National Defence committee  Thank you. Mr. Chair, it's an honour for me as the national president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress to appear today before the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence. I thank the committee for allowing me the opportunity to offer testimony today on this to

National Defence committee  This is a very important question, because the whole question about the information war is very acute. We have not only active military aggression happening in Ukraine but also economic aggression happening against Ukraine by the Russian Federation. Perhaps even more dramatic and

National Defence committee  Well, they have no way of accessing that region, because those are occupied territories. There are arguably 40,000 troops there in the occupied territories, controlling those territories. There is no access, whether by Ukrainian NGOs or Ukrainian government officials, to actually

National Defence committee  Access to Internet, yes; access to media, no. Access to Ukrainian media is almost non-existent in the occupied territories, and hence, the disinformation campaign is very intense in that region.

National Defence committee  It's simple but very difficult. The simple way is to force Russia's hand to remove their military, their equipment, and their financing of the—quote, unquote—“separatists”, because at the end of the day, as I mentioned at the very beginning, there was never a separatist movement.

National Defence committee  No, they're very congruent, in order to force Russia's hand to accept a peacekeeping mission to Ukraine, to accept a peacekeeping mission that doesn't freeze the conflict. Vladimir Putin several weeks ago proposed a peacekeeping mission to Ukraine on the contact line, on the conf

National Defence committee  First of all, the whole Maidan revolution was, to Mr. Westdal's point, poking the Russian bear, so to speak. The Ukrainian people won't live in a world where they are part of somebody else's sphere of influence. The Ukrainian people are very independent-minded and have fought for

National Defence committee  Do you mean leading up to the Maidan or the Revolution of Dignity?

National Defence committee  When the president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, fled the country after the killing of 100 peaceful protesters on the Maidan in Kiev, Ukraine, he realized he had overstepped the bounds, and he had nowhere else to go but to flee to Russia. At that point, Russia implemented thei

National Defence committee  When you look at how these bands of supposed separatists were able to take over a Buk missile system, were able to get their hands on the most sophisticated Russian military equipment to shoot down flight MH17 because they had mistaken it for a Ukrainian military plane, and you h

National Defence committee  I see my time is up, but essentially I think Canada's moving in the right direction.

National Defence committee  I'd like to get invited back one day so I'll....

National Defence committee  We have been working together with our member organizations on various levels. Number one is to strengthen the whole infrastructure, because things like health care reform and support for humanitarian initiatives have been a key priority for us to help the Ukrainian people get

National Defence committee  Absolutely. Unfortunately, there are still many in Ukraine who have not travelled abroad and have not travelled to either Europe or Canada. We'd like to see much more happen by way of youth exchanges, opportunities for students to study here, and opportunities for young professio

National Defence committee  A peacekeeping mission is not going to happen any time soon. As we know, these things take a long time to broker and a long time to get off the ground. We would love to see it happen soon, but in reality they're just starting to talk about it. If there are suggestions on how we c