Ukraine

Patriotic volunteers crucial to Ukraine’s fight against Putin

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Two sets of volunteers have been crucial in the battle to defeat Vladimir Putin’s imperialism in eastern Ukraine. The first has been Ukrainian patriots who joined volunteer battalions. The second – just as important – has been the civilian volunteers throughout Ukraine who have supplied food, fresh water, uniforms, medical supplies, showers and washing facilities, and camouflage netting. I have visited civilians – primarily women – collecting, producing, cooking and supplying these products based in southern and eastern Ukraine and in Kyiv. One of the most incredible volunteers we met on a recent trip was a pensioner from Ivano-Frankivsk known as “Stepanivna” who provides medical care and lives off her pension.

Commentary

U.S.-Canada rift over Ukraine as big as that with Europe

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This week Ukraine celebrates the first anniversary of the Euro-Maidan revolution that toppled kleptocratic President Viktor Yanukovych and when Ukrainians became the first Europeans to die under the European Union (EU) flag. In the same week the second peace agreement signed in Minsk on February 12 collapsed for the same reasons as the first Minsk agreement signed last September: then and now, Russia and its separatist proxies failed to adhere to a single article of the Minsk agreements. Therefore, it is only a matter of time before the EU will return to the question of tougher economic and financial sanctions and U.S. President Barack Obama has to decide whether to continue to fight his own Democratic Party, as well as Republicans and both houses of Congress, over whether to authorize supplying defensive military equipment for Ukraine (https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/18/lets-call-the-ukrainian-cease-fire-what-it-is-russia-putin/). But, Canada, in addition to Western Europe, is also opposed to providing Ukraine with military equipment. With Minsk-2 having disintegrated at the strategic railroad crossing of Debaltseve from which Ukrainian forces retreated, will Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government, which has been strong on rhetoric but weak on substance, and the Canadian Parliament continue to oppose the sending of military equipment to Ukraine?