A Global Affairs Canada official tasked with leading Ottawa’s response to the war in Ukraine said Tuesday she doesn’t have “a ton of optimism” about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to make peace, underscoring the need to keep supporting Kyiv and putting pressure on Moscow.
Jocelyn Kinnear, director general of the Ukraine Task Force, told MPs at the House of Commons foreign affairs committee that Ukraine’s resiliency continues to give her hope as the war approaches its fourth anniversary with no end in sight.
“That’s where I draw my optimism from,” she said.
“I don’t have a ton of optimism about President Putin. But I do think that we all need to be determined in exerting whatever pressure we can to bring him to the negotiating table and to bring an end to the war.”
International efforts led by U.S. President Donald Trump to bring a negotiated end to the war have crumbled, with Putin showing no willingness to order an end to Russia’s unrelenting missile and drone attacks on Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday that he will travel to Turkey this week in an attempt to jump-start negotiations. Turkish officials said the talks would centre on how to establish a ceasefire and a lasting settlement.
Trump has expressed frustration with Putin’s refusal to budge from his demands for putting an end to the war, which include acquiring the entire eastern Donbas region of Ukraine that Russian forces only partly occupy currently.
Heavy new American sanctions on Russia’s all-important oil industry, devised to push Putin to the negotiating table, are due to take effect on Friday.
The sanctions against oil companies Rosneft and Lukoil seek to starve Putin’s war machine of cash and bring an end to the fighting, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives in Ukraine.
Canada announced new sanctions last week that will target those behind Russia’s drone and cyber-attacks on Ukraine, as well as vessels in Russia’s sanctions-evading shadow fleet and two Russian liquefied natural gas entities.
Andrii Plakhotniuk, who was appointed Ukraine’s Ambassador to Canada in July, urged MPs on the committee to continue to strengthen Canada’s sanctions regime and further cut off Moscow’s war funding.
He said efforts to focus on the Russian oil and gas sector, along with Ukrainian strikes on energy industrial targets, are beginning to have an impact.
“By the end of this year, Russia will have lost at least $37 billion United States dollars in budget oil and gas income,” he said. “Therefore we should multiply our joint efforts to put pressure on Putin and to make him stop the war. This is the only way.”
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Kinnear said making sanctions effective is “tricky” and the penalties need to be constantly refined to close gaps where Russia can evade them.
“I would say that sanctions are a marathon and not a sprint, and over the course of the last three years, the sanctions have played an important role in degrading Russia’s economy,” she said.
She pointed to high inflation and Russia’s pivot to prioritizing oil and gas exports as examples of how sanctions have changed the Russian economy, which is now entirely centred on the military industrial complex at the expense of other sectors that are now “suffering.”
“The (sanctions) coordination that is happening between Canada and its partners, its G7 partners, this is unprecedented in nature,” she added.
Eric Laporte, the acting director general of the International Security Policy and Strategic Affairs Bureau at Global Affairs Canada, said Canada is also “frequently” speaking with China about using its influence to seek a peaceful end to the war and end its economic support of Russia, including purchasing Russian oil.
“We are bringing attention to the fact that in 2022, China convened the Global Security Initiative, which seeks multilateralism but has components and principles that are important — territorial integrity, sovereignty,” he said in French.
“What Russia is doing in Ukraine goes against that Chinese initiative. So we are highlighting those contradictions in the Chinese position (of neutrality).”
Laporte told the committee there is an “active conversation” about how to “progress” Operation Unifier, Canada’s military training mission for Ukrainian soldiers.
Those options include possibly moving that training from other parts of Europe to within Ukraine itself, with Laporte citing Prime Minister Mark Carney’s comment in September that Canada is willing to deploy “direct and scalable military assistance” in a post-ceasefire Ukraine.
“The prime minister has made it clear that Canada would be willing to consider scalable options, including potentially putting troops on the ground, boots on the ground, if and when required,” Laporte said.
“So that’s all part of a conversation that is ongoing in terms of Operation Unifier and how we progress it further.”
Plakhotniuk said Ukraine would be “extremely grateful” if Canada approved another round of military and financial assistance “at least the same size as” the $2-billion aid package Carney pledged earlier this year.
“On many cases you have shown strong leadership, so please continue to do that,” he said. “Please continue to support.”
That Canadian leadership has included efforts to find and return Ukrainian children forcibly deported to Russia and Belarus, where Plakhotniuk said the young abductees are being indoctrinated and given new Russian identities, as well as being trained to fight Ukraine.
Putin and other top Kremlin officials have been charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court over the practice.
The Ukrainian government estimates 20,000 Ukrainian children have been taken by Russia, of which only 1,819 have been successfully returned.
The issue was a key focus for several members of the committee, with many asking what more Canada can do to ensure all children are reunited with their families.
“All actions that we have on the table should be implemented,” Plakhotniuk said.
“Collect evidence, present it to the court, and then bring perpetrators to justice. Justice should prevail.”
Kinnear said Canada has helped convene dozens of allied countries to help with the issue of returning abducted Ukrainian children, some of which can help due to their proximity to Ukraine and Russia.
“It’s really about bringing all of these players together to do things that Canada can’t do by ourselves,” she said.
“Those are 1,800 important lives that have been changed for the better, but there’s more to be done.”
Kinnear also said she was glad to see Ukraine send “the right signals” to its international allies by quickly responding to a $100 million embezzlement and kickback scandal involving top officials and Ukraine’s state nuclear power company.
Two members of the government have resigned over the scandal, which is the latest to dog Zelenskyy despite his pledge to root out corruption — a key roadblock to Ukraine’s efforts to join the European Union.
“Canada sees Ukraine’s future as being within the Euro-Atlantic family,” Kinnear said.
“Strengthening its rule of law and governance … is going to be critical for its EU accession. It’s going to be critical to unlock investment after the war. These are the messages that we share with the Ukrainians, and I think they are resonating with them and that they understand. These are why these types of things need to be addressed very seriously.”
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