Editor’s Note: This new opinion feature separates Ukraine’s friends from its enemies The Order of Yaroslav the Wise has been given by Ukrainian presidents 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 is still rotting on the Kremlin’s Red Square, 100 years after the October Revolution he led.
Ildar Dadin – Order of Yaroslav
The Wise
Ildar Dadin, a Russian opposition activist, has consistently spoken out against Russia’s war in Ukraine’s Donbas and seizure of Crimea in 2014.
In 2015 Dadin was sentenced to three years in prison for staging one-man pickets and participating in unauthorized peaceful rallies, including those in support of Ukraine.
Russia’s Supreme Court canceled the verdict against Dadin on Feb. 22, ordering his release. The ruling is likely an effort by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to fool the West into thinking that he is moderating his authoritarian ways. In fact, the opposite is true.
The law under which Dadin was punished is despotic by any standards: it envisages jailing protesters for repeated “offenses” at peaceful rallies, such as protesting without government permission and holding unauthorized posters.
Putin’s brutal regime has stepped up its repressive policies following Ukraine’s 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, fearing that a similar uprising could take place in Russia. The Kremlin despot has destroyed independent media, jailed his political opponents and been accused of many murders.
Dadin is hated by the Kremlin because he participated in the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution as a member of Maidan self-defense.
Last year Dadin said he had been severely tortured by prison staff, triggering an outcry in Russia and abroad.
“A dozen people beat me up and kicked me four times on that day,” he told his wife. “After the third beating up, they put my head into the toilet bowl in the cell.”
He said prison staff had also threatened to rape and murder him. “I was led to (prison chief Sergei) Kossiev’s office and he said: ‘You haven’t been beaten enough. If I give an order to my employees, they will beat you harder. If you complain, you’ll be killed and buried behind the fence..”
People like Dadin should be always welcome in Ukraine because they risk their freedoms and lives for both Ukraine and Russia.
“The biggest tragedy for me personally is that my country is killing, torturing, blowing up and tearing apart people in a neighboring country that hasn’t done anything bad to us,” Russian opposition politician Konstantin Borovoi quoted Dadin as saying last year “My country is doing that on my behalf, and I can’t prevent this in any way. What my country is doing now is all about producing lies, fascism and misery.”
Dadin also dismissed Kremlin propaganda myths about the rise of Nazism in Kyiv, saying that in Ukraine “nationalism is not hatred for others but love for your own country and your people.”
Konstantin Zatulin – Order of Lenin
Konstantin Zatulin, head of Russia’s CIS Institute, is one of the main promoters of Kremlin imperialism.
The CIS Institute, named after the Russian-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States, is an organization that seeks to promote the Kremlin’s imperial ambitions in former Soviet countries.
Ukraine’s InformNapalm hacktivist group on Feb. 22 published what it claimed to be the email account and social networks of Belarusian citizen Alexander Usovsky. According to the hacked accounts, Zatulin was coordinating Usovsky’s efforts.
Usovsky has encouraged anti-Ukrainian and pro-Russian sentiment in Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary, InformNapalm said.
He told Zatulin’s deputy Igor Shishkin, that he had agreed to cooperate with the Polish People’s Party and create a pro-Russian faction in the Polish parliament.
In 2016 Usovsky sent to Zatulin a plan to organize discussions in an effort to promote anti-Ukrainian ideas among Polish nationalists.
One of Usovsky’s proposals is to spread the idea that Ukrainian immigrants in Poland should not be welcome if they adhere to Ukrainian nationalism.
Poland has seen a rise in anti-Ukrainian sentiment in recent years, and speculation is rife that this is Kremlin-inspired.
In July Poland’s parliament, voted to declare the Volyn Tragedy a genocide of Polish civilians by Ukrainian nationalists of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.
Major anti-Ukrainian protests have also taken place in Poland recently.
Zatulin has been a foe of Ukraine for a long time.
In the late 1980s, he was an apparatchik of the Soviet Union’s Communist Youth. He was proclaimed persona non grata in Ukraine in 2006 after participating in anti-NATO protests in Crimea.
In 2008 he was again banned from entering the country after the Security Service of Ukraine accused him of preparing riots in Crimea.
Zatulin said in an interview with the politnavigator news site in 2015 that he had realized in 2008 that the Kremlin should create a pro-Russian political movement aiming to take over southeastern Ukraine. Zatulin actively supported Russia’s annexation of Crimea and became an advisor to the speaker of Crimea’s Russian-installed puppet legislature in 2014.
In 2016 Zatulin was elected to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s rubber-stamp legislature, the State Duma, on the ruling United Russia party’s list.
He has defended the Kremlin’s interests in Russian-occupied areas, including Ukraine’s Crimea and Donbas and Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia.
