Thank you, Mr. Norlock.
Following Vladimir Putin's illegal defacto invasion of Ukraine, first with Crimea and laterally in parts of eastern Ukraine, Canada together with our NATO allies decided it was important to send a message, literally of reassurance, to our NATO allies, particularly those bordering on or in the proximity of Russia. One of the reasons for this is that Vladimir Putin has used the presence of a Russophone, ethnically Russian population in eastern Ukraine and Crimea as the pretext for his defacto invasion of those areas, claiming that he is protecting the interests of those minorities.
You will be aware that there are also Russian ethnic and Russian language-speaking minorities in other countries of eastern and central Europe, including most notably the Baltic countries, which have very limited ability to defend themselves against Russia given their small size and resources.
Consequently, it was the view of the alliance that we should together send a strong message of our determination to respect the alliance. Through a series of joint exercises, including one in which we are involved called Baltic air policing, we are sending... These are very small countries, the Baltic states. They have populations of under three million in each case. They don't have significant air assets. Baltic air policing, which is one dimension of Operation Reassurance, sends a message to the Russian air force and to Vladimir Putin that we are patrolling the skies over the Baltic states.
Our joint infantry training exercises in Poland, where we have some 250 Canadian infantry men and women, demonstrates our presence in the eastern side of Poland close to Russia, indicating that it is part of NATO territory, as does the presence of the HMCS Fredericton in the Black Sea. The Fredericton re-entered the Black Sea on Monday of this week. Immediately following that, two Russian naval vessels were tracking the movements of the Fredericton, and there were Russian jet fighters that, to use the colloquial expression, “buzzed”, or flew at low altitude over the Fredericton.
I think that's a success. The Russians know we are there as part of NATO. We're not going away, and the message is don't even think about further destabilizing, particularly the NATO areas of eastern and central Europe.