Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for being here today and sharing this important information with us.
I think all Canadians are very interested and concerned about the situation in Ukraine. As I think you know, many, many Canadians have a family heritage from Ukraine, and the connections between our two countries go back more than a hundred years. It's very important to us that we see real democratic progress in Ukraine. We were all very excited at the time of the Orange Revolution about what we saw happening. Now we see, from the perspective of where we sit in Canada, that things may be taking a step backwards.
I have a number of questions, and then I'll share my time with Mr. Hawn.
First of all, Mr. Rybachuk, you mentioned Viktor Yushchenko and the fact that he may have been poisoned. We have been told that Yulia Tymoshenko is unwell. She is apparently quite ill today in her prison cell. You may know that a team of Canadian doctors, along with some German doctors, visited her recently with the support of the Canadian government.
Do you see a pattern of what happened to Mr. Yushchenko being repeated with Yulia Tymoshenko? What are your views on that?