Canada sends weapons to Ukraine as allies ramp up sanctions against Russia

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This article was published 27/02/2022 (1033 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA—The Canadian government is dispatching anti-tank weapons and rockets to Ukraine as part of a growing global effort to bolster Ukrainian troops, paralyze the Russian economy and isolate President Vladimir Putin.

Five days after Russian troops stormed into Ukraine, talks near the Ukraine-Belarus border failed to produce a ceasefire, stock markets fell and the Russian ruble tanked as Canada joined the United States, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan and the European Union in unprecedented sanctions against Russia’s central bank.

It was a move one American official said was discussed and planned for months but came together almost overnight once it became clear on the weekend the Russian central bank was shifting assets from institutions around the world.

Early Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau prohibited all Canadian financial institutions from engaging in transactions with the Russian Central Bank as stock markets opened here. “Russia will be held accountable,” Trudeau told Parliament in an evening debate.

Faced with Putin putting his military deterrence force on alert — a force with capacity to deploy nuclear weapons — U.S. President Joe Biden and UN member states called for de-escalation.

Switzerland abandoned its historical neutrality to adopt European Union sanctions against Russia.

And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appealed to the EU to fast-track his country’s application for membership in the 27-member bloc, normally a years-long process.

“President Putin has made a grave miscalculation,” Trudeau said at a news conference, hours after attending a meeting hosted by Biden with leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland, Romania, the United Kingdom, the European Union and NATO.

“The international community is rallying to support democracy and the people of Ukraine.”

Trudeau said the plunge in the value of Russian currency and the closure of its stock market was due to the co-ordinated international sanctions, including a weekend decision to cut off major Russian banks from the international banking transactions messaging system called SWIFT.

“Our message is clear: this unnecessary war must stop now. The costs will only grow steeper,” Trudeau said.

“We warned you,” said Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland. She said she told the governor of the Russian Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, last week that the price for invading Ukraine would be western sanctions that “would be swift, co-ordinated, sustained and crushing.”

“They are and they will continue to be,” Freeland said.

American officials briefing reporters said Russia’s central bank holds foreign currencies “and because of the work that we’ve done in co-ordinating, it means that those assets are also immobilized and unavailable for their use.”

Inflation in Russia will spike and its economy will contract as a result, the officials predicted.

“No country is sanctions-proof,” said one. “Putin’s war chest of $630 billion in reserves only matters if he can use it to defend his currency, specifically by selling those reserves in exchange for buying the ruble. And after today’s actions, that will no longer be possible, and Fortress Russia will be exposed as a myth.”

Canada and global allies had already targeted sanctions at Putin, his inner governing circle, key ministers, Russian parliament members, Russian financial institutions and companies connected to Russian billionaires — the oligarchs and ruling elite who Trudeau said profit from the economic stability and systems that western democracies have built.

Asked how Canada assesses the risk posed by Putin’s nuclear threat, Trudeau said allies “will not look to provoke. We will not look to escalate but we will stand in defence of the values and the freedoms that Canadians and Americans and Europeans and people around the world have fought for and fought to preserve over the many decades past.”

Allies will defend against any Russian threat to NATO member countries bordering on Ukraine, but “it is clear that we are not going to be sending troops into Ukraine,” Trudeau said.

In addition to three previous commitments of about $35 million in non-lethal and lethal aid, Canada will also send anti-tank weapons and rockets, cut off any remaining Russian oil imports to Canada and take steps to block Russian broadcasters spreading disinformation on the airwaves.

Defence Minister Anita Anand said the latest military shipment would see 125 Carl Gustav anti-tank systems and 2,000 rockets sent to Ukraine in response to that country’s request, along with heavy airlift capacity.

Trudeau acknowledged Canada does not import large quantities of Russian oil. But it is an industry that “Putin and his oligarchs have largely profited from” and represents a third of Russian budget revenues, so “this measure sends a strong message,” he said.

Between 2010 and 2020, Canada imported just $2.2 billion in crude oil from Russia, according to a report from the Canadian Energy Centre.

Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said Canada has not imported any Russian crude since 2019.

A government official told the Star the government is looking to ban other Russian energy imports, such as natural gas, and is still checking to make sure such a move would not cause unintended harm to Canadian businesses.

“We’re trying to go as far as we can,” said the official, who agreed to speak on condition they aren’t named.

In addition, Trudeau said his government is asking the independent broadcast regulator, the CRTC, to review the licence of Russian television broadcaster RT, although private sector telecoms like Rogers, Bell, Telus and Shaw have said they would drop it from their offerings. Trudeau welcomed that move, and said his government will still ask for a review “because the independence of journalists, of media in this country is something we have to take great care in.”

In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Canadian ambassador to the UN Bob Rae recalled that just six weeks ago, Russia — one of the permanent members of the Security Council — agreed that any recourse to a nuclear threat “was wrong.”

And yet, said Rae, “here we are, with a war that is a threat to each and every one of us.” He said there are “credible reports that Russian forces are using prohibited weapons including cluster bombs and imposing siege warfare on Ukrainian cities.

“These are violations of international law, and they are acts that could amount to war crimes under international humanitarian law.”

Earlier in the day, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly in a teleconference from Geneva said Canada is considering additional sanctions, including on any assets held by Russian businesses in Canada, and looking at ways to oust Russia from the G20 group of world leaders “to make sure that we impose maximum pressure on Russia even within multilateral forums.”

In Parliament, MPs voted unanimously to condemn Moscow’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine even before the debate unfolded.

The federal government says it is also looking at ways to deal with what it says could be a refugee crisis in Europe as Ukrainians flee the war.

In the past two weeks Canada has approved more than 4,000 applications from Ukrainians who’d already applied to come to or remain in Canada, said Immigration Minister Sean Fraser.

With files from Alex Ballingall

Tonda MacCharles is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @tondamacc