Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on May 10th, 2022

[The Chair]

[Technical difficulty—Editor]

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I didn't hear you, Mr. Chair, but I assume that was an acknowledgement of me.

[The Chair]

Yes. You are correct.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you so much.

First of all, I want to echo my colleagues and thank everyone so much for being here today and for sharing this testimony. As you can imagine, it's very difficult to hear, but it's very important that we hear it.

Ms. Kravchuk, I want to tell you that, when you were in Canada and you met with me and my colleagues, it was the impetus that moved me to bring forward the motion on genocide. Your advocacy on behalf of Ukraine is so vitally important, so thank you for being here again.

I have to say, I have a young woman who started working in my office, a Ukrainian intern, who brought me a flag of Ukraine that's been signed by soldiers in Ukraine. We both started to cry when she gave that to me. I want all of you to know that you are not alone. We see what is happening in Ukraine. We are standing with you. We will be there in the short, medium and long term. That's what I'd like to talk a bit about today.

When Ukraine wins...because we all know that this is the only option. Putin has to be held to account so that he doesn't continue to feel that, in another several years, he can invade again. We can't have this continue on. It has to be very set. We will be there to help make sure that the International Criminal Court is activated, that those crimes are being prosecuted and that justice is brought.

What I would like is some feedback from the mayors. From your perspective—from you who are on the ground, seeing the massive impacts on infrastructure, water and electricity—what are the things that you need from Canada and the global community to rebuild in the short term?

I heard the call for support in demining. Obviously, we need to make sure that people have access to clean drinking water and medical supports. This is for the short term, but also the long term, because I think we're going to need something like a Marshall plan to rebuild Ukraine.

Perhaps, Your Worship Atroshenko, I could start with you.

[Vladyslav Atroshenko]

[Witness spoke in Ukrainian, interpreted as follows:]

First of all, I think they need to...until we achieve our victory. To me, as a city mayor, I am communicating with different funds and organizations from European countries, but not only Europeans. There was a representative from Japan, from a big development fund. I know that there are all kinds of contacts and negotiations happening, but everyone is waiting until the war has ended.

I can talk about my city, the city of Chernihiv. We have made some preliminary calculations. They show that we have suffered direct losses of approximately 1.5 billion euros here, with destruction of property, houses and infrastructure, as well as roads, buildings, surfaces, warehouses and schools. Some of the schools have been completely destroyed.

There will be a lot of need for a lot of resources to rebuild. We will need new technologists. We obviously won't be able to do this on our own from our city revenues. We would look to outside resources to help us in our rebuilding effort. However, it can probably only take place after the active phase of this military campaign has concluded.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you.

[Yuriy Bova]

[Witness spoke in Ukrainian, interpreted as follows:]

I think I am a little bit different from my colleague. I think we don't need to wait until the end of the war, but we should start activities. I can see on many of your lapels some Ukrainian pins with Ukrainian symbols. It shows your support. I know that you believe in Ukraine and believe in the Ukrainian people. You stand with us.

Currently our military is prosecuting the defence of our country to the best of their abilities. Russia is suffering heavy military losses in Ukraine, and we are hoping that this will prevent any attacks in the future. All of our people stand as one. We help our Ukrainian military personnel. We support them. As my previous colleague said, we're all hoping. We all want our people to come back to our cities, rebuild their lives, renew their lives, to continue.

Our city is 30 kilometres from the Russian border, so it means that we can be attacked at any minute, on any day, basically. We already are trying to rebuild what we can daily, using our own resources. We have received some offers of help, for example, from Poland. They are offering to provide us with the ambulances that we've lost—all of them.

We are already trying to rebuild what we can. We have restored one floor of the destroyed hospital so that they continue to provide medical services. I asked the chief pediatrician how many staff they had. Before the war, there was about 400 staff at this hospital. Now over 350 have returned. Can you imagine how quickly our people are coming back, how strongly they believe in our city and our country?

The Russians actually tried to remove everything. Can you imagine that from the city building they removed all the computers—not a single server, not a single computer left behind? Everything was stolen, removed. Even today, whatever help can be offered will be appreciated, because we are trying to rebuild. We're dedicated. We're helping our armed forces, which are now strengthening their defensive capabilities in and around the city. As the city, we are trying to provide them with any resources that we can. They need sometimes even shovels. They need all kinds of things, from low tech to high tech. Our people are actually offering whatever they have, whatever they can. They come to me and say, “I will do whatever I can do to help our city, from our civil defences to what can be provided to the military.”

By the way, we are very well aware of the Canadian technology, how to quickly build housing, like modular houses that could be put up very quickly. That would be something that will be probably very useful for Ukraine right now, because I am certain that most, if not all Ukrainians, will be coming back.

[The Chair]

Thank you.

Now we go into the second round of questions. Given that we are considerably behind, perhaps I could ask the members to keep it restricted to one question, under three minutes.

First, we go to Ms. Vandenbeld.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you.

I hadn't anticipated a second question, but I'm very pleased to have one.

I would like to actually put a similar question to what I did before, but particularly to Ms. Musayeva, because you are a journalist.

Obviously there is a certain form of documentation that journalists do, but that doesn't always hold up in court. Is there more that Canada can do to be able to provide assistance to ensure that any documentation right now will hold up in the International Criminal Court or any future tribunal?

[Sevgil Musayeva]

Thank you. That is a great question.

I know that we have already started an official investigation, but I think that we don't have enough war crime prosecutors in our country. I think that is how Canada can help Ukraine during this investigation, because I know that investigation has started, but our prosecutors are faced, as you can imagine, with thousands of victims in just Kyiv region, and you need to investigate every single case. You need to find all the evidence, and you need to gather all this evidence.

I have already met with some international humanitarian specialists and international humanitarian lawyers who already work in Ukraine, and they told me that they had never seen anything like that and that they had never seen such human rights violations as were in Ukraine, even in Kyiv region.

I spoke last week, for example, with one international humanitarian lawyer, and he told me that he will probably try to gather evidence for maybe 50 victims, but we have thousands of victims. We need co-operation with a general prosecutor's office, and I think it is co-operation not only for the investigation of such crimes but for education as well. We need to educate prosecutors on how to investigate such cases, because I think we have a problem with this.

I know that a lot of civil organizations already gather such evidence. One of them is a coalition named 5 AM, and this is a coalition of 37 human rights organizations in Ukraine. I would suggest working with our government, and I would suggest working with such a coalition of human rights organizations as 5 AM . I can provide you with their contact, but it's not hard to find.

Thank you.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you.

Do we have time for Ms. Kravchuk to answer briefly?

[The Chair]

I'm afraid not, Ms. Vandenbeld. We're keeping it limited to three minutes. You have my apologies.

The next round goes to Mr. Cooper.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for your, frankly, very disturbing testimony in terms of what is happening on the ground in Ukraine.

It had been submitted that sanctions are working, that they are having an impact. In that regard, perhaps Ms. Kravchuk, a member of parliament, is in the best position to comment.

Does she have any recommendations on how those sanctions can be improved upon in terms of better coordination among the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and other countries? Does she have anything to add in terms of how we can strengthen and make those sanctions more effective?

[Yevheniia Kravchuk]

Yes. I surely can answer that.

The sanctions are harmful to Russia but not harmful enough for Putin to stop the war. He clearly gets a lot of money from gas and oil. In that regard, I am really thankful to Canada for being the first G7 country to completely ban oil.

Right now we are still waiting for the sixth package of sanctions from the European Union. The very end of it is probably being negotiated right now. In this package we will probably see a ban on oil, but we will not see a ban on gas. Gas brings a lot of money to Russia. By our count, Russia gets around 800 million euros per day selling energy resources. That's probably the same amount they spend for the war in Ukraine, every day. They get this money all the time.

Another thing that has to be strengthened is sanctions on banks. Gazprombank is the bank that is operating all these transactions with energy resources. It's not under sanction. It's not off SWIFT yet. We hope that Swedbank, another big system bank, will be on this sanctions list.

A total embargo on energy resources would do the thing. We understand that it's a long time. Help from the United States and Canada could probably be provided to countries to find other sources for getting energy.

Another thing that I think Canada could be very helpful on, and that you and members of the foreign affairs committee could work on, would be in trying to influence India. India is trying to stay neutral—to buy oil, to have business as usual with Russia. It's not a time to be neutral. Please talk to Indian parliamentarians. We're ready to have a three-country meeting between the Ukrainian parliament, the Indian parliament and the Canadian Parliament. Please help us negotiate in that.

Thanks.

[The Chair]

Thank you.

The next round goes to Mr. Trudel.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you.

I have a brief question for Ms. Musayeva.

We know that, in a war, news media are targeted, including journalists, newspapers and television stations. In an article, you talked about an attack on a television tower in Kyiv, close to Babi Yar. That affected you deeply.

Can you tell us a bit more about that, Ms. Musayeva?

[Sevgil Musayeva]

Yes. I am one of the members of the civil board of the Babyn Yar project. Of course, when it happened at the beginning of March, it was a tragedy, and it's a tragedy that we are going through for a second time. As you know, Babyn Yar was the biggest mass grave of Jews killed in eastern Europe, in Ukraine. More than 100,000 people were killed in this place.

Now, when you are faced with this in the 21st century, of course it is difficult. I know from my Jewish friends and from representatives of Jewish organizations in Ukraine that they were shocked by this. Unfortunately, two days ago, for example, a Jewish cemetery in Hlukhiv was bombed. I know that the memorial for Jewish people also was bombed in Kharkiv in April, so we have already three examples of what has happened.

I think after all the quotes from Minister of Foreign Affairs Lavrov and what he said about the Israel government and that they were helping neo-Nazis.... You know that Putin even asked Bennett to forgive that.

For me, it's quite an emotional situation. I'm absolutely shocked this is happening in the 21st century, after what we went through in the 20th century.

[The Chair]

Thank you, Mr. Trudel.

The last round goes to Ms. McPherson.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Again, thank you to our witnesses for the testimony today. I think I'll end today with Ms. Kravchuk and Ms. Musayeva.

I'm very interested in justice for women as we go through these horrible times in Ukraine. I wonder if you could both speak a little bit very quickly about the gender-based violence against women that we're seeing in Ukraine and how Canada can support women in being part of the peace process and receiving justice at the end of this conflict.

Perhaps I could start with you, Ms. Kravchuk.

[Yevheniia Kravchuk]

Thank you.

It really resonates with my heart because my resolution in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe is about women in conflict and peace reconciliation. It will be voted on in June. I could just draw from the conclusions of my resolution report.

First of all, we need the help of psychologists who deal with sexual violence during conflict because the number of these cases are under-recorded. We get just the tip of the iceberg because women are afraid to speak. Another thing that we could use from Canada is help for NGOs that are working in this field. We have the national action plan for the United Nations resolution 1325, as you probably do as well. There is a list of NGOs who are working with government on the national action plan. They are run by women.

Actually, yesterday I was participating in a discussion organized by Georgetown University based in Washington. We had very powerful speeches from women from NGOs who are working on the ground and who are staying in the cities helping their peers to overcome.

Of course, it's also documenting. That's another thing that our prosecutor general's office could receive. Also, the police are working on collecting this evidence and testimonies to actually put these cases to the international tribunal as well because these are clear war crimes that were committed.

We also need to understand that not only women and girls were raped, but men and boys as well. It has covered all ages and all genders. These cases are really horrific and those who committed them should be put into the tribunal.

[Sevgil Musayeva]

I want to continue about rape.

Two weeks ago, one of the hospitals in Kyiv asked me for help with providing abortions for women who were raped because it was a problem even with this. Yevheniia already described that it's a very traumatizing situation and women are afraid to ask about it. They can only ask for it in hospitals and from physicians. Physicians ask me as a journalist just to help with this providing. I think that it's about medical assistance and about psychological assistance.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much, Ms. McPherson.

This concludes this session.

Allow me, on behalf of the entire committee, to thank you all. What we heard was incredibly compelling, but also disturbing, if not unconscionable. Please rest assured that the resolve, the courage and the determination that you have demonstrated in the last two months has won you a big place in all our hearts. We will continue to stand with you. We're hoping for a very early victory.

Thank you very much for appearing before our committee. Take good care.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, now that our guests have left, would it be possible for me to move my motion?

[The Chair]

Absolutely, Ms. McPherson.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, and I think it has been distributed so everyone should have it in both official languages.

Mr. Trudel, you have my apologies. I won't read it in French because, of course, that would probably not sound as good as you'd like.