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.
Friend: Mary Louise Kelly
When veteran American journalist sat down with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington on Jan. 24 to conduct an interview for All Things Considered, a radio program broadcast on National Public Radio, the conversation deteriorated as soon as Kelly began to question Pompeo about Iran.
NPR aired the unedited 11-minute interview, in which Kelley began questioning Pompeo about America’s policy trajectory regarding Iran. When the conversation turned to Ukraine, things got testy. Kelley asked if Pompeo felt he should have done more to defend Marie L. Yovonavitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine fired by U.S. President Donald J. Trump, Pompeo grew irritated with the line of questioning.
There are “people who have resigned under your leadership saying you should stand up for the diplomats who work here,” Kelly continued, to which Pompeo responded, “I don’t know who these unnamed sources are you’re referring to.”
“These are not unnamed sources. This is your senior advisor Michael McKinley… who testified under oath that he resigned in part due to the failure of the State Department to offer support to Foreign Service employees caught up in the impeachment inquiry on Ukraine.”
The rest of the interview continues in the same way, with Kelly pressing Pompeo to answer specific questions about the conduct of the United States in Ukraine as he responds with vaguely worded misrepresentations, before abruptly ending the conversation.
According to Kelly, she was then taken to Pompeo’s private living room where he shouted at her for about the same amount of time as the interview itself and then asked Kelly to identify Ukraine on an unmarked world map, which she did.
Kelly’s conduct during the interview looks to have been professional in all respects.
“Journalists don’t sit down with senior officials to score political points. We do it in the service of asking tough questions, on behalf of our fellow citizens. And then sharing the answers—or lack thereof—with the world,” Kelly wrote following the interview.
Foe: Pyotr Tolstoy
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, known as PACE, lost even more of its moral leverage following its latest concession to Russia: the election of Pyotr Tolstoy, the head of the Russian delegation known for his anti-Semitic and anti-Ukrainian leanings, to the position of PACE vice president.
Tolstoy’s election, coming not long after the body unconditionally readmitted the Russian delegation in July 2019, reneging on sanctions implemented after the annexation of Crimea, looks to observers of Ukraine as the latest betrayal of the values that PACE was founded to uphold.
Aside from Russia’s war against Ukraine and its disregard for the human rights of many if its own people, Tolstoy himself has a record of promoting pro-government propaganda and at times resorting to anti-Semitic tropes.
In 2017, Tolstoy responded to the Ukrainian delegation at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, writing in a post on his Telegram channel, “We will also remind about the rekindling of Nazism in a European country, in which streets are named after direct organizers of the Holocaust,” a falsehood often repeated by Ukraine’s antagonists that the country is overrun by fascists and framing the Russian-sponsored war in eastern Ukraine as a mission to preserve human rights.
The same year, Tolstoy was asked to comment on the transfer of St Isaac’s Cathedral to the Russian Orthodox Church after it had functioned as a museum since the Soviet era. He supported the return of the cathedral to the Church, saying that those protesting against the church were “the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who destroyed our churches and who jumped, revolvers in hand, out of the Pale of Settlement in 1917,” referring to the territory where Jewish settlement was permitted from the late 18th century until the Bolshevik era.
Ironically, Tolstoy’s claim that it was the Jewish people who destroyed Russian churches rather than the Bolsheviks is the repetition of a trope favored by the Nazis he claims have overrun Ukraine.
Ukrainian PACE representatives, including Mariya Mezentseva, and appealed against Tolstoy’s ascension because of his anti-Semitic views. However, given the body’s recent concessions to Russian interests, it appears unlikely that his election will be overturned.
