Madam Chair, I will be sharing my time with the member for Kildonan—St. Paul.
Tonight we have heard in detail about Operation Unifier in support of our ally Ukraine. However, in my limited time, I would like to provide an historical and geopolitical context as to how this effort is the hard military front line of a global hybrid war against liberal democracy launched by President Putin.
Over 25 years ago, the Soviet totalitarian empire collapsed, and leading political thinkers declared that liberal democracy and free markets had won the Cold War. They pronounced the end of history and a great peace dividend to come.
Meanwhile, in East Germany, KGB officer Vladimir Putin watched the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the expulsion of the Soviet army and KGB bases from East Germany and the Warsaw Pact countries with personal fury. Later, President Putin called the collapse of the Soviet Union the greatest calamity of the 20th century, not the Holocaust, the Holodomor, nor the two world wars, which cost 100 million lives.
Inside the KGB mind of Putin, World War II was a great victory, with the Kremlin's armies stationed on East German borders less than 600 kilometres from France. For agent Putin, the loss of this empire was an historic humiliation.
During the February 23, 2014 closing ceremonies of the Sochi Olympic Games in Russia, the world watched the pageantry in the stadium, including the ominous coming together of a giant hammer and sickle. In the west, most did not notice. As the son and grandson of refugees who escaped the horrors of the Soviet Union, I felt a foreboding. I called family in Ukraine. The symbolism was not lost on anyone in central and eastern Europe. Four days later, on February 27, an unprepared west witnessed a geopolitical event in Crimea that changed our world order. Putin ordered the military invasion and annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula on the false pretext of Russian ethnic grievances. This had not been seen in Europe since the 1930s and Sudetenland. It was the first act in Putin's plan to dismember and collapse the Ukrainian state, its revolution of dignity and democracy. This Russian military annexation violated the letter and spirit of every post-World War II treaty and agreement guaranteeing the integrity of international borders. Our rules-based international order, which has largely prevented territorial wars of expansion, has been jeopardized. Today no small state bordering Russia can feel secure.
Soon after the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea, and the west's initially confused response, Russia invaded Donbass. Today, three years hence, the result is that there are over 10,000 dead, approximately two million internally displaced, and a frozen hot conflict within Europe. Weekly, we receive reports of more Russian tanks and artillery systems being moved into Ukraine. Daily, we read the front-line casualty figures. In fact, in the last 24 hours, four Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in action.
Within Crimea and occupied Donbass, extra-judicial arrests are commonplace, those incarcerated are tortured, and summary executions are frequent. Crimea's indigenous people, the Crimean Tatars, are particularly targeted. Their Mejlis, mosques, and schools are raided and closed, their leaders arrested or disappeared.
As part of Putin's hybrid global war against liberal democratic values and governments, Russian hydrocarbon billions corrupts political and corporate elites in the west, such as former German Chancellor Schröder and former U.S. security chief Michael Flynn. Far right nativist parties and movements are financed, such as Le Pen's National Front, political elections are sabotaged, the U.S. presidential election is hacked, and there is Montenegro's attempted coup d'état.
However, in this amorphous borderless global hybrid war, there is a hard military front line. It stretches from the Baltic to the Black Sea. With our U.S., British, and German allies, we have placed soldiers on Russia's borders with the Baltic states and Poland. In the Black Sea, we have placed a frigate and deployed air force personnel to train with Romania's air force. On this hard military front line, there is an active regional war in Donbass. There the Kremlin is testing the resolve of the democratic west. Will the west sacrifice Ukraine in the hope of satisfying Russian revanchist neo-imperialism in the manner that Czechoslovakia was sacrificed by the west after the invasion of Sudetenland?
Canada has made it clear that there will be no appeasement. While we diplomatically engage Russia, sanctions will continue, and the Canadian military will continue to deploy into Ukraine to help train and equip the Ukrainians as they head to the front lines. With Operation Unifier, we stand shoulder to shoulder with our ally Ukraine in the face of Russia's war against Ukraine, and we are containing Putin's—