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, more than 100 years after the October Revolution he led.
Ukraine’s Friend of the Week: Jeremy Hunt – U.K. foreign secretary
A couple of weeks of solid support for Ukraine from London have culminated in the U.K. Foreign Office, headed by Jeremy Hunt, announcing nine million pounds in extra financial support for independent media in Ukraine.
In the days leading up to a vote that resulted in Russia’s unconditional reinstatement to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, U.K. delegates rallied beside Ukraine, voted in solidarity with Ukrainian colleagues, and spoke passionately in defiance of the Assembly’s capitulation to the Kremlin.
Last week, the Kyiv Post recognized all the European delegates who stood beside Ukraine in its hour of need, and now we recognize there is a new challenge going forward as Russia retakes its seats. That council in Strasbourg oversees the European Court of Human Rights and helped to shape the European Convention on Human Rights. Russia’s readmission, seemingly at any price, is an unconditional surrender to the Russian authorities, who have demonstrated no willingness to change course. They will exploit this opportunity and bend it to their will.
The Kremlin wages war against Ukraine and is abducting and torturing Crimean Tatars. It is also imprisoning and killing journalists. It does not care about human rights.
We in the independent media must continue to do everything we can to hold them to account and expose their crimes.
That is why we’re thankful for the U.K. government reaffirming and strengthening its commitment to independent media in Ukraine, where the country’s media landscape, especially television, suffers from an oligarchic stranglehold and a crippling lack of diversity. Pro-Russian narratives and outright Kremlin propaganda saturate the airwaves and about 74 percent of Ukraine’s television broadcasting is controlled by a handful of powerful oligarchs.
It was another Foreign Office minister who announced on July 2 that Britain would invest more into Ukrainain journalists. However, this was Hunt’s pet project, and he pointed the office firmly in that direction and has made it a priority while he has been in charge.
“Whether it is the editors who bring out independent newspapers against the odds; the journalists who brave threats and intimidation; or the bloggers who keep a vigilant eye on their leaders; all know better than anyone that a lively and free media provides the best possible safeguard against corruption and misrule,” Hunt said in a speech in Ethiopia in late May.
“I want Britain to play its part in championing media freedom,” he continued. “So I’ve joined my Canadian counterpart, Chrystia Freeland, to launch a global campaign to protect journalists doing their job and promote the benefits of a free media. In July, we will host the world’s first ministerial summit on media freedom in London.”
Jeremy Hunt is by no means a perfect politician. He has a questionable record in the U.K. on some issues and has made mistakes in the past. The Kyiv Post also expresses no opinion whatsoever on whether he would make a decent U.K. prime minister. However, for investing in Ukrainian journalism and media freedom, Hunt is a deserving recipient of the Order of Yaroslav the Wise and a friend to Ukraine this week.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week: Lionel Barber – editor of the Financial Times
A free press is essential, perhaps more so than ever before. Journalists are under attack worldwide and, for the most part, we need to stick together.
However, we also need to do our jobs properly. When we do not, it reflects badly on us all and gives ammunition and energy to our critics and attackers, those who brand us enemies of the people.
As journalists, we must strive to take the privileged and powerful to task, hold authority accountable and speak truth to our leaders. We must also speak for those who are without a voice, uncover hidden truths and expose wrongdoing. Occasionally, we might have to criticize another journalist who has failed at this.
Therefore, it must be said that Lionel Barber’s interview in the Kremlin with Putin was a wasted opportunity. He failed us all in Moscow and let a brutal tyrant run rings around him.
Barber practically ceded the floor to Putin and gave him an opportunity to dissect Western values and demolish the idea of liberalism. It was a stunning, victorious moment for Putin, as well as for anti-democratic and far-right ideologies that are on the rise in the West.
Barber also failed to recognize that Putin’s hands are stained with the blood of thousands of Ukrainians, Syrians, Georgians and the passengers of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17. He did not have anything to ask about these issues and instead wasted valuable minutes on aimless intellectual fluff.
A veteran journalist should know better and have done a much more thorough job of holding Putin to task. For falling on his face during his interview in the Kremlin, Barber is this week’s foe to Ukraine and recipient of the Order of Lenin.
