In Ottawa this week, if it weren’t for the Ukrainian news media, important, even far-reaching events would have remained largely silent and unremarkable.
The Liberal government quietly (perhaps deliberately) handed over a draft security guarantee plan for Ukraine to officials in President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office.
This milestone was acknowledged by Canada’s Ambassador to Ukraine Natalka Komok, who was widely quoted in multiple media outlets in Kyiv.
Cmoc spoke about the security plan on Monday. Global Affairs Canada took until Friday to respond to fairly straightforward questions about what the ambassador had said to the Ukrainians. Still, the department’s milquetoast response sidestepped a central topic at the center of debate in the battleground state.
In an interview with news outlet Ukraineska Pravda, Cmoc clarified that the security measures promised by Canada are better described as “guarantees” rather than “guarantees.”
While highlighting the difference, she said she did not see the paraphrase as a source of friction between the two countries.
“I think the word ‘guarantee’ is very important,” Cmoc said. “We are considering the drafting of a document that would provide guarantees to Ukraine, and there is a growing sense of urgency.”
The ministry described the package as a “bilateral security commitment” and said it hoped to complete negotiations quickly.
“Negotiations are ongoing and we will have more to say in due course,” Global Affairs spokeswoman Charlotte MacLeod said in a written statement.
Last summer, as compensation for Ukraine’s failure to quickly gain NATO membership, the G7 countries stepped into the political vacuum with a series of bilateral deals that would provide reassurance as a war-weary Ukraine drags its feet. promised to negotiate a security agreement between the two countries. A full-scale invasion of Russia and prospects for the future.
It is interesting that Ottawa has remained relatively silent since then, or rather reluctant to acknowledge and substantively discuss the issue.
The Liberals have gone to great lengths in recent days to hurt the Conservatives for voting against amendments to the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement late last year, with Opposition Leader Pierre Poièvre an embattled ally. They are trying to make their support for the government appear weak.
Under these political conditions, the Liberals are pushing the security agenda across the board, with plenty of the motherhood-and-apple-pie sentiment we’ve come to expect whenever the war in Eastern Europe is mentioned. I might have expected him to approve. .
What is even more strange is that in the highly tense media environment in Kiev, the Cmoc has been given the power to speak publicly about the realization of the plan (something like that rarely happens in the world of government communications) – where seems to be more important than Ottawa’s political establishment realizes).
Defense analyst Oleksandr Musyenko, director of the Military Legal Research Center in Kyiv, said the difference between a “guarantee” and a “guarantee” is very important in Ukraine.
long memories
At the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, when the Iron Curtain was coming down, Ukraine was assured of giving up its share of the former Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal through the Budapest Memorandum. The Budapest Memorandum is a comprehensive set of three treaties signed by the United States. The United States, Russia and the United Kingdom have agreed to respect Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders.
During these negotiations, Ukraine initially demanded legally binding security “guarantees” from the United States against a possible invasion. After it became clear that the United States was not interested in providing such guarantees, the Kiev government at the time agreed to accept politically binding security “guarantees” to protect itself. China and France did not sign a memorandum of understanding, but later gave similar assurances.
Musiyenko said Ukrainians have long memories and the Budapest Memorandum was a “huge trauma” for the country and its people. Some openly claim that they had the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal at the time, and they would not fight the Russians today.
”[The] Note… I just talked about the warranty, there is no warranty. Therefore, it is very important for us to know that this is not a new Budapest Memorandum,” he said.
Many defense experts, including Musiyenko, acknowledge that it would have been economically difficult for Ukraine to maintain an adequate and secure inventory of strategic nuclear weapons. (The story might have been different if it were a small tactical nuclear weapon.)
On January 12, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, while in Kyiv, signed a new security agreement for his country with the Ukrainian president, while also announcing an increase in military funding for the beleaguered country.
Musiyenko said Ukraine will expect much more than it did in the 1990s in negotiations with other allies, including Canada.
“This document we have signed with the UK is not the Budapest Memorandum. It is much more than that. It is much bigger and it means a new package of support and arms supplies,” he said. “That means producing weapons and taking on obligations for us and our partners.”
And that in itself may explain Ottawa’s uncomfortable silence and reluctance to take politics out of important events.
