Loading ...Ukraine is looking for more than bland security ‘assurances’ in talks with Canada, expert says
A significant, even far-reaching event would have slipped almost silently under the radar in Ottawa this week, had it not been for Ukrainian news media.
The Liberal government quietly (perhaps deliberately so) handed over a draft of its proposed security assurances plan for Ukraine to officials in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office.
Cmoc spoke about the security plan Monday. It took Global Affairs Canada until Friday to answer a rather straightforward question about what the ambassador had told the Ukrainians. Even then, the department’s milquetoast response avoided the central theme, which has preoccupied the debate in the embattled country. In an interview with the news outlet Ukrainska Pravda, Cmoc made it clear that Canada’s promised security measures were best described as “assurances,” not “guarantees.”
“This document, which we signed with the United Kingdom — that’s not a Budapest Memorandum. It’s more. It’s bigger and it means new packages of support and supplying weapons,” he said. “It means producing weapons and obligations … for us and for our partners.”
And that, by itself, may explain the uncomfortable silence in Ottawa and the reluctance to make political hay out of an important event.