Canada's Bloody Role in Ukraine
by Gary Porter - “At the end of the day, we want to be able to provide a form of stability, predictability, to what is being done by different countries,” she said. “Because even when the war ends, and basically Ukraine wins, I think that in order for reconstruction to happen, we need to be able to provide these formal assurances.” So said Canada's Global Affairs Minister Melanie Joly.
But Canada's role has been the opposite; it is a source of instability and unpredictability in Ukraine, a source of war and provocation of Russia. Canada has been a close ally of the United Kingdon and the United States in the overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected government in 2014 and the installation of the Nazi-coloured coup government bent on suppressing Russian speakers in Ukraine and on becoming a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) base for war against the Russian Federation.
Canada is not a good guy in this bitter and very lethal conflict. The Canadian ruling class is highly integrated into, and shares a broad range of interests with the U.S. ruling class, including its military-industrial sector. Big business in Canada, and it’s military are every bit as ruthless, brutal and efficient at the use of force as are the Americans, although proportionally smaller in impact.
Canada’s government and its corporate media have misrepresented the war from the beginning and suppressed dissenting views as assiduously as the media in the U.S. and the U.K.
As a member of the Five Eyes group, together with the US, UK, New Zealand and Australia, Canada’s settler colonial state shares a broad range of intelligence and analysis with its former British Empire allies in one of the closest military relationships in history.
It was the U.S., the U.K. and Canada that first met privately to discuss the founding of NATO in 1948. Of course, other capitalist states were part of the aggressive imperial cabal, such as Germany, France, and Italy. Its purpose was to restrict, intimidate and contain the Soviet Union and its allies. The North American Air Defense (NORAD) is a nuclear-armed alliance between Canada and the U.S. with an integrated command to manage a nuclear confrontation between North America and Russia or China. NORAD was portrayed in the 1964 dark comedy “Dr. Strangelove.”
Immediately after the US engineered an illegal coup to overthrow the elected government in Ukraine and install a U.S.-handpicked replacement, Canada became involved. Before the blood of over 100 people murdered by Nazis in Maidan Square had dried, Canadian special forces joined the British SAS and U.S. forces on the ground to begin the transformation of the Ukrainian military into a well trained, well equipped, and much larger force. To what end? There were two reasons. First, the Russian speaking Ukrainians
in Crimea and the Donbass provinces did not accept the coup. They understood it to be anti-Russian and pro- American, led by Ukrainian nationalists and Nazis, and hostile to their very existence. They were correct.
These areas declared their autonomy. In Crimea, Russian forces at the Russian Black Sea naval base were there by international agreement. When Crimea voted to join Russia, Russian troops were on site.
The prized Ukrainian black soil, the most fertile in the world, and the Black Sea port, the oil and gas reserves and costly mineral deposits are all primarily in the Russian-speaking areas. The foreigners, the western alliance coup engineers, had no intention of letting go of these assets. They created a Ukrainian force that could take back these areas by brute force -- only Ukrainians need die. The Nazis regiments would be especially helpful. They consider the Russian-speakers in Eastern and Southern Ukraine subhuman. Gangs of Nazis were integrated into the armed forces so they could be trained and equipped by the U.S., the U.K., and Canada, the first states into Ukraine, and their NATO allies.
The 2014 coup was executed at a cost of USD 5 billion, according to Victoria Nuland of the US State Department, in order to move Ukraine into the Western Alliance against Russia. Ukraine would become part of the E.U. and NATO, with its famous Clause 5 requiring all NATO members to come to the aid of any member state attacked.
Assessing that Russia was unable to stop this process, they created a strong force in Ukraine, with the aim of moving nuclear missiles into Ukraine -- only 12 minutes from Moscow and close enough to most Russian missile silos to render Russian nuclear deterrence ineffective. Canada knew this, understood this, and agreed with all of it.
The war in Ukraine had already begun with the Ukrainian forces, now under the tutelage of NATO, attacking the Russian-speakers living in Ukraine. Russia did not start the war. NATO started the war and Canada was deeply involved. Over the next 8 years, Ukraine forces killed 14,000 Russian-speaking Ukrainians and wounded 50,000 more. Canada’s military was involved, behind the scenes, but Canadians back home were not asked whether they wanted anything to do with this dirty war against civilians.
In Canada a driving political force is Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland. Her right wing Ukrainian heritage, extends to deep connections in the current Kyiv government. JTF 2 (Joint Task Force 2) and CSOF (Canadian Special Operations Force), Canada's two special operations forces, worked with NATO to train some 260,000 troops in Ukraine, including the Azov and other ultra-nationalist forces conquer the Donbass and Crimea by force, against the will of the residents, and fight the Russian Federation if necessary. Among weapons shipped to the Ukraine battle zone, a crime under UN rules, Canada transported 8 Leopard 2 main battle tanks, and a substantial number of Canada's very high-quality armored personnel vehicles made by General Dynamics Land Systems in London, Ontario.
Canada has participated in weapons shipments, intelligence gathering, the creation of massive amounts of misinformation and censoring the news to foster a false consensus supporting U.S. and NATO war aims. Canada purveys the line that Russia's intervention was unprovoked and that Russia must accept total defeat, turn the ethnic Russians in the Donbass and Crimea back to the tender mercies of Kyiv and its Nazi regiments, and submit to war crimes investigation -- as a basis just to begin negotiations. This is Zelensky’s position. When he took it to a Saudi-sponsored peace conference in Jeddah in August, the 40 participants politely told him it would never happen.
“Canada is continuing to provide Ukraine with the comprehensive military aid it needs to defend its territory and people against ongoing Russian aggression. Canada has trained 35,000 Ukrainian personnel through Operation UNIFIER, we have donated over $1 billion in military aid, and our Canadian Armed Forces personnel have transported over seven million pounds of Ukraine-bound donations. Ukraine will win and Canada will be there until the end,” said the Honourable Anita Anand, Minister of National Defence.
Of course, this thinking is deluded. Ukraine is losing the war. The Kremlin, notwithstanding its revanchist aims and its bombardment of civilian quarters in central and western Ukraine, will not give up in negotiations what it won on eastern battlefields in justifiable defense of victimized Russian-speakers.
Where does the leadership of Canada’s labour party, the New Democratic Party, stand? On March 2, shortly after the start of Russia’s military intervention, Jagmeet Singh referred to refugees. “I spoke to many Ukrainian Canadians who are worried about their family and community members in Ukraine desperately trying to seek refuge from the war. Canada has an important role to play to help resettle those who are and will be seeking refuge. We must do everything possible to help people seeking safety from the threat of violence in Ukraine. And we must move much faster.” Singh is correct. Helping refugees and aiding civilians is the right role for Canada.
But there is more to the NDP stance.
On the first anniversary of Russia's incursion, and the ninth anniversary of the war started by NATO in 2014, Heather MacPherson, NDP foreign affairs critic, said:
“Canada’s sanctions regime isn’t working as well as it should. Sanctions are critical to holding Putin’s oligarchs accountable for their complicity in this illegal war, but the Liberal government has been slow to impose sanctions, has failed to seize assets, and has been very weak on enforcement and transparency. This must change. Russia must be held accountable for its aggression and for its crimes against humanity. Promises are not enough.”
In truth, the NDP supports Canada’s aggressive role in Ukraine, supports NATO, and condones the defeat and looting of Russia by the western powers, which would result in the impoverishment of Russian workers.
Socialists begin with the needs of working people. Capitalist war brings only misery and death to workers. Socialists and labour leaders should call for an immediate ceasefire, urge negotiations for peace, self- determination for the peoples of Donbass and Ukraine, and freedom for all anti-war political prisoners. Demand: Canada out of NATO. Disband NATO, the criminal syndicate of the corporate rulers who profit from war.
Photo: A chemical factory burns following a missile strike in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Aug. 19. SERGEY BOBOK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (Source)