OTTAWA – A global summit organized to support Ukraine’s reform process was the logical venue for Ukraine’s new president to make his first overseas trip and North American debut with Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska.
Attending the third annual Ukraine Reform Conference in Toronto – a gathering of more than 800 representatives of 37 countries and 10 international organizations – along with receiving a red-carpet welcome, signing bilateral agreements and obtaining further funding from the Canadian government made Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s decision to interrupt his campaigning for Ukraine’s July 21 parliamentary election an astute move to demonstrate his statecraft skills back home.
Presidential Office of Ukraine
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine and Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland with participants of the Ukraine Reform Conference in Toronto.
Arriving in Toronto at 6 p.m. on Canada Day, July 1, the 41-year-old neophyte politician spent the next day in the city on a jammed near 13-hour public schedule that began with a 7:45 a.m. working breakfast with Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland. The day’s schedule also included several meetings with international officials, members of the Ukrainian Canadian community and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau; a visit to the Holodomor Memorial; an address to the Ukraine Reform Conference; and a dinner in his honor hosted by Mr. Trudeau.
The July 2-4 itinerary offered many opportunities for Mr. Zelenskyy to demonstrate how he has transitioned from playing a president on television (in the Ukrainian series “Servant of the People”) to filling that role as Ukraine’s sixth head of state since his May 20 inauguration. A natural showman, he did not disappoint in terms of style.
“I would like to deliver my speech in a language that is well understood in this country and almost official – it’s Ukrainian,” said the diminutive, gravely voiced president at his July 2 joint news conference with the towering Prime Minister Trudeau.
“Yesterday, we took a walk in Toronto and I had a strange feeling that I am in my homeland – although 1,000 kilometers away from Ukraine – and somebody approaches you and says, ‘Can I take a selfie with you?’ – in Ukrainian!” he continued in Ukrainian.
Ukrainian World Congress
Ukrainian World Congress President Paul Grod (left) leads the panel discussion titled “Vision: Ukraine as a High Income Country.”
Following his lighthearted introduction, Mr. Zelenskyy turned to the more serious substance of his first public speech on Canadian soil. He spoke of his desire to reach a ceasefire in the battle-ravaged eastern region of Ukraine, rescue the 24 Ukrainian sailors detained and recover the Ukrainian ships seized by Russia last November in the Kerch Strait.
President Zelenskyy said he spoke to Prime Minister Trudeau of expanding the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement to include joint ventures in the area of information technology, and referred to one of two new bilateral tracts both leaders signed. “The Audiovisual Coproduction Treaty will help promote Canadian content in Ukraine, [and] once ratified… will facilitate feature film, television and digital productions by creating a framework for the pooling of creative and financial resources of Canadian and Ukrainian audiovisual producers,” according to a backgrounder from the prime minister’s office.
“Ukraine will be able to make joint movie projects with Canada – Jim Carrey, Keanu Reeves, Ryan Reynolds – these are resounding names for Ukrainians,” said President Zelenskyy, before offering a wink to his former profession. “In Ukraine, we have actors who rival Canadian actors’ skills.”
During his visit, Canada and Ukraine also agreed to renew a Youth Mobility Arrangement, which was first established nine years ago by former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government to support travel and work opportunities for Canadian and Ukrainian young people.
“It is now not very simple to get a visa to [visit Canada]. It’s as difficult as to get a ticket to a National Hockey League game,” President Zelenskyy told reporters. “I understand that Canada is very cautious when it comes to a visa-free environment. But for us, this is an important issue to make sure that our young people can travel and get back to their homeland.”
(Ukrainians require a visa to visit Canada, whereas Canadians do not have the same requirement to visit Ukraine for under 90 days.)
The president’s remarks followed the prime minister’s reiteration of Canada’s strong ties with Ukraine.
“It’s really important that we rally support for Ukraine and its reform agenda, especially at a time when the international context is rapidly changing,” said Mr. Trudeau at the news conference. “This is something I raised with [Russian] President Putin at the G-20,” which met on June 28-29.
During the Ukrainian Reform Conference, co-hosted by the governments of Canada and Ukraine, Ottawa announced over $45 million (about $34 million U.S.) in support for Ukraine, including $25 million ($19 million U.S.) over six years to help implement “inclusive and gender-responsive reforms in Ukraine,” according to Global Affairs Canada, headed by Minister Freeland, who is of Ukrainian descent.
Presidential Office of Ukraine
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets with Ukrainian World Congress President Paul Grod and representatives of the Ukrainian Canadian community.
“The president’s impatient and is looking forward to undertaking reforms in Ukraine,” the prime minister told reporters. “It’s in that context that it [is] important to include all citizens in developing policies that include the most vulnerable, women and minority groups. This is one of the best ways of making sure that reforms be both sustainable and trickle down to most Ukrainians as well.”
Mr. Trudeau said that when he visited Ukraine three years ago, he had a “sit-down with civil-society leaders – whether it was folks working on police reform, on freedom of the press, on anti-corruption issues, or on LGBT rights. I [saw] a strong and vibrant civil society that is raring to be part of the reforms and progress in Ukraine.”
“I know with Volodymyr’s election, we’re going to see even more positive steps,” the prime minister added. “We will be patient, of course, because there is a lot of work to do. But we will also be appropriately impatient, as I know Volodymyr is, to see the results positively for the Ukrainian people.”
President Zelenskyy later chimed in. “We already had a major reform – the reform of the president, so this is a new beginning,” he said. “We wait for the 21st of July when we have a snap election, and I’m sure we [his Servant of the People party] will [form a majority in the Verkhovna Rada] and there will be a new government that will be a team that really cares about reform to meet European standards.”
Mr. Trudeau said the issue of Ukraine’s security also was “discussed extensively” in his meeting with Mr. Zelenskyy.
“In the wake of Russian aggression and attempts to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty, including the illegal annexation of Crimea, it is all the more important for countries like Canada to stand alongside its partner [Ukraine]. Russia’s actions are not only a threat to Ukraine but to international law,” said the prime minister, who outlined Canadian support for Ukraine, such as through the Canadian Armed Forces’ Operation UNIFIER military mission that has helped train more than 12,500 members of Ukraine’s security forces.
One new measure, announced during President Zelenskyy’s visit, will be to deny entry to Canada for Ukrainians from the Donbas region holding Russian-issued passports.
Presidential Office of Ukraine
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland.
“People who are citizens of Ukraine, which is the case for people living in occupied Donbas and Luhansk, are very welcome to apply for a visa to come visit Canada using their Ukrainian passport,” Foreign Affairs Minister Freeland said at the conference.
“Canada, however, considers the issuance of Russian passports to these people to be a further act of aggression against Ukraine,” she underscored.
Prime Minister Trudeau also said that Canada was “dismayed” that member states of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) recently voted to reinstate Russia “despite having not liberated the Ukrainian sailors from the Sea of Azov.”
However, on the diplomatically delicate issue of Canada equipping Ukraine with arms in its war against Kremlin-backed militants, Mr. Zelenskyy appeared to go off-script during his news conference with Mr. Trudeau.
The Ukrainian president said that he obtained an agreement from the Trudeau government on “the supply of armed vehicles to Ukraine.” But a Canadian government official told the CBC that no such arrangement was reached, and Prime Minister Trudeau made no mention of it when taking questions from reporters about equipping Ukraine’s military with weapons.
Instead, he referred to his government’s addition of Ukraine to the Automatic Firearms Country Control List that enables Canadian companies and individuals to apply for a permit to export certain restricted firearms, weapons and devices to Ukraine.
Last summer, a Canadian arms company signed a deal with the Ukrainian military to provide it with sniper rifles in a deal worth about $756 million U.S. at the time.
“We have already seen investments by Canadian companies into an ammunition factory in Ukraine,” said Prime Minister Trudeau, without offering any detail.
Within the new basket of funding to Ukraine, the Canadian government also allocated $6.5 million (about $5 million U.S.) over three years to help, in part, Ukraine expand policing into rural areas – and it will send up to 45 Canadian police officers (an increase from 20 officers) to Ukraine to help train their counterparts there as part of a Canadian international police peacekeeping program in the country that has been extended until 2021.
At the Ukraine Reform Conference, Lithuanian Foreign Affairs Minister Linas Linkevicius announced that his country would co-host the next global Ukraine Reform Conference in Vilnius next year. The first two conferences were held in London and Copenhagen in 2017 and 2018, respectively.