generalspeaking

Mentoring Ukraine

"People who are citizens of Ukraine, which is the case for people living in occupied Donbass and Luhansk, are very welcome to apply for a visa to come visit Canada using their Ukrainian passport."
"Canada, however, considers the issuance of Russian passports to these people to be a further act of aggression against Ukraine."
"We very much encourage our partners who share our support for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity to join us in taking this step."
Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland

Frosty relations have become the norm between Canada and the Russian Federation. Russian President Vladimir Putin will apologize to no world body that he authorized the violent takeover of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. Russian heritage lies there. In fact, Ukraine, once the breadbasket of the U.S.S.R. which also made it the victim of a grain shortage that created the Holdomor, is wrong, according to the Kremlin, to consider itself a sovereign entity; it too is part of the Russian Federation.

This little tiff between once-friendly neighbours, so friendly they were in face, 'family', is viewed somewhat differently by the Ukrainian-Canadian community, some one-and-a-half-million-strong. Such that they have great influence in the Canadian halls of power. All the more so that one of their own is the Liberal minister of foreign affairs whose loathing of Russia and its politics is more than evident and whose loyalty to Ukraine assures the still-governing Liberal party of a loyal bloc of voters.

Moscow's mischief in Ukraine is well documented. And its incitement of ethnic Russian restiveness in eastern Ukraine, supporting the rebellion against the government in Kiev leaning toward the European Union and spurning closer ties with Moscow has led to a standoff in hostilities though micro-conflicts break out from time to time. Russia has been sanctioned for the violence it has inspired in eastern Ukraine, and for breaking international law in seizing Crimea.

None of which particularly troubles Vladimir Putin. And although Russia's proxies in eastern Ukraine have been fairly quiescent of late with Russian attention turned elsewhere, toward the Middle East for the time being, there is little doubt that the Kremlin's plans have not yet been completed. That the areas in eastern Ukraine currently occupied by ethnic Russian-speaking Ukrainians are meant to become part of the Russian Federation. Ukraine's evisceration is not yet complete.

Canada, proclaims Minister Freeland, is duty-bound to denounce the passport scheme launched by the Kremlin as one more assault on Ukrainian sovereignty. The breach of Ukraine's borders by Russia's annexation of the Crimean Peninsula is permanent as far as Moscow is concerned, but temporary according to Ukraine's new President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as it was also viewed by his predecessor. Just as Trudeau's predecessor, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper tersely told Mr. Putin to 'get out of Ukraine'.

The eastern Ukraine insurgency is meant to be an introductory phase to a looted Ukrainian geography hearking back to the conclusion of the Second World War when territorial boundaries were still flexible and the winners took all. Ukraine's concern is that in the Donbass and Luhansk areas where Ukrainian citizens of ethnic and cultural Russian background now use Russian passports, the situation is ripe for Moscow to to assert its inalienable right to 'protect' its own. Co-opting the geography in the process as a final stamp of assertive ownership.

It is what China has done in Tibet; sending Han Chinese to colonize Tibet so they become a majority which China must protect and hence absorbing Tibet as a part of greater China. This is a tactic as old as territorial disputes between neighbours and far-flung colonized areas alike, something that has existed since time immemorial. Think of Britain claiming possession of the far-flung Asian Maldives and its dispute over the Falkland Islands with Argentina.

Now, Canada, through its Minister of Foreign Affairs speaks "about the need for strategic advice on government" with Ukraine. "This is a true area of Canadian expertise and we are pleased to be starting right away", said Chrystia Freeland with the confidence born of one speaking for the government she represents toward the government of her heritage.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has said that the reconstruction of the country’s war-torn Donbass region will cost more than 10 billion euros. Speaking at the Ukraine Reform Conference in Toronto, which brings together the country’s international partners from the public, private and non-profit sectors, Mr Zelensky urged foreign investors to take part in the rebuilding of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine      Photo: Official website of the president of Ukraine

Labels: Canada, Conference, Crimea, Rebels, Russia, Ukraine, Violence

posted by Pieface @ Friday, July 05, 2019