It’s time to stop pretending that Canada isn’t at war with Russia.
On Tuesday, April 19, in advance of a new Russian offensive in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Canada will be sending heavy artillery to the besieged European nation. This came on the heels of the recently released federal budget, which earmarked half-a-billion dollars for arms to Ukraine, in addition to $90 million worth of “offensive” weapons announced and delivered since the end of February.
Canada has played a significant role in arming Ukraine and training its military personnel long before Russia’s illegal February 24 invasion. According to a recent report by Simon Coutu of CBC/Radio-Canada, the federal government has spent at least $900 million to train Ukrainian forces since 2015. The 2,800-word exposé details how Canada even trained elements of the Azov Battalion, a far-right neo-Nazi group that was absorbed into the Ukrainian national guard in 2014.
A recent front-page Wall Street Journal article also focused on the central role played by Canadian military trainers in Ukraine. In 2019, former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko dubbed Canada’s Harper-era Defence Minister, Jason Kenney, as the “godfather of the modern Ukrainian army” for his role in launching Operation UNIFIER (a bilateral mission between Canada and Ukraine) and helping to restore Ukraine’s “decrepit” army and navy following the overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.
Prior to the Russian invasion, the United States and the United Kingdom had also spent billions of dollars training and arming the Ukrainian military. An explosive investigation by Yahoo News revealed the CIA ran a secret training program in Ukraine until days before the war began. As part of the program, CIA paramilitaries taught their Ukrainian counterparts sniper techniques and provided instruction in how to use Javelin anti-tank missiles. (more...)
Is it time to admit that Canada is at war in Ukraine?
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