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: Hugues Mingarelli
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, at his annual press conference at the Kremlin, trotted out the usual falsehoods whenever the topic turned to Ukraine.
Russia does not threaten Ukraine’s security and respects its territorial integrity, Lavrov said. He also said Russia had not broken the commitments it made on Ukraine’s security when Moscow signed the Budapest Memorandum in 1994, because Russia had not used nuclear weapons against Ukraine.
In contrast, on Jan. 16, the day after Lavrov had told his absurd lies in Moscow, the head of the European Union’s Delegation to Ukraine, Hugues Mingarelli, was telling the truth in Kyiv.
Speaking at a round table entitled “Threats to the Security of Ukraine and Other Countries of the Eastern Partnership: Possible Answers,” Mingarelli named the two biggest threats to Ukraine and its neighbors in Eastern Europe.
This first is the Kremlin, of course. While Moscow insists that it has respected Ukraine’s territorial integrity since it began its illegal occupation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in March 2014, in truth is that ever since then it has been waging a covert war on Ukraine in the Donbas – a war that has cost over 10,200 lives. Russia, in fact, is not merely a threat to Ukraine and its territorial integrity – it is attacking Ukraine and its territorial integrity to this very day. Lavrov’s continued insistence that Russia has not militarily intervened in Ukraine, in the face of the now overwhelming evidence to the contrary, is increasingly making him look ridiculous.
But the second threat to Ukraine’s security mentioned by Mingarelli is one that the Ukrainian government itself fails to recognize – the internal weakness brought about by Ukraine’s failure to reform and combat corruption.
The EU’s top diplomat in Ukraine wins the title of Ukraine’s Friend of the Week and the Order of Yaroslav the Wise for again highlighting that poor governance, corruption, lack of rule of law and weak institutions also make Ukraine vulnerable.
These weaknesses allowed Ukraine to become the target of Russian aggression in the first place. Conversely, if Ukraine became a well-governed, rule-of-law democracy, with corruption rare and its economy strong, the Kremlin would be much less able to interfere in its affairs.
Yet Ukraine’s leaders are not only foot-dragging on important reforms, such as the introduction of an anti-corruption court, they have attempted to sabotage the few reforms that have been made already, including the appointment of a new Supreme Court.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who is now brushing away criticisms from Ukraine’s international backers of his bill to set up an anti-corruption court, appears to believe that with Ukraine’s economy improving (due to help from its backers), he no longer needs to rely on their help. Ukraine has gone to the market and found people willing to buy its debt, and if it needs more money, it can go back to the markets for more, he appears to think. Who needs the International Monetary Fund, or the World Bank, or the European Union, and their pesky demands for reform?
Meanwhile, Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said in a recently published interview in the magazine Forbes Georgia that he thinks the problem of corruption in Ukraine has been exaggerated. Yet according to a recent poll conducted by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation and the Razumkov Center, 80 percent of Ukrainians think the country’s fight against corruption has not been a success, with 46 percent judging it a complete failure.
With the EuroMaidan Revolution, Ukraine bought itself a chance to change, shake off Russian domination, and secure its sovereignty. But four years have passed, and little has been achieved. The threat from Russia has not receded, and could worsen again with a further rise in the price of oil or a downturn in Ukraine’s economy.
Although Mingarelli is too diplomatic to say it, Poroshenko, Groysman and the rest of Ukraine’s political elite, with their apparent blindness to Ukraine’s persistent problems and their unwillingness to change, are becoming a threat to Ukraine’s security themselves. They should either start to do their jobs, or go.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week: Konstantin Zatulin
Konstantin Zatulin, a member of Russia’s State Duma, the rubberstamp legislature of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, has long been an enemy of Ukraine.
He has been declared persona non grata in Ukraine three times – in 1996, 2006, and 2008 – because of comments he made on the status of Crimea that Ukraine deemed to have undermined the country’s territorial integrity.
He has opposed, since its signing in 1997, the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between Ukraine and Russia, under which Russia recognized Ukraine’s borders and the fact that Crimea is a part of Ukraine. The treaty came into force on April 1, 1999.
And, foreshadowing the Kremlin’s calls for the federalization of Ukraine made since 2014, back in 2005 Zatulin was also calling for the end of Ukraine as a unitary state, writing at the time that “the main result of the presidential elections of 2004 is that it clearly shows the internal split in Ukraine, proving the theoretical necessity of its federalization.”
“This (federalization) … is the main guarantee of keeping Ukraine within the sphere of special relations to Russia,” he went on.
For a Russian imperialist like Zatulin, “keeping Ukraine within the sphere of special relations to Russia,” means keeping Ukraine in the Kremlin’s sphere of influence, in a subordinate position, with limited sovereignty.
Zatulin has already been named Ukraine’s Foe of the Week (Kyiv Post, Vol. 22, Issue 8, Feb. 24, 2017), but he deserves the title again for his renewed attacks on the treaty of friendship and cooperation. He called on Jan. 14 for Russia to denounce the treaty, or at least its Article 2, which confirms Ukraine and Russia’s mutual respect for their territorial integrity and the inviolability of their borders.
Not that this treaty is worth much now: under Article 15, paragraph 5, Russia was in violation as soon as it sent its troops in unmarked uniforms out of their bases in Crimea without Ukraine’s prior approval (the first such movements were recorded on Feb. 21, 2014, even before former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych fled Kyiv.)
However, Ukraine has not itself denounced the treaty, and it officially remains in force, meaning that under international law Russia is obliged to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine and the inviolability of its borders. That would entail immediately ending its occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea and withdrawing Russian troops and weapons from the parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts that it has occupied.
The Kremlin, of course, denies that it is occupying parts of the Donbas, even though these denials are patently false. But it cannot deny occupying Crimea – it even claims to have made the territory part of Russia itself.
So there is no option to resolve this obvious absurdity but for Russia itself to denounce the treaty (or at least Article 2), and Zatulin is heralding the plan. Zatulin’s statement also explains the ridiculous comment by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, made during his Jan. 15 annual press conference, that Russia respects Ukraine’s territorial integrity, but only “at the borders that formed after the referendum in the Crimea and after the reunification of Crimea with the Russian Federation.”
The Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between Ukraine and Russia is automatically extended every 10 years if neither state objects within six months of the automatic extension. The treaty was automatically extended on April 1, 2009. It will be automatically extended for another ten years on April 1, 2019 unless one of the sides objects by Oct. 1, 2018. So we can probably expect Russia to denounce the treaty (or at least Article 2) before that date.
The Kremlin apparently feels that by denouncing the treaty it will end the obvious hypocrisy of its official positions on Ukraine and Crimea, and perhaps free itself up to do some more redrawing of Ukraine’s borders.
Meanwhile, we hesitate to award Zatulin the Order of Lenin – as an old Communist Party member, he’d probably be pleased, and that’s not the spirit in which it is awarded.
But he definitely deserves to be named Ukraine’s Foe of the Week for a second time, although, given his hatred of the country, that might please him as well.
