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.
Rex Tillerson – the Order of Yaroslav the Wise
Only a couple of weeks ago, I had U. S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson penciled in as Ukraine’s foe of the week.
He remains suspect for his opposition to sanctions against Russia while he served as ExxonMobil CEO, as well as his pursuit of a $500 billion oil dal in Russia. He also unwisely accepted the Order of Friendship from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
But he redeemed himself at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on March 31, during a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission. Some excerpts of his powerful statement:
“Today, Russia’s ongoing hostility and occupation is compromising our shared vision of a Europe that is whole, free, and at peace.
“American and NATO support for Ukraine remains steadfast.
“We do not, and will not, accept Russian efforts to change the borders of the territory of Ukraine.
“We will continue to hold Russia accountable to its Minsk commitments. The United States sanctions will remain until Moscow reverses the actions that triggered our sanctions.
“The OSCE must be able to fulfill its mandate which included monitoring throughout the conflict zone and to the international border. And Russia must understand there is no basis to move forward on the political aspects of the Minsk agreements until there is visible, verifiable and irreversible improvement in the security situation.
“Crimea-related sanctions must remain in place until Russia returns control of the peninsula to Ukraine.
“The U. S. continues to urge Ukraine to redouble its efforts to implement challenging reforms, including uprooting corruption, increasing transparency in the judicial system, strengthening the banking sector, and pursuing corporate governance reform and the privatization of state-owned enterprises. We must continue to support Ukraine on its reform path.
“It serves no purpose for Ukraine to fight for its body in Donbas if it loses its soul to corruption. Anti-corruption institutions must be supported, resourced, and defended.
“Even in the face of ongoing Russian aggression, Ukraine is committed to an ambitious effort to reform and modernize its armed forces according to NATO standards by 2020,” he said, citing $600 million in U.S. security assistance to Ukraine since 2014.
These were powerful words. Could they signal a tougher stance on Russia under U. S. President Donald J. Trump? His position on supplying Ukraine with defensive weapons, refused by ex-U.S. President Barack Obama, will be telling.
— Brian Bonner
Eleftherios Synadinos – the Order of Lenin
As Ukrainians celebrated on April 6 another milestone on the long road to winning visa-free travel to the European Union – a vote in favor of an EU-Ukraine visa-free regime by the European Parliament – there were only a few grumbling voices of dissent against the move.
One of those voices was that of Eleftherios Synadinos, a Greek member of the European Parliament, who spoke against, and voted against, giving Ukrainians greater freedom to travel in Europe.
“In Ukraine, (former) President (Viktor) Yanukovych was ousted, and now Nazis are in power, Nazis, who came (to power) through revolution,” Synadinos said during the debate. “How can you provide a visa-free regime to a country where there is no democracy?”
As a member of the European Parliament, Synadinos must surely be well aware of the true situation in Ukraine, where Nazis are of course not in power, where there have been free and fair presidential and parliamentary elections since the EuroMaidan Revolution, and where support for far-right parties is amongst the lowest in Europe.
So why was he spouting such nonsense in the august chamber of the European Parliament? Why does it sound like his speech could have been written in the Kremlin?
Well, it turns out that Synadinos probably knows a fair amount about Nazis, coming as he does from Greece’s Golden Dawn party, a far-right, nationalist, racist and xenophobic group.
Members of Golden Dawn, which is rooted in a movement that wanted to see a restoration of the right-wing military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974 (Synadinos is himself a former soldier), have been involved in hate crimes against immigrants, political opponents, homosexuals and ethnic minorities. The party’s symbols were reported to have been found scrawled on four vandalized Jewish sites, including a synagogue and a cemetery.
So far, so fascist. But added to that, Golden Dawn also has Kremlin connections that go back to 1996, when representatives of the party attended a conference of far-right parties in Moscow. The Kremlin, as is known, has long been chumming up to extremist, Euroskeptic, far-right parties. U.S. authorities also suspect some European far-right parties, Golden Dawn among them, might also be clandestinely funded by the Kremlin. Could that be why Synadinos so readily parrots Moscow’s propaganda?
Maybe. But for his insulting, anti-Ukrainian comments on April 6 alone, the Order of Lenin this week goes to Synadinos, a true far-right friend of Ukraine’s biggest foe.
– Euan MacDonald
