Foreign Affairs Committee on June 1st, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

The time is the same for the second, third and fourth rounds.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Okay.

A few moments ago, Colonel Siromakha was talking about supply routes in the Arctic. Moreover, in the document you submitted to us, I found that a lot of emphasis was placed on the Arctic situation. I wondered whether there is a parallel between the fact that troops are massed on the Ukrainian border and the fact that, in a way, troops are also massed on the Canadian border in the Arctic. Or is Ukraine actually concerned about what is happening in the Arctic?

I think the colonel was giving us a good indication of what the real concerns are. Perhaps he would like to follow up on what he was saying a few moments ago.

Dr. Fry was also talking about the importance of the Arctic and what Russia is doing there.

[Col Viktor Siromakha]

Ambassador, if I may....

Thank you very much for your question.

I would like to emphasize that the Arctic is the new theatre of operations for Russia. For example, at the moment, there are more than 90,000 troops on the border with Ukraine. Also, the Russian fleet is in the Arctic. On the border of Ukraine, the Russians have sent more than 54 battalions. In April 2019, the Russians sent all the ships in their northern fleet to the Arctic.

Simultaneously with the buildup on the frontier with Ukraine, we saw huge development in the Arctic. For instance, in the presentation you can see the nice picture of three Russian submarines at the northern pole. I would say that's a brilliant indication of how Russians have shown their capacity and the importance of their nuclear assets in the region. For instance, on April 19 they sent all their fleet assets from their respective bases to the respective areas in the Arctic Ocean.

For a brilliant explanation of what is going on in the Arctic, there's an article by Marcus Kolga called “Winter is coming to Canada's North”. Maclean's magazine published this article recently. Mr. Kolga explained why Russian has started all these activities in the north, with the assessment that Foreign Minister Lavrov recently announced that all the oil and gas and minerals under the ice will now be the property of Russia. Definitely, at 200 nautical miles, that's the exclusive zone of Canada, but Russia's ambitions are at the edge of this zone, so this—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Colonel Siromakha, I apologize. We will have to leave it there.

Mr. Bergeron, you will have the opportunity to ask more questions in the fourth round.

We will now go to Mr. Harris for two and a half minutes, please.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Chair.

I have a couple of questions for the ambassador.

President Zelenskyy has recently indicated some concern with the current Minsk agreement and would like to see some changes made. Could you indicate what the concerns are there, and what changes President Zelenskyy would like to make in that agreement?

[H.E. Andriy Shevchenko]

The Minsk agreement helped us to slow down the major escalation we witnessed in 2014 and 2015, but it never laid down a clear way on how we could move forward. It's well known that our view is that we should start with the ceasefire and de-escalation along the front line, and then proceed towards political settlement and eventually the election in the occupied territories. Again, the Russians try to present this differently. They would like to have an election first. It's very difficult to understand how you can have an election when there is no ceasefire.

In a way, I'm telling you this just to explain that the Minsk agreements and the Minsk process have never actually laid down a clear way for how we can get to a successful result in this process. The second strong argument to review the Minsk agreements is to remind ourselves that Crimea is not covered by the Normandy process and the Minsk agreements. One way or another, we should be open to some other options for peace talks.

Having said that, Ukraine is strongly committed to the existing Minsk agreements.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Yes, the note provided to us indicated that there were meetings even as late as April of this year, during which both Ukraine and Russia offered their support and undertook to implement the provisions of that agreement.

You're looking for additional measures in it as well. What specific ones would you want to see?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Would you give just a brief answer, Ambassador, please?

[H.E. Andriy Shevchenko]

Imperative number one is a strong, reliable and sustainable ceasefire. That has never happened. We could start with that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Mr. Harris.

Thank you, Ambassador.

We have Mr. Bezan, please, for five minutes.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ambassador, you were talking earlier about things that Ukraine needs, which include defence weapons.

What specific defence weapons does Ukraine want from Canada and other allies?

[H.E. Andriy Shevchenko]

Mr. Chairman, if you would allow, I would invite Colonel Siromakha to start on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Please go ahead, sir.

[Col Viktor Siromakha]

Since 2014, Ukraine has already received a lot from Canada, and it was timely and the exact assistance that we had been desperately waiting for.

Now the situation has completely changed, so we have already strong armed forces. What we face now is competition in intelligence and competition in modern, sophisticated assets.

For instance, on the border with Russia and within Ukrainian territory, we have Russian modern electronic warfare equipment, so modern and so powerful and successful that they even jammed a U.S. Global Hawk drone at the end of April this year, Forte 12. This drone was jammed by, let's say, unidentified assets within the territory of Ukraine, but I would say that it was Russian electronic warfare assets, even Krasukha-4 or something like this.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

There are also reports of electronic warfare in the Black Sea. A U.S. destroyer has been destabilized by Russian assets in the region.

[Col Viktor Siromakha]

Absolutely, yes. A U.S. ship was overflown by a not-very-young Russian aircraft, a Su-24. I would say it is 25 years old, maybe even more, but the electronic warfare assets on board this aircraft were quite powerful. That's why, if we are talking about what more Canada can do, it is to help us with our ability to counteract Russian electronic warfare measures, and to better protect very sensitive areas in the Sea of Azov and the northern part of the Black Sea.

At the same time, on a technical level, we face severe casualties from snipers, because Russian sniper teams have been permanently deployed along the contact line. That's not only Russian armed forces snipers; that's also Russian special forces snipers, JFO snipers, FSB snipers. It's like a tour of duty for them to go to the contact line and work against our positions, our soldiers, our officers and our men and women in uniform.

I can tell you, as a military guy, I can't think about evil on a Friday night, but to start a competition to hit Ukrainian soldiers in the eye, I would say, is not a very friendly approach from our neighbours.

What do we need? For instance, in this particular case, it's telemeter sights, night vision devices, thermoscopes, laser designators. We have some lists, and we are sharing this list of requirements with our colleagues here in the Department of National Defence. I know there are some partial plans to provide Ukraine with, let's say, some nanosensors over the next period of time. DND knows about these plans and is working on this.

At the same time, if we are speaking about really good Canadian assistance to Ukraine, I would move slightly towards political support. For instance, you definitely know about our plans to work on the NATO-Ukraine Commission, and we definitely need Canadian support to unblock this commission because of the position of some member states.

As the ambassador said before, we are working on an enhanced security agreement between Ukraine and NATO, because we need to start an exchange of restricted information via secure channels.

Thank you.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Thanks, Colonel. I'm going to have to cut you off, because I see the 30 seconds coming up.

I just want to say this to you both, Ambassador Shevchenko and Colonel Siromakha. You mentioned that Ukrainian forces are holding the eastern flank to NATO, and I want to thank all those who have stood on the line. You are the front line against Russian aggression and the rest of Europe—and all of NATO for that matter. I know you've paid a terrible price in lives lost, in displaced people and in all the ongoing injuries, both visible and invisible, that have been suffered by Ukrainian forces. I want to pass on my gratitude and condolences to those who were lost and to the families that were victimized. Know that we will continue, as Conservatives, to stand with Ukrainians and united with Ukraine, and to ensure that some of the things you had that are no longer being provided, like RADARSAT imagery.... We'd love to restore that and work with you on providing the defensive weapons you require.

[H.E. Andriy Shevchenko]

Thank you, Mr. Bezan.

We'll pass it and take it as a message on behalf of all of Canada.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you, Mr. Bezan.

Thank you, Ambassador.

We'll now go to Mr. Fonseca for five minutes.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, Ambassador and Colonel.

I'm sure you're glad to have seen the Biden administration return to supporting a liberal, rules-based order—the UN, the WTO and other multilateral organizations that maybe the U.S. had gotten away from for a while.

Also, I want to bring up how we've all been affected—be it Europe, the United States, Canada—by some of these Russian aggressions. We've seen the poisoning in Russia of Alexei Navalny, and his imprisonment. We saw what happened in Belarus with Ryanair. We saw the elections interference in the United States and in other places around the world. We saw United States energy systems being attacked, not necessarily—I'm not sure—by the state of Russia, but by Russians who are attacking these states.

I say that because I want to ask: Through this targeted, Russian, political interference and these disinformation campaigns and cyber-incursions, should we exchange lessons learned from others, from yourselves, from everybody getting together with our respective experiences, and share best practices to combat these and other forms of Russian hybrid warfare? I really feel that this is where Russia is attacking the world, through this hybrid warfare, attacking our economic systems, our energy systems, our defence systems and, bigger than all of that, our democracy by interfering with our elections.

I would like to hear from you and the colonel.

[H.E. Andriy Shevchenko]

Mr. Fonseca, that's precisely the strategic approach that we encourage all of us to take on this. Let's speak, for example, about Canada and the U.S. You already do a lot to coordinate through the Five Eyes mechanisms. Also, both Canada and the U.S. are part of the Quint group, those five countries that the Ukrainian armed forces co-operate most closely with, and we expect to see even better co-operation.

I would also encourage the Canadian parliamentarians who follow the matter to reach out to their American counterparts. We need you to coordinate, to exchange what you know, and to come up with a good joint vision and plan on this. Yes, we expect the Biden administration to have a very strong position on this, and we are very encouraged by the first steps. In the visuals that we shared with you, you can find a slide that specifically refers to the American response to this Russian escalation. That is a good sign, but there are plenty more things we should do together.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Colonel, if you would like to comment....

[Col Viktor Siromakha]

In this current reality, it's quite hard to start with a really good exchange of good visits of professionals, analysts and operators from Canada and from Ukraine. That's why we really need this reliable, secure channel of communication and a varied focus, especially on security and air defence situations in the areas of the Black Sea and Sea of Azov.

Hybrid threats are definitely a challenge, and we are now watching what is going on with Colonial Pipeline, SolarWinds and attacks on critical Ukrainian infrastructure objects in western Ukraine. So far, we are working on the development of our own capabilities, like cybersecurity centres. We would like to restart visits in the future in order to bring more Canadian specialists to Ukraine, to show them what we have in Kiev and, of course, to share knowledge with you here in Canada.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

These cyber-attacks we're hearing about are even affecting us here. They're affecting municipalities and businesses, where they're taking over, shutting them down, holding them for ransom and then bribing them. We don't even know how many this is happening to, because many are fearful of disclosing that this has happened to their businesses.

It is really imperative that we be transparent with this and find out where these are coming from. I know that Russia is one that has been isolated as to where some of these attacks are coming from—or from Russians—but there's also China and other parts of the world. I think we need to work together on this.

[Col Viktor Siromakha]

I absolutely agree with you on this issue, and I must commend you. In one assessment here in Canada, I saw that cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure objects like heating systems or water systems in Canada could be even worse with all the consequences of COVID-19. That's going to have a really targeted, focused impact.