Ukraine honors political and journalistic supporters from abroad with Orders of Merit, including three journalists from the Axel Springer publishing house, to which WELT also belongs. The awards go to WELT Editor-in-Chief Ulf Poschardt, Deputy Editor-in-Chief Paul Ronzheimer and Julian Röpcke, Editor-in-Chief in the Politics department of Bild. This emerges from a decree by President Volodymyr Zelenskyj in Kyiv.
Former Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk congratulated. “Through your courageous reporting, you opened the eyes of the Federal Republic to the fact that this war affects every German,” he wrote to Ronzheimer and Röpcke on Twitter on Monday. Poschardt contributed to the German traffic light coalition supporting Ukraine with arms deliveries.
They will each receive the Ukrainian Order of Merit, third class, according to Zelenskyy’s November 4 decree. Poschardt wrote on Twitter that he was happy about the award on behalf of all his colleagues.
Journalists from Poland, Latvia and the USA also received awards. The Lithuanian Defense Minister Arvydas Anusauskas, his Italian ex-colleague Lorenzo Guerini and the Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau were honored with orders of merit of various degrees. Selcuk Bayraktar, head of the Turkish drone manufacturer Baykar, also received a medal.
