WAR IN UKRAINE: August 4, 2022
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Canada's ambassador to Ukraine, Larisa Galadza, attend the re-opening of the Canadian embassy in Kyiv on May 8, 2022. MURRAY BREWSTER /THE CANADIAN PRESS
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 163
Ukrainian forces have struck a key railway bridge which is used for Russian re-supply between illegally-occupied Crimea and occupied southern regions. Meanwhile, a Kherson Oblast Military Administration official says that Ukraine's Armed Forces liberated 53 settlements in the Oblast from Russian occupation
Before pulling Canadian diplomats out of Ukraine weeks ahead of the Russian invasion, Global Affairs Canada received intelligence confirming that Russia intended to wage war against its neighbour, and that Ukrainians who worked for the Canadian embassy were likely on lists of people Moscow intended to hunt down. Despite the apparently dire situation, Ottawa told Canadian embassy leaders in Kyiv to withhold this information from those Ukrainian staff members and leave them behind. These events were described to The Globe and Mail by three Canadian diplomats with direct knowledge of what happened. Read the full report here. Also see my commentary on this issue below.
At the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzya, Europe’s largest, the situation is “out of control,” according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Russian forces are reported to have transformed parts of the plant into a military base - with lethal weaponry stored in a generation area and with Ukrainian staff being forced to work under Russian command. The IAEA has called for maximum restraint to avoid any accident that could threaten public health in Ukraine and elsewhere. “These reports are very disturbing and further underline the importance of the IAEA going to the Zaporizhzya plant. I’m continuing my determined efforts to agree and lead a safety, security and safeguards mission to the site as soon as possible. It is urgent,” Director General Grossi said. The IAEA has not been able to visit the Russian-occupied facility in Ukraine's south since before the conflict began five months ago. “It is extremely important that no action is taken that could in any way jeopardize the safety of this plant, which is also Europe’s largest. During a conflict of this nature, a nuclear facility can be damaged unintentionally. It must be avoided at all costs,” said Grossi.
Russia claims it has destroyed six US-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) but Ukraine says all of the 20 units under its command are working and undamaged. The Pentagon has also denied Russian claims that the country had destroyed six HIMARS. "We are aware of these latest claims by Minister Shoigu and they are again patently false," Todd Breasseale, the Pentagon's acting spokesman, said. President Zelensky has said that the HIMARS are so important that they have become to equal justice.
The U.S. Commerce Department on Tuesday will add 25 Airbus airplanes operated by Russian airlines believed to violate U.S. export controls as part of the Biden administration's sanctions over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the agency told Reuters. The department has previously identified more than 150 Boeing airplanes and one Gulfstream plane that had flown into Russia from other countries since March 2 or into Belarus since April 8.
Separately, the department sanctioned Russian President Vladimir Putin's reputed girlfriend, CNN reported. Alina Maratovna Kabaeva, who has been romantically linked to the Russian leader, was sanctioned "for being or having been a leader, official, senior executive officer, or member of the board of directors of the Government of the Russian Federation," a Treasury Department statement said. It describes the 39-year-old Kabaeva as having "a close relationship to Putin." She is a former member of the State Duma "and is the current head of the National Media Group, a pro-Kremlin empire of television, radio, and print organizations."
The newly formed Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, made up of Ukrainian musicians — some from Ukraine’s major cities, some now displaced as refugees, and others who play in European orchestras — started its world tour. Under Canadian-Ukrainian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson, the idea was to form an orchestra that would make a statement against war. It goes back to an initiative by New York Metropolitan Opera and the Polish National Opera. Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra is touring Europe and the US from July 28 to August 20, 2022, including stops in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, before culminating with concerts in New York and Washington, DC.
My reaction to revelations about the treatment of Ukrainian staff at Canada’s embassy in Kyiv..
In the span of just a few weeks, the government of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has managed to alienate and anger not only members of the Ukrainian Canadian community - but also a large swath of society here in Ukraine - from its slow response with the deployment of lethal weaponry to Ukraine to tinkering with its own sanctions to deliver a turbine to Russia for the Nord Stream 1 pipeline - a tool being used by Mr. Putin to weaponise energy. Then there was the staged photo op of the PM and his ambassador of the “re-opening” of the Embassy of Canada to Ukraine in Kyiv. Now it emerges Ottawa refused to assist or evacuate national staff working at the embassy even though Global Affairs Canada had intelligence that they would be in danger in case of a Russian invasion. A request by locally-engaged staff to temporarily switch their duty station from Kyiv to Lviv or Warsaw was also denied. I know for a fact that many other missions did assist their local staff to relocate, including overseas.
That’s not it. The so-called emergency visas that Canada is offering to asylum seekers from Ukraine is now taking months to process (according to applicants who’ve contacted me). This deplorable situation despite the immigration department claiming it “has increased operational readiness in Europe in anticipation of an increased volume of requests.”
Overall, the Trudeau government’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a story of bungling and incompetence. As I’ve said on CNN, to my embarrassment, our Canadian diplomats were among the first to flee their desks in Kyiv and among the last to return.
As Andrew Coyne wrote in a follow up OpEd in The Globe and Mail: “Clearly, there is something broken at Canada’s Foreign Policy—Global Affairs Canada. This is the department, after all, that sent a high-ranking official to a party at the Russian embassy in Ottawa, even as Vladimir Putin’s army was laying waste to Ukraine.”
This behaviour - what does it say about us as a nation? Is this Mr. Trudeau’s way of delivering on “the world needs more Canada?” As a Canadian I’m disgusted at the lack of support to Ukrainian staff at the Canadian Embassy - as well as the sweaty palm we extended to locally-engaged staff in Afghanistan. I know many of Ukrainian staff in Kyiv, have collaborated with several on many occasions. They’re among the most hard-working and professional people I’ve come to know. A large number have a track record of several years service to Canada.
As a Canadian, what can I say? Other than to offer my apologies to them for this totally unacceptable treatment. Is this how one treats a best friend?