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: Julia Kloeckner

The German agriculture minister is spearheading a program that would bring up to 40,000 seasonal workers, including many from Ukraine, into Germany in April 40,000 more in May to help ease a labor shortage, according to the Associated Press.

The seasonal workers are needed to pick asparagus, which has already sprouted in Germany, and to plant other crops in the fields. Kloeckner described the program as a “pragmatic and goal-oriented solution,” the news agency said.

Two planes carrying Eastern European farmhands arrived on April 9. “This is important and good news for our farmers,” Kloeckner said. “Because the harvest doesn’t wait, and you can’t delay sowing the fields.” She cautioned that the extra cost of bringing farmhands into Germany will probably increase food prices.

Amid rising global unemployment, including in Ukraine, Kloeckner and the German government are to be commended for fast work in solving the problem.

“We will need to always reevaluate the situation and then act, and act quickly,” she said. Such foresight benefitting Ukrainian workers, but not only, has earned Kloeckner the distinction as Ukraine’s Friend of the Week.

Foe: Sergey Lavrov

Our old enemy Sergey Lavrov, the immoral Russian foreign minister, is a repeat winner of Ukraine’s foe of the week award.

This time Lavrov gets it for his comments on April 14, when he “angrily rejected Western claims that Moscow has used the coronavirus crisis to expand its political influence.” He called for world unity, according to the Associated Press account and accused the West of “Russophobia.”

The U.S. and European Union imposed sanctions on the Kremlin in response to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and support for a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine. The sanctions have limited Russia’s access to global financial markets and blocked transfers of Western technologies, the news service noted.

Lavrov claimed Russia wouldn’t ask for sanctions to be removed.

“If the EU realizes that this method has exhausted itself and renounces the decisions that were made in 2014, we will be ready to respond in kind,” he added.

We have a better idea for Vladimir Putin’s stooge.

The Kremlin should renounce the decisions it made in 2014, get out of Crimea and the Donbas, so that Ukraine can live in peace.

We’ve lost track of the number of times that Lavrov has been named Ukraine’s foe of the week. But he deserves every Order of Lenin that he gets.

(c) KyivPost