Canadian diplomacy is overdue in Ukraine | War in Ukraine

The Trudeau government assures that the return of the Canadian delegation is in its plans, but has not provided a specific date.

L’goal of Canada is to reopen the embassy over the next few days, weeksFederal Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said last week, adding that the government was studying scenarios in this sense.

In an interview with The Canadian News, Andriy Shevchenko, who was Ukraine’s ambassador to Ottawa until last summer, after serving in the Ukrainian parliament, pleaded for a rapid return of Canadian diplomats to his country.

” Canada was one of the first countries to move the embassy outside [du pays]. We don’t want Canada to be the last to go back. »

About ten days before the invasion of Russian troops in Ukraine, Ottawa had initially suspended its activities at the Canadian embassy in kyiv and opened a temporary office in Lviv, in the northwest of the country. On the first day of the Russian offensive, February 24, Canada transferred its diplomatic personnel to Poland.

Quoted by the CTV network, Minister Joly maintained last week that Ottawa was closely monitoring what its allies were doing, in particular its partners in the Five Eyes secret service alliance (“ Five Eyes », in English), which also includes the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, citing security imperatives.

Testifying before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, Global Affairs Canada official Heidi Kutz echoed the country’s chief diplomat on Monday, linking a gradual return of the diplomatic presence in Ukraine under appropriate security conditions.

Bloc Québécois MP Stéphane Bergeron asked if this was not a way to postpone the reopening of the embassy indefinitely.

In a war situation, how can we claim that the situation will become sufficiently secure for us to be able to do like most of our allies and show concrete support for Ukraine by having an embassy there?he argued.

” Shouldn’t we, at the very least, reopen [des bureaux diplomatiques] in Lviv as a preliminary step leading to the full reopening of the embassy in Kyiv? »

Nearly thirty countries, mainly European, have already sent their diplomats to the Ukrainian capital. This is notably the case of France and the United Kingdom. I feel like this is absolutely the place to bethe daily said on Sunday The Guardian the British ambassador, a few days after her return.

The list continues to grow: On Monday, the Danish embassy reopened its doors, and Sweden announced the reopening of its own in two days. American diplomacy, for its part, said it hoped for a return by the end of the month.

Despite the bombardments that targeted the region of the capital in the first weeks of the Russian offensive, Poland and Georgia have even kept their embassies open since the start of hostilities.

No Canadian visit to Kyiv yet

Since the Russian withdrawal from the Ukrainian capital, nearly twenty foreign leaders and senior leaders have marched there to show their support for Ukraine.

On the other hand, no official from Canada, the country with the second largest Ukrainian diaspora after Russia, has yet been there.

When you see in person a friend, an ally […] present in the capital, it means a lotargued Andriy Shevchenko to The Canadian News.

Interviewed by a The Canadian News team, Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov, one of the leaders to have visited Ukraine, for his part insisted on the importance, for foreign leaders, of seeing the extent damage on the ground. He himself recently went to the kyiv region, in particular to Irpin, one of the theaters of abuses attributed to the Russian army by the Ukrainians.

” It’s very different when you make public statements from the comfort of your office. It’s very different to see it with your own eyes. »

Asked on the sidelines of an automotive investment announcement in Windsor, Ontario, about a possible visit to Ukraine, Prime Minister Trudeau dodged the question, merely repeating that Canada support Ukraine.

As you know, we are still in contact with the Ukrainian government to deliver what they need, and we will continue to be. And we will always seek to contribute in a positive way to help the Ukrainians in this conflict against the illegal war of Russiahe replied.

However, international community officials who have visited have generally not publicized their stay for security reasons.

The first to make the trip, the Polish, Czech and Slovenian prime ministers had met President Volodymyr Zelensky in mid-March, even before the departure of Russian forces from the region.

They were then followed by, among others, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. The United States, for its part, dispatched the Secretaries of Defense and Foreign Affairs, Lloyd Austin and Antony Blinken, as well as, this weekend, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.