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: Glen Grant
In late February 2014, when Russia began its invasion of Ukrainian territory, the sorry state of Ukraine’s military became shockingly visible. As Russian units spread out of their bases in Ukraine’s Crimea to seize the peninsula, and unrest started to be stirred by Russia’s agents in the large cities in the south and east of the country, Ukraine’s military could muster only around 6,000 combat-ready troops – only just over a single NATO-standard-sized brigade.
Ukraine’s military failed in its mission to protect the country and its territorial integrity. Of course, Ukrainian politicians in hindsight placed too much faith in the security assurances granted to the country by the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.
But the military had also been hollowed out by underfunding during the years that former President Viktor Yanukovych was in power. Yanukovych diverted funds from the military to build his paramilitary police forces, such as the now-disbanded Berkut unit, which were well equipped to deal with the only threat that Yanukovych thought he might face – public unrest. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military atrophied, its problems further exacerbated by rampant waste and corruption.
Ukraine was fortunate to survive as a state in 2014. But the Kremlin was cautious, not ready to launch an open invasion, and overconfident about the amount of support it would get from Ukrainians in the east of the country.
It also underestimated the response of ordinary Ukrainians, who self-organized into volunteer units to defend their country. While these units were no match for the regular Russian army, they were a match for the Kremlin’s proxy forces of local collaborators and mercenaries. By August 2014, with Ukraine slowly squeezing back Russian-led forces, the Kremlin had to send in its regular troops, and organize a fake “humanitarian convoy” of hundreds of white trucks to covertly ferry military supplies into Ukraine.
The bloody intervention by the Kremlin with its regular forces in late August 2014 put an end to the Ukrainian advance and ushered in the present stalemated war. But since then, Ukraine’s defense expenditure has skyrocketed, the army has become much better equipped and trained, with the help of the country’s foreign allies. It currently seems unlikely that Russia would attempt an all-out invasion.
Unlikely, but not impossible, and Ukraine’s military still has to prepare for increased aggression from the Kremlin. Moreover Glen Grant, a British expert on defense reform who has been advising the Ukrainian government for the past few years, warned in an opinion piece published by the Kyiv Post on Jan. 31 that there are signs that the Kremlin may be preparing to strike Ukraine again.
Grant’s long and comprehensive article listed the flaws that still plague the Ukrainian army – the pervasive Soviet mentality, organizational problems, low mobility, and the sapping of morale due to the stalemated war created by the Minsk Peace Agreements. He also set out a checklist of urgent reforms that are still needed to turn Ukraine’s army into one that can fight off a full Russian attack.
Rumor has it that Grant’s opinion did not go down well with the Defense Ministry, and within a few days, on Feb. 3, Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak said in an interview with Voice of America, the U.S. government international broadcaster, that Ukraine was “90 percent” ready to join NATO.
That is at best an overly optimistic assessment, and at worst a deliberately misleading one. Other officials say Ukraine is about a quarter of the way through implementing the 1,300 or so NATO Standardization Agreements, or STANAGs, that are neede to bring a country’s military into conformity with NATO requirements.
But as Grant, Ukraine’s Friend of the Week and winner of an Order of Yaroslav the Wise, points out in another opinion piece published by the Kyiv Post on Feb. 28, getting ready to join NATO means more than ticking off STANAGs on a to-do list. It requires a change in mentality, the military ethos of an army, to see soldiers as human beings with value, worthy of respect, rather than as cannon fodder. It requires honesty, integrity, sacrifice and service from the lowest ranks to the top commanders.
That’s something Ukraine’s old cadre of senior military officers doesn’t want to hear, but it is vital Ukraine’s military heeds the advice of Grant and other foreign advisers if it wants to avoid repeats of the disastrous defeats it suffered at Russian hands in the dreadful summer of 2014.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week: Paul Manafort
Looking back on the events of the winter of 2013 and 2014, it’s now clear that the Ukraine’s EuroMaidan Revolution was a watershed moment.
In the years before the overthrow of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, few could have foreseen the sudden rise in the far right across the West. The lunacy of Brexit – threatening peace in Ireland and even the breakup of the United Kingdom – was unthinkable to most. And the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency – a man who has praised neo-Nazis, bragged about sexually assaulting women, and whose campaign team is under investigation for collusion with Russia – was something that could only happen in an episode of the Simpsons.
There were a few voices, such as those of Economist editor Edward Lucas and former Guardian Moscow correspondent Luke Harding, alerting the world early on to the nature of the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin – but little heed was paid to them.
Nevertheless, the signs of renewed threat to the West from the Kremlin were there. The war of aggression launched by the Kremlin on Georgia, and the seizure of parts of its territory, the cyberattacks on Estonia, the election interference in Ukraine – all were harbingers of the Putin regime’s coming assault on the West.
But the Kremlin seems to have advanced its plans following the overthrow of its Ukrainian puppet Yanukovych. Its actions became more brazen, pretenses of seeking cooperation with the West were dropped, Moscow’s rhetoric became aggressive and arrogant – like an internet troll – while at the same time aggrieved and self-pitying: suddenly “Russophobia” became a thing.
The end of the Yanukovych regime in Ukraine also brought an end to the activities of Paul Manafort, a U.S. public relations and influence peddler, who is Ukraine’s Foe of the Week and winner of the Order of Lenin.
Manafort, it is now becoming clear, is the nexus of a shady web of links between the Kremlin, Ukraine, European politicians, and the Trump campaign in the United States. In the years he was active in Ukraine, Manafort set up a group of European politicians to burnish Ukraine’s image, tarnished as it was by the oafish, thuggish and corrupt Yanukovych.
The existence of Manafort’s group only came to light on Feb. 23, when U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller issued fresh charges against Manafort in addition to the fraud charges made against him in October. Mueller’s latest indictment against Manafort mentions a “European chancellor” as being among those in group, named the “Hapsburg Group.”
Yanukovych, a corrupt, pro-Russian politician with authoritarian tendencies, who jailed political opponents and who previously rigged a presidential election, certainly needed some good PR. Had the former Ukrainian president remained in power, Manafort would have had years of lucrative work ahead of him. Manafort gained millions of dollars working for the corrupt Yanukovych, and could have gained tens of millions more, had the Ukrainian people not intervened via the EuroMaidan Revolution, chasing Yanukovych and his gang out of the country and bringing Manafort’s shady business in the country to an abrupt end.
In the future, if Mueller and his team are allowed to do their work, no doubt we will learn much more about Manafort and his activities in Ukraine, Russia, and the United States.
But we already know that it was the EuroMaidan Revolution that was the beginning of Manafort’s downfall – the key point when things started to go sour for him. It also marked the start of the Kremlin’s open confrontation against the West. The Ukrainian people’s fight to escape the Kremlin’s domination, it is becoming clear, has had global consequences.
