OTTAWA – Although the Canadian government has yet to announce an extension to Operation UNIFIER in western Ukraine, Canadian soldiers who have been training their Ukrainian counterparts there since 2015 are planning well into 2018, according to a Canadian member of Parliament who was in Ukraine last month.
Former Conservative Cabinet Minister Peter Kent, who now serves as the Official Opposition foreign affairs critic, said in an interview that Lt. Col. Wayne Niven, who commands the Canadian military mission in Ukraine, and Roman Waschuk, Canada’s ambassador to Ukraine, told him that they have received “no instructions” to conclude the operation despite a March 31 deadline.
“They have no plans to leave and continue to make plans with Ukraine and with other democratic countries involved there to continue their work through the year and into next year. I was pleased to hear they would be there for some time to come,” said Mr. Kent, a member of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, who was in Kyiv in January with his committee colleagues as part of a 12-day, fact-finding mission to Ukraine, Latvia, Poland and Kazakhstan.
Canada’s military training mission falls under the mandate of a joint task force that includes Ukraine, the United States and the United Kingdom.
However, the Canadian Armed Forces always do “contingency planning for various scenarios, both at home and abroad,” said Jordan Owens, a spokeswoman for Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan, in an e-mail to The Ukrainian Weekly. “It is part of prudent preparation so that they can meet whatever mandate Canadians give them.”
She said that a decision to extend Op UNIFIER has yet to be made.
Mr. Kent said that while the 200 Canadian Army soldiers stationed in Ukraine have had no orders to stand down, the Ukrainian government is “uncertain about Canada’s resolve” in assisting Ukraine as its government troops resumed intense fighting with Russian-backed rebels in the eastern part of the country last week.
In a statement last week, he and James Bezan, Canada’s Official Opposition defense critic, noted that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to extend Op UNIFIER beyond March 2017. President Poroshenko “deserves a clear answer,” they wrote.
“It would be helpful if the federal government formally announced the extension sooner rather than later to reassure the government and people of Ukraine to reinforce Canada’s support,” said Mr. Kent, who has represented the Toronto riding of Thornhill in the House since 2008.
“Given the surge in hostilities last week, with indiscriminate artillery barrages from rebels, the displacement of the civilian population, and the denial of heat and electricity, we’ve got a humanitarian disaster in the making. And I think that as Vladimir Putin is testing our resolve and the resolve of Donald Trump, this is the time for the democratic West to step up and stand up to maintain our support of Ukraine and opposition to Russian aggression,” Mr. Kent stated.
Minister Sajjan discussed the training mission in Ukraine during his meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis at the Pentagon on February 6, according to a readout provided by the Canadian National Defense Department. No further details were provided.
Mr. Kent, a former broadcast journalist best known to Americans as an NBC News television reporter in the 1980s, has also called on the Trudeau government to restore the sharing of satellite images with the Ukrainian government.
To help Ukraine bolster its security against Russia in the ongoing conflict with separatist forces, the previous Canadian Conservative government of Stephen Harper announced two years ago that it would give Ukraine imagery from Canada’s Radarsat-2 satellite that can generate surveillance data around the clock regardless of cloud cover.
However, the Trudeau government cancelled the satellite-imagery sharing program last May following reported concerns about numerous approval processes in Ottawa and restrictions on the type of information that could be provided to Ukraine, according to documents obtained by the Canadian news agency, Postmedia, last summer.
Mr. Kent, who served as minister of state of foreign affairs responsible for the Americas and later as environment minister in the Harper government, also wants Prime Minister Trudeau’s government to ramp up sanctions against Russian and Ukrainian officials that the Conservatives enacted in 2014 under Canada’s Special Economic Measures Act in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee is conducting the first statutory parliamentary review of that legislation along with the Freezing Assets of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act since both laws came into effect 25 years ago.
Mr. Kent would like sanctions against Russia extended to “naming and shaming any human rights abusers” in the country who have been associated with the conflict in Ukraine through a Magnitsky-type law, which the Liberals, Conservatives and left-of-center New Democrats supported in the last Canadian general election campaign in 2015.
Last May, Ukrainian Canadian Sen. Raynell Andreychuk introduced a private member’s bill in Canada’s upper chamber that would freeze assets and impose travel bans on “foreign nationals responsible for gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”
Bill S-226, the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (Sergei Magnitsky Law), would follow a similar law passed in the United States in 2012.
Mr. Magnitsky was a Moscow lawyer who uncovered the largest tax fraud in Russian history, and was detained without trial and tortured before dying in a Moscow prison in 2009.
Sen. Andreychuk’s bill received a second reading in the Senate last November and it was referred for further study to the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, which the senator chairs.
If the bill passes the Senate, Conservative MP Bezan will sponsor the bill in the House of Commons where, if approved, it would become law.
There’s a greater likelihood it will, now that Ukrainian Canadian Chrystia Freeland is Canada’s foreign affairs minister.
She is known to support the law, unlike her predecessor, Stéphane Dion, who feared such legislation could damage Ottawa’s attempt to improve relations with Moscow.
“Stéphane Dion muted Canada’s voice because he thought more could be achieved in dialogue with Vladimir Putin than continuing sanctions, which he was against,” said Mr. Kent. “Minister Freeland is certainly an improvement from Mr. Dion in terms of her statements about the situation in Ukraine.”
In response to a question Mr. Kent asked her in the House last week about Canada’s response to developments in eastern Ukraine, Ms. Freeland said the situation at Avdiyivka is “of utmost concern” and “we condemn the actions of the Russian-backed separatist forces there.”
Mr. Kent praised Minister Freeland for being “far more direct” in answering his question than her predecessor had when asked about Canadian reaction to Russian actions in Ukraine.
“It’s a great advantage for Canadians to have a Ukrainian Canadian foreign affairs minister at a time when Russia is one of the great threats to peace and stability and you have someone who knows Russia and Russian leadership, and the challenges of post-Soviet Eastern Europe,” said Mr. Kent, referring to Ms. Freeland’s previous career as a journalist working in Ukraine and Russia.
“She has reassured the government of Ukraine and the people of Ukraine that she knows what needs to be done. But now that she’s foreign minister, we expect her to be as consistent as she was in the past when she wasn’t setting government foreign policy,” he added.
There are no signs that Ms. Freeland is softening her stance toward Russia.
Last month, she rejected a Russian offer of “reciprocity,” which came via the Russian news agency, Sputnik, in which her name could be removed from the list of Canadians banned from entering Russia in exchange for Canada lifting its economic sanctions and travels bans against Russia and Russian officials. “No quid pro quo for aggression and illegal action” by Russia, Ms. Freeland’s spokesman told Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper.
Mr. Kent hopes the minister can persuade her Cabinet colleagues to “stiffen their resolve in support of Ukraine, and to listen to the government of Ukraine as to what it needs in terms of Canada’s humanitarian and military support,” while sending “meaningful warnings” to discourage the Russian president’s further ambitions regarding Ukraine.
“As Putin ratchets up military aggression, the West has to assist Ukraine in counterbalancing that aggression, which might mean Canada now needs to supply Ukraine with lethal weapons,” Mr. Kent said.
His January visit to Ukraine was his first to the country since the late 1980s when he was senior European correspondent for NBC News.
Between then and now, Mr. Kent has seen Ukraine’s struggle for sovereignty shift from dwindling Soviet rule to “renewed Russian imperialism,” and based on conversations he had in Kyiv last month, the Kremlin’s continuing power and influence on Ukrainian soil has taken a toll.
“There was a concern that some elements of Ukrainian society might be willing to trade the Russian occupation of Crimea for a reduction in hostilities in the Donbas,” said Mr. Kent, who previously chaired the House Standing Committee on National Defense.
That sentiment surprised him, as did another power imbalance he observed while in Ukraine.
“Civil society is writing almost all of the reform legislation and politicians are passing it, which is not a healthy sign in a parliamentary democracy,” said Mr. Kent. “Politicians should listen to civil society, but they should write the laws.”