Politics

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) calls on the Government of Canada to swiftly adopt a "Magnitsky Amendment" to the Special Economic Measures Act. The United States adopted the Magnitsky Act in 2012. Magnitsky legislation is named after the late Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer and fraud investigator who uncovered evidence of a major theft of tax money by government officials - but was then arrested for it himself, imprisoned, tortured and left to languish for 358 days before he died in jail at age 37...

Today marks the two-year anniversary of the so-called ‘referendum’ held in Crimea and the invasion and military occupation of Ukraine by the Putin regime. To mark this solemn occasion, Official Opposition Foreign Affairs critic, Tony Clement, and Defence critic, James Bezan, call on the Liberal government to clearly state that it will never recognize the illegal occupation of Crimea: “It is deeply concerning that the Liberal government, in a statement released today, refused to repeat what we have been saying all along: that Canada will never recognize any part of Ukraine as Russian territory. Crimea is Ukraine, Donbas is Ukraine and they always will be. Canada must not waver in standing with our partners and allies in support of the people of Ukraine, and their quest for peace and democracy...

Rona Ambrose, Leader of the Official Opposition and Interim Leader of the Conservative Party, along with Conservative Party critics Tony Clement and James Bezan, issued the following statement earlier today: “1st Lt. Nadiya Savchenko, a Ukrainian Air Force Pilot and member of the Ukrainian Parliament, is being held illegally in a Russian prison. Today, thousands of people in Ukraine and around the world, including Canada, are gathering to demand that the Russian Federation release Nadiya Savchenko from Russian imprisonment...

The International Council in Support of Ukraine (ICSU) is deeply troubled by a string of controversial endorsements received by Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump. Last week, former Ku Klux Klan leader, David Duke, endorsed Donald Trump for the US presidency. Duke’s support came on the heels of an endorsement from pro-Kremlin, xenophobic politician Jean-Marie Le Pen, the former leader of France's National Front party. Most recently, US media outlets reported that the Russian ideologue, Aleksandr Dugin, whose neo-imperialistic views inspired Putin's aggression in Ukraine, has endorsed Donald Trump. In fact, David Duke has travelled to Russia to meet with Dugin. All of this has serious national security implications. Trump has sung the praises of Russian President Vladimir Putin, proposing that the US outsource the war on ISIS to the Kremlin...

ite the failed no-confidence vote in the Ukrainian Parliament, calls for new mid-term parliamentary elections have not diminished. They originated with the Opposition Bloc (former Regions Party) and were then taken up by the Fatherland Party and, subsequently, the Self-Reliance Party. Not so coincidentally, leaders of the Russian Federation are strong supporters of new elections. According to snap election advocates, the government is in crisis because the President and Prime Minister have failed to implement government reforms and to eliminate corruption. Their main argument is that no high level corrupt officials and oligarchs have been arrested. Why then are leaders of the Maidan Revolution of Dignity, who have since become members of parliament and are leading advocates and authors of government reforms and anti-corruption legislation, opposed to new elections? After all, there appears to be no disagreement between the two sides or among top government leaders on key policies. For the first time since the restoration of independence in 1991, there is unanimity on rejecting any form of union with Russia and supporting joining the European Union and the Euro-Atlantic community. All agree on the need to implement government, economic and fiscal reforms, including eliminating corruption, as set forth, inter alia, in the IMF loan requirements and the terms of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement...

"The Obama Doctrine" published recently by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic Magazine will likely launch many dissertations and research papers, given its significant analysis of America's foreign policy under the leadership of President Barack Obama. Obama's comments throughout the article give us a better insight into the decision-making process of the White House and Washington's establishment regarding the use of foreign policy tools. While the article primarily concentrates on Obama's handling of the crisis in the Middle East and the rise of ISIS, it provides sufficient amount of information about America's policy towards Eastern Europe, more specifically the current crisis provoked by Russian aggression against Ukraine...

Two great Americans who are also trailblazing African-Americans, and hence even greater sources of pride for citizens like me, revealed their thoughts on Ukraine this month. One got the situation -- and the message -- more right than wrong. The other one got both more wrong than right. U.S. President Barack Obama, the first black American president, got my support for two terms in office. George W. Bush, the president that Condoleezza Rice served as America's second black and second female U.S. secretary of state, never got my vote. But on the issue of Ukraine, Obama will go...

Obama didn’t much like my line of inquiry. “Look, this theory is so easily disposed of that I’m always puzzled by how people make the argument. I don’t think anybody thought that George W. Bush was overly rational or cautious in his use of military force. And as I recall, because apparently nobody in this town does, Putin went into Georgia on Bush’s watch, right smack dab in the middle of us having over 100,000 troops deployed in Iraq.” Obama was referring to Putin’s 2008 invasion of Georgia, a former Soviet republic, which was undertaken for many of the same reasons Putin later invaded Ukraine—to keep an ex–Soviet republic in Russia’s sphere of influence. “Putin acted in Ukraine in response to a...

To his millions of admirers, Pope Francis seems possessed of an almost angelic spirituality. But after his meeting with the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill on February 12th, some were left wondering whether the pontiff had rushed in where angels fear to tread. The meeting with his Russian counterpart drew Francis deep into geopolitics, and led him to condone Russia’s foreign policy and critique the West’s in ways that have infuriated some of the Catholic church’s supporters. It is easy to see why the meeting appealed to Francis. Reconciliation is at the core of his world view. “Bridges last, and help peace. Walls do not,” he told an...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reached out Tuesday to the new government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau while decrying the government of Trudeau's predecessor Stephen Harper as "Russia-phobic." Speaking during a wide-ranging annual foreign affairs news conference in Moscow, Lavrov said Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trudeau met on the sidelines of the G2O meeting in November in Turkey and "both expressed desire to normalize relations." After that meeting, Trudeau said to reporters he had told Putin that "Russia's interference in Ukraine must cease." Russia looks forward to correct the "mistakes of predecessors," referring to Stephen Harper's government, Lavrov said Tuesday. He called the...