Foreign Affairs Committee on March 31st, 2022

[Magdalena Dembińska, Full Professor, Department of Political Science, Université de Montréal, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for inviting me to appear before the committee.

The war was not expected to last this long. Despite Russia's military superiority, the Ukrainian army is resisting. The situation on the front has been stagnant for some time. All indications are that the Kremlin has made another ill-informed calculation. Let me backtrack a bit.

Indeed, in 2014, the annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in Donbass were supposed to deter Kyiv from turning to the west and signing association agreements with the European Union. This did not happen. The agreements were signed in 2015. Popular support for the EU rose to almost 75%. Support for NATO membership tripled to almost 60%. The wars, the one in Donbass since 2014, followed by the current one, blurred regional differences at the same time. Traditionally Russian-speaking and pro-Russian regions in the east and south are supporting Ukraine against the invasion of Russia and anti-Russian sentiments are growing.

In order to control Ukraine, the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015 were to allow—according to the Kremlin's interpretation—the reintegration of Donbass into Ukraine as an autonomous territory with a special status, which would have given them a de facto veto over Ukraine's future geopolitical direction. Faced with the fiasco of this scenario, Mr. Putin took advantage of a perceived weakening of the west and used military pressure at the end of 2021, hoping to obtain guarantees from NATO regarding the end of its enlargement and the withdrawal of its troops from the eastern flank. This has not happened. The invasion of Ukraine followed, with Ukrainian resistance and determination again surprising the Kremlin. Mr. Putin's idea of overthrowing the government in Kyiv and establishing a greater Russia has met with a real obstacle. We are now in a kind of stalemate on the ground that explains the impasse in the negotiations, where the parties are not ready to make concessions.

Moscow still demands that Kyiv recognize the annexation of Crimea and the independence of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. Moscow wants Ukraine's demilitarization and neutrality status, including implicitly non-membership in the European Union as well. If Ukraine says it is ready to discuss neutrality, it is asking for security guarantees in exchange. As for concessions on territorial integrity, it is clear that they would be considered illegitimate in the eyes of the population. Mr. Zelenskyy therefore wants to postpone any negotiations on this issue until the coming years. Any future arrangement will have to be put to a referendum. Indeed, any agreement reached above the heads of the Ukrainian people has little chance of holding.

It goes without saying that, in the face of the human drama unfolding before our eyes, a ceasefire is necessary. Even if it is not in Moscow's interest to prolong the war, which has cost it some $25 billion since February 24, it is in Russia's interest to prolong the talks a little in order to gain enough ground to be able to talk about the success of its operation.

On the one hand, despite some breakthroughs by the Ukrainian army in recent days, it is unlikely that it will be able to push the Russian army out of its entire territory on its own. On the other hand, while sitting at the negotiating table, Russia is stepping up the scale and brutality of armed actions on the ground in the hope of breaking the morale of the Ukrainian side and bringing about political divisions leading to eventual capitulation. Waiting for such an outcome may be too long and too costly. Another scenario, in fact, is now emerging. It is the partition of Ukraine, which was already mooted in 2014.

In addition to Crimea, at the very least, it involves occupying the entire Donbass region in eastern Ukraine, beyond the territories controlled by the pro-Russian separatists of the self-proclaimed republics, including in particular the city and port of Mariupol, which are still undergoing a brutal offensive.

However, the plan seems more ambitious at the moment. In the south of the country, the offensive is increasing around Mykolaiv and Odessa. In the Kherson region, Russian forces are trying to set up another pro-Russian people's republic. If Russia succeeds in advancing on these eastern and southern territories, it will have control of the land link between Donbass and Crimea and potentially also, through Odessa, with the self-proclaimed pro-Russian Transnistrian republic in Moldova. Moscow could then claim a geopolitical success, that of having cut Ukraine off from the Black Sea, over which Russia will dominate.

Where will Russia stop? That depends crucially on how much time it can buy before a ceasefire is signed, which is why it is important to keep applying pressure, sending more and more aid to Ukraine and imposing even tougher sanctions to rapidly weaken Russia's military capacity. Unfortunately, there is no realistic scenario for Russia's total withdrawal from Ukraine.

I do not like to make pronouncements and predictions about the future, but unless there is a dramatic turnaround by Russia, in the next few years or decades, there will probably be another frozen conflict, a ceasefire, a demarcation line between the warring parties. However, there will be no peace treaty, because neither Kyiv nor the international community will recognize such a forced partition of Ukraine.

For its part, Russia has a history of using territory in neighbouring countries to advance its geopolitical agenda. For more than 30 years, Transnistria as well as South Ossetia and Abkhazia have been destabilizing Moldova and Georgia, respectively, and standing in the way of their western aspirations. A prolonged confrontation is brewing, a wall between two civilizations, according to Mr. Putin.

Thank you for your attention.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Professor Dembińska.

Dr. Snyder, please go ahead for five minutes of opening remarks.

[Prof. Timothy David Snyder, Professor of History, Yale University, As an Individual]

Thank you very much. It's an honour to be asked to testify.

After this extremely competent introduction, this tour d'horizon, what I would like to do with my time is just present a few concepts that I think help to understand the overall shape of what's happening. Then I'll look forward to your questions.

As a historian, I don't have any doubt that what we are passing through now is a turning point in the history of the world, but like all turning points, we can't really be sure which way matters are turning. I'll have something to say about that towards the end.

I think the concepts that are useful in understanding what's happening, the big concepts, are four.

Number one, the opponent that Ukraine is facing here, the enemy that Ukraine is facing here, can be characterized as an “oligarchy”. Russia is a state that is characterized by extreme concentrations of wealth. The Government of Russia can be understood as one dominant oligarchical clan, and we can understand Russia's war against Ukraine as the kind of fantasy that oligarchs indulge in.

The second concept, a second category and a second classical political term that helps to understand what is happening, is “tyranny”. Mr. Putin is a tyrant in the classical sense of the word, just as described in chapters 8 and 9 of Plato's Republic. He is separated from useful advisers. He's unable to listen to advice. He's more and more involved in his own conceptions, in which he seems to believe more and more.

A third useful concept—which was raised, I believe, in the last panel—is the concept of “empire”, and not in some kind of vague or metaphorical sense but in the specific sense of the history of European empires as entities that denied that other countries are states and that other peoples are nations. A very specific quality of Russia's aggression towards Ukraine is the consistent claim that Ukraine is not a state and that Ukraine is not a nation. This recalls 500 years of European imperialism. It also recalls very specifically the kinds of arguments that were used by Hitler and Stalin in 1938 and 1939, during a period of European imperialism inside Europe.

In addition to that, I would note—and here I'm echoing, I believe, what other panellists have said—that we are now in a second stage of the war, where the first stage was characterized by belief in this imperial vision and by the belief that Ukraine would fall in two or three days. The military operation, as it was initially conceived, assumed that there really was no state or nation that would resist, and that, on the third day of the invasion, Putin would already be negotiating with his own puppet regime and there would be a victory parade.

Because that did not turn out to be the case, the Russian military, along with the Russian national guard, Chechen irregulars and so on, must now try to make the world look like Putin's characterization. This is now, in a fairly literal sense, a war of destruction or a war of annihilation, where the Ukrainian nation and the Ukrainian state have to be destroyed or, at the very least, humiliated, so that the world looks like what Putin said it looks like.

The fourth useful term for me is “unreality”. This war is being fought in the name of not just these classical concepts, which are my concepts; it's being fought in the name of Putin's concepts, which are concepts like “de-nazification”. In effect, Putin is fighting a war of aggression in the name of the Second World War. He's fought a war that is to destroy a government and a state, which happens to have a Jewish president, in the name of de-nazification.

This war is being fought, of course, very meaningfully in reality, with thousands and thousands of people dying, but it's also being fought, in a way, in “unreality”. This is a war to take away concepts. It's a war to unmoor us. It's a war to make meaningless the words we use to sort out the past and think about the future.

My final word will be about democracy. We talk about democracy a lot, and we are now reaching a stage where the struggle against democracy has taken on an explicit, violent form. There have been plenty of anti-democratic movements, and they are winning, but it is not so common that a violent war is fought on this scale, with this scale of destructiveness and with this kind of suddenness, in order to destroy a democracy.

This is not a perfect democracy; it's a real-life democracy, but it has the basic attributes of the rule of law, of freedom of speech and of pluralism. The fact that this is an everyday, normal democracy helps to explain why Ukrainians are fighting. They're very aware of what losing would mean. It would mean losing their political existence, their civic existence and their national existence.

I'd like to close on a note that is perhaps a bit different. I do think that the right way to think about the end of this war is how to win. Winning does not necessarily mean Ukrainians driving Russians from their territory. Winning means Ukrainians doing well enough that political pressure is felt inside the Kremlin.

I do not believe the war ends until political pressure is felt inside the Kremlin, and I believe that's what we must be aiming for.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Professor Snyder, thank you very much for your opening remarks.

Colleagues, I am challenged by the clock this afternoon. I propose that we do what we did in the first round, which is to compress our rounds of questioning slightly to make sure that everybody here has a chance to ask our second panel at least one question. I'm also mindful of the fact that it's Thursday night, and that at least some of us are travelling to our constituencies tonight, so I'm not terribly inclined to go late.

If colleagues are okay to start with an opening round of four minutes, I propose that this would give us the flexibility to potentially bring everybody into the conversation. If you're good with that, I will go to Mr. Chong for the opening round of four minutes.

Please go ahead.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My two questions are for Dr. Snyder. One's on nuclear, and one's on food security. I'll ask them both in terms of your historical view of these two questions.

Tactical nuclear weapons are the least regulated category of nuclear weapons and are not included in the strategic nuclear treaties that Russia is party to. Russia hasn't ruled out the use of a tactical nuclear bomb to protect its troops in retreat. Can you comment on the Russian tactical nuclear doctrine, and what in your view should be the U.S. and NATO response if Russia uses either a tactical nuclear weapon or, alternatively, a chemical or biological weapon?

The second question I have is regarding food security. It's estimated that synthetic nitrogen fertilizer accounts for half of all global crop production. In other words, without this fertilizer, made from natural gas, we can feed only about half of the planet's people, rather than the seven billion people who live on the planet today. Russia accounts for about a quarter of all global exports of ammonia fertilizer and about a sixth of all urea fertilizer exports. Many are raising alarm bells about food shortages in the next six months. From an historical perspective, could you comment on what potential food shortages could mean to geopolitical stability in Europe and around the world?

You have about three and a half minutes to address those two questions. Thank you.

[Prof. Timothy David Snyder]

Thank you. Those were both very cheerful questions, and I congratulate you on making my remarks even darker than they were in the original formulation.

On the first question, that of tactical nuclear weapons, I think my broadest point here would be that there has to be an anticipatory reaction that goes beyond North America and Europe. I think we ought to be able to build a broader consensus about the use of biological, chemical and tactical nuclear weapons than just North America. I think that should be something at least on the scale of the OSCE, but possibly going beyond the countries who would seem like natural allies in this business, because establishing norms about the use of nuclear weapons is something that doesn't just concern this war. That would be my first impulse.

My second impulse would be that—I agree with you—there has to be some kind of clear statement about what kind of deterrent would be at hand. I should say, I am less concerned about this scenario than some people seem to be. I think that Mr. Putin has succeeded very well in framing this war in terms of things he might do, as opposed to things he could do or things he would do, and I think there's an element of this that supposes we will spend our time being concerned about escalatory scenarios.

My footnote there would be—you didn't ask this directly, but I'm going to just add this—I think, pragmatically, the best way to prevent escalatory scenarios is to try to keep the war as short as possible, because it's not so much the intentions as the multiplicatory effect of time that makes these things more likely. If we saw an opportunity to make the war shorter, this is one more reason to take it.

On food, I quite agree with you. I wrote a book called Black Earth, which is a history of the Holocaust, in which I tried to reintroduce the ecological factor; that is, the perception that shortages are coming tends to make perceived racial and other enmities much more tangible, plausible and salient in politics. I completely agree with this.

The short-term scenario, I have to say, I'm not so worried about. I'm more worried about a long-term scenario in which Russia controls all access to the Black Sea, and therefore Russian and Ukrainian food supplies are added to natural gas as the kind of thing that the Russian leadership can treat as a weapon. I don't think this war actually began as an attempt to control the Black Sea. I think it began as an attempt to overthrow the Ukrainian government, install a new government and create a pan-Russia. All of the evidence suggests that. However, where we are now, I'm worried about the scenario of the Black Sea being controlled by Russia.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Mr. Chong, thank you very much.

I'm struggling against the fiercely racing clock, as we can all see.

Mr. Oliphant, the floor is yours, for four minutes.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

I think it's Ms. Bendayan.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you as well, Mr. Oliphant.

Ms. Dembińska and Mr. Snyder, I'm very happy to have you here.

I especially want to thank Ms. Dembińska, who is a full professor at the Université de Montréal. I am very proud to be the member of Parliament for Outremont, where the Université de Montréal is located.

Ms. Dembińska, I read with great attention and interest your article of February 27, 2022, in the daily La Presse. I invite all my colleagues to read this article, entitled “La guerre, point culminant d'une série d'échecs pour M. Poutine” or “The war, the culmination of a series of failures for Mr. Putin,” which was published during the first days of this war.

In the article, you talk about the failure of President Putin's plans A, B and C. You end by talking about his plan B, in the context of this war. Of course, I also believe that President Putin's plan was to take Kyiv and install a puppet government there. Now it seems that this plan has also failed.

You mentioned a possible plan E, the division of Ukraine. Do you think this plan will work?

[Magdalena Dembińska]

Thank you very much for the question.

Of course, I don't have a crystal ball, but history will tell us. I think this is possibly the most realistic scenario, even if it is terribly sad. It is the most realistic in the sense that it gives Mr. Putin the opportunity to say that he has won, because he controls the Black Sea and can therefore separate Ukraine from the Black Sea, important ports, natural resources, and so on. Dr. Snyder has already spoken about this.

I think that is indeed the plan he is trying to implement. In order to do that, he has to move the front as quickly as possible. That's what he seems to be doing. Indeed, we have seen in recent days that there is an intensification of the offensive in Mariupol, but there are also, as I mentioned earlier, plans to set up another pro-Russian republic in the Kherson region. We also see that the Odessa region is under pressure. It seems that this territory in the south of Ukraine is the one that is currently under the most pressure.

It is important for Mr. Putin to act before signing a ceasefire. History shows us that, whether it is the conflicts in Moldova, Georgia or elsewhere, when a ceasefire occurs, the demarcation line of the warring parties is where the front line ends. So this line of demarcation is extremely important to Mr. Putin.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Do you think this plan includes Odessa?

[Magdalena Dembińska]

I am sure it does. As to whether this plan will be implemented, I am not sure. For Mr. Putin to be able to turn to his electorate—if he takes it into account—to say that he has succeeded and that he wanted to liberate Donbass—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Ms. Bendayan and Professor Dembińska.

Mr. Bergeron, you have the floor for four minutes.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank our witnesses for the very enlightening comments they are sharing with us.

Maybe you followed the discussions with the first panel where we talked about a palace coup. I would have liked to ask you about that. If you have any comments on it, please feel free to say them.

You have heard that, by saying it would never intervene in this conflict, the West has basically given Mr. Putin carte blanche to pretty much do as he pleases.

Again, feel free to answer my question if you like. Does this give him the opportunity to use chemical, bacteriological or even nuclear weapons?

Finally, Ms. Dembińska, given the scenario you mentioned and the fact that Russia has made sure to set up some kind of puppet state inside most of the former Soviet republics, whether it's Transnistria, South Ossetia or Donbass, do you feel that Mr. Putin will continue on to Moldova if he succeeds with his idea to have connectivity from Donbass to Odessa?

[Magdalena Dembińska]

I will also give Professor Snyder a chance to answer the question, but as far as Transnistria is concerned, I would say that it's possible. On the other hand, the Transnistrians are careful not to state their position on this—unlike South Ossetia and Abkhazia, for example, which were quick to recognize Donbass, Luhansk and Donetsk as independent states and support Russia's invasion of Ukraine—because Transnistria has other interests. Even though it has close ties with Russia and relies on it for gas, finance, military security and so on, it also deals with Europe. More than 60% of Transnistria's exports go to Europe. So there is some interdependence.

For the time being, Transnistria doesn't seem ready to step in with its own army to support the offensive on Odessa. However, nothing is off the table, because Transnistria has a Russian military base under Moscow's command. So Moldovans certainly have good reason to be fearful of that.

However, at the moment, the Russian military is very much lagging behind and I don't believe it has the capacity to go that far. I believe that Mariupol is the strategic point that Moscow is going to go after. Eventually, if everything drags on, Transnistria will also be involved.

As far as a palace coup goes, I don't think we can count on that happening in the short term. It's something that might happen in the medium to long term. In the Kremlin, all the leaders close to Mr. Putin, like the oligarchs, depend on him to maintain their wealth. He has surrounded himself with people who believe, as he does, in the idea of making Russia great. So I strongly doubt there will be a popular uprising. I feel it would only be possible in the very long term.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Ms. Dembińska and Mr. Bergeron.

Ms. McPherson, you have the floor for four minutes.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you very much, and thank you to the witnesses today. This has been very enlightening.

Dr. Snyder, you talked about the multiplicative impacts of time and the idea that, ultimately, what we are trying to do, in the short term at least, is stop the loss of life, stop the violence against the Ukrainian people. You also spoke about the idea of breaking Ukrainians through the brutality we're seeing. We have heard of gender violence. We have heard of horrific attacks on children.

It seems to me that negotiation is our only way through, to some degree, and I wonder what the potential for that is. I'd love some more insight into how Canada can play a role in that and how Canada can play a diplomatic role in terms of encouraging other countries to play a role in that.

We saw what happened at the United Nations. We saw those outlier countries. Some, of course, are easy to explain; others are less easy to explain. I'd like some more insight on that, on how we can go forward at that level.

[Prof. Timothy David Snyder]

Thank you.

In answering this question I'm also going to take the opportunity to say a word about the palace coup scenario, because I'm afraid I think they are integrally connected. I would like to believe that negotiation is simply a matter of there not being enough goodwill, but I believe that's not the case. I believe that negotiation is meaningfully possible only from the moment when Putin believes that his personal position is threatened. I may differ a bit here from my colleague.

I think that his disposition is actually objectively threatened at the moment, but he doesn't feel it. I think there are meaningful signs of dissent around the elite of the Russian state. I can go into detail if anyone is interested. I'm not sure that another month of taking casualties at this level and another month of sanctions and another month of international opprobrium will not leave a mark on the Putin regime.

The thing about regimes like this is that they seem inevitable until they fall, at which point it's their fall that seems inevitable. It's hard to predict, but at some point I think the combination of military losses, humiliation in Ukraine and sanctions could, if not lead to a palace coup, at least lead to that moment when Putin feels enough pressure.

While I agree with you completely that we want to negotiate an end to this war as quickly as possible, I think there's only one way to get there, and that is for the Ukrainians to continue doing much better on the battlefield than people expected. We need another month in which the Ukrainians are doing much better on the battlefield than people expected, and then we might get where we're wanting to go. The immediate implication of wanting negotiations is to arm the Ukrainians and think creatively about how best to help them hold the territory so that Putin feels the pressure. Zelenskyy is ready to negotiate. From day two of the war, he's been making propositions about how the war could end. It's Putin whom we have to be concerned about.

In terms of what Canada in particular can do, I would offer there that what the Ukrainians need, perhaps more than we realize at a distance, is a vision of the future. I think they are feeling more cut off and more alienated from us than we might realize. I think they're putting a brave face on things and trying not to make us feel too bad about how awful things are in their country. You wouldn't want to call up the Marshall Plan from Canada, but I think it's important for us, insofar as we can, to be promising things like significant forms of aid and a vision of a future Ukraine and what things will look like after the war. It's things like that, in addition to the military help. They're going to need a notion of how Ukraine will be a more western country after the war in order to stop fighting, because, remember, for there to be peace, Ukrainians have to believe it's in their interest to stop fighting, and that may not be as easy as it seems.

One of the ingredients for peace, therefore, is a west that offers them a better future. That has to be part of the deal.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you, Ms. McPherson.

[Magdalena Dembińska]

I completely agree.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you, Ms. Dembińska.

We will go into our second round with the panel. Time is furiously ticking again. We're at 5:20, so I'm going to propose allocations of three minutes and one and a half minutes.

It becomes a bit meaningless with times that short. Inevitably the interventions will be a bit longer, but I'm going to try to get the entire round in. That should take us to about 5:35, and, as I said, colleagues, if we could do some quick housekeeping just before we break tonight that would be great.

Leading us off will be Mr. Aboultaif for three minutes. Please go ahead.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Dr. Snyder, in the “bloodlands”, where Ukraine is unfortunately placed, we have a war that is hard to understand. It's very complicated and messy, and of course it's hard to understand or to know what the result is going to be.

Do you believe that no matter the outcome of this war, because in my belief there will be no winner whatsoever.... Regardless of the outcome of this war, do you see a path forward? Do you see that this is going to change anything in the future as regards the west, Russia and China of course, and the new reality that we will be facing?

[Prof. Timothy David Snyder]

I think that your two questions hang very closely together. Whether this is meaningful for the future depends very much on how we apprehend it now, what we're trying to do now and what we're aiming for now.

You may be right that there's no way to win this war. I don't actually agree with that. I think it's quite possible that Ukraine can win. It may not be more than 50% likely, but I think it's quite possible. I think it's important to orient oneself around that possibility, because if all we're thinking of now, at this particular turning point in world history, is the continuation of the war or a Russian victory, then we're not thinking of what the stakes are. I agree with you: I believe that the stakes for the future are very high. What the stakes are depends very much on who wins. If Ukraine wins, then we can say, “Ah, ha, this was a moment when democracies were able to defend themselves.” If Ukraine loses, we won't be able to say that.

My evidence for that is, think about what the world would be like if Ukraine hadn't fought at all and Zelenskyy had fled. We would now all be very depressed indeed about the future of democracy. The fact that the Ukrainians have fought for five weeks already puts us in a completely different frame of mind. My suggestion is that the better they do, the better we're also going to feel about the future of democracy.

In terms of lessons learned for the future, I would refer back to the concepts that I said at the beginning. We are in a world where tyranny is possible. We're in a world where oligarchy is generally dangerous. We're in a world where imperial ideas are once again with us.

I would also mention climate. This war is separated from climate, but, as has already been mentioned, this war has a lot to do with natural resources. You can frame this war as a kind of prelude to what the 21st century is going to look like. If the hydrocarbon oligarchs are in charge, we are going to have this kind of war again and again.

If Putin is driving the way that the world is, we're going to have climate change wars the rest of the way. It's symbolic that ice shelves are falling off of Antarctica while we're not looking because of this war. Putin is a hydrocarbon oligarch. Defeating people like this, in a very broad way, is consistent with trying to make sure that we have an ecologically sustainable future. There's an idea of what a big stake all of this is.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much.

Next we have Mr. Ehsassi, please, for three minutes.