ukraine has been a disaster. He has brought sanctions on his country. Russia’s once massive reserves may be exhausted by next year. Meanwhile, the cost of maintaining occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea and propping up its forces in the Donbas is draining Kremlin coffers.
Putin’s “successes” often come only with the help of “useful idiots” in other countries, as Poland’s ambassador to Ukraine, Jan Pieklo, pointed out in an interview with Dilova Stolistsya newspaper published on Dec. 10.
“Honestly, there are marginal groups of useful idiots who want to spoil our good neighborly relations, both from the Polish side and the Ukrainian side, and, unfortunately, they have reached the mainstream,” Pieklo said.
A perceptive observation: the weaknesses of the West, the underlying xenophobia, racism and class inequalities, the weakening of public trust in democratic institutions and the media — these have all been mainstreamed by a group of formerly marginal figures.
It may be that Putin has aided these people, with money or informational support, but in the end they are our idiots, not his. The title of Ukraine’s Friend of the Week and Order of Yaroslav the Wise winner goes to Pieklo for his work to smooth Ukrainian-Polish relations. It will take honesty, self-reflection and intelligence to overcome the harmful effects of Putin and our own useful idiots. It will also require the help of useful friends, and we should cultivate them.
Thierry Mariani – Order of Lenin
The website nrt24.ru, a propaganda outlet supporting Russia’s war in eastern Ukraine, on Dec. 9 issued a report, in French, claiming that Ukrainian armed forces had attacked the Donetsk Water Filtration Plant near the government-controlled city of Avdiyivka with white phosphorous — a particularly savage incendiary munition — a splash of the ignited agent on the skin will burn to the bone.
The same day, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which monitors the war in Ukraine, said the report was false.
Such reports have been regularly made in Ukraine, but there has not be a single confirmed case, according to investigations by Human Rights Watch and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.
The Russian media have been particularly egregious with false claims about the use of white phosphorous by Ukraine.
Nevertheless, there are politicians in the West that lap up these lies. One is the French politician Thierry Mariani, a member of the Republicans party, a French National Assembly member and transport minister under the government of French Prime Minister Francois Fillon from 2010 to 2012.
On Dec. 9, Mariani retweeted a tweet on the false nrt24.ru report by Nicolas Dhuicq — another French National Assembly Member and member of Les Républicains.
Even after the OSCE, an organization of which Mariani is a member, debunked the false Kremlin propaganda report, the retweet of the fake news was still on Mariani’s timeline as of Dec. 11.
Believing Kremlin propaganda over his own colleagues in the OSCE would be enough to earn Mariani the title of Ukraine’s Foe of the Week and an Order of Lenin, but there’s more.
Mariani illegally entered the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory of Crimea in July 2015, and there expressed support for the Russian occupation.
He has submitted non-binding resolutions to the French National Assembly and Senate calling for the withdrawal of sanctions against Russia and recognition of its claimed annexation of Crimea.
Interestingly, the French version of the nrt24.ru websites (it has Russian, English, French, German, Spanish and Polish versions) has by far the most views — several thousand for some articles, while the articles on the Russian and English versions have a few hundred views at most, and usually many fewer.
Mariani and his ilk appear to be spreading these falsehoods about Ukraine far and wide in the Francophone world. Honte à vous, monsieur, shame on you!
