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.
Angela Merkel — the Order of Yaroslav the Wise
When thinking of a firm and longstanding friend of Ukraine, one name comes immediately to mind — that of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The German leader, who met with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Meseberg in eastern Germany on May 20, is the only leader of the biggest four European countries, Germany, France, Britain, and Italy, who has been in office continuously since Russia launched its war in Ukraine in February 2014.
And with the election of Donald J. Trump as U.S. president on Nov. 8, Merkel has taken on the role of the West’s foremost opponent of Ukraine’s nemesis, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
It was Merkel, along with the former French President Francois Hollande, who was the architect of the Minsk peace process. With the exit of Hollande from the world stage earlier this month, she is, therefore, more politically invested than any other Western leader in seeing that the Minsk peace process succeeds.
And Merkel, like no other Western leader, understands the threat Ukraine faces. Although born in Hamburg, West Germany, she grew up in communist East Germany and learned to speak Russian fluently. Her relationship with Putin (who speaks German) is based on the kind of understanding, at least in linguistic terms, unrivaled by any other Western leader.
She has referred to Putin as “living in another world.” She wasn’t implying that Putin was crazy, but was referring to his worldview — imperialist, Soviet-revanchist and embittered. She no doubt understands that it is this worldview that has prompted his wars against Georgia and Ukraine and his threats to the Baltic states — former Soviet republics that have, since the fall of the Soviet Union, shaken off the shackles of centuries of Russian domination with membership in NATO and the European Union.
Merkel is also up for re-election in autumn, and will face a direct threat from Putin himself: There is little doubt that the Kremlin, as it has done in recent Western elections, will seek to influence the vote, promoting its favored candidates with its propaganda media. It will also probably release stolen and falsified data hacked from the computers of German political parties in an effort to sway voters.
Putin will not favor Merkel, so it is to be hoped that, as in France, the Kremlin’s efforts to meddle in Western democracy fail. “Mutti,” as the German chancellor is affectionately known, will hopefully emerge victorious (although Martin Schulz is also an acceptable contender), and remain one of Ukraine’s best friends in the West for years to come.
Sergei Lavrov — the Order of Lenin
There is a good Yiddish word, “chutzpah,” for a personal quality Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has in abundance.
A common definition for the word goes like this: “It is the quality exhibited by a man, on trial for the murder of his parents, who throws himself at the mercy of the court because he is now an orphan.”
In other words: jaw-dropping arrogance, insolence and speciousness.
As Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s point man at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lavrov has in recent years had plenty of opportunity to put this particular personal quality on display.
At the Munich Security Conference in February 2015 he had the gall to go before the audience and proclaim that Russia’s illegal invasion and annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, by Russian troops in unmarked uniforms, and the subsequent sham referendum, was all fully in line with the UN Charter on the self-determination of peoples.
“Territorial integrity and sovereignty must be respected,” Lavrov went on to say, not meaning Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, but Russia’s.
The audience sucked in its breath at Lavrov’s chutzpah, and then burst out laughing.
Lavrov’s latest display of this dubious quality came this week, when he complained that people in Crimea were facing “visa discrimination” by the European Union.
Ukrainians, of course, are set on June 11 to at last obtain visa-free travel rights to the Schengen Area of the European Union, and that includes Ukrainian passport-holders in Russian-occupied Crimea.
However, many people in Crimea have obtained Russian passports, and since June 2016, the European Commission has asked the consulates of EU countries in Ukraine not to recognize passports issued to people in Crimea since 2014 by Russia’s occupying authorities.
In fact, Russia’s occupying authorities have been coercing Ukrainian citizens in Crimea to give up their Ukrainian passports and accept Russian ones. People who don’t take up Russian citizenship can face discrimination in obtaining health insurance, or employment, according to a recent report by Human Rights Watch. Some have been fired for refusing to give up their Ukrainian passports, as their employers don’t want to deal with the Russian-imposed regulations on hiring “foreigners.”
Thus the problems faced by many Crimeans in obtaining visa-free travel to the EU are entirely of Russia’s making. Yet Lavrov claims it is the EU that is discriminating against “Russian citizens” in Crimea, many of whom became such against their will.
That’s pure, Lavrovian chutzpah, and that’s what makes the Russian foreign minister our foe of the week.
