Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Issue No. 63 - Evidence - Meeting of May 8, 2019
OTTAWA, Wednesday, May 8, 2019
The Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade met this day at 4:20 p.m. to study foreign relations and international trade generally.
Senator A. Raynell Andreychuk (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Welcome to our witnesses. I will introduce you, but they will be short introductions because we previously received the biographies and we don’t want to use up your time with your excellent backgrounds. We appreciate your kind response to our very quick request to come and update us on the Ukrainian situation. I will ask the senators to introduce themselves.
Senator Coyle: Mary Coyle, Nova Scotia.
Senator Boehm: Peter Boehm, Ontario.
Senator Cordy: Jane Cordy, Nova Scotia.
[Translation]
Senator Dawson: Dennis Dawson from the province of Quebec.
[English]
Senator Bovey: Patricia Bovey, Manitoba.
[Translation]
Senator Saint-Germain: Raymonde Saint-Germain from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Dean: Tony Dean, Ontario.
Senator Ataullahjan: Salma Ataullahjan, Ontario.
Senator Ngo: Thanh Hai Ngo, Ontario.
Senator Housakos: Leo Housakos, Quebec.
[Translation]
Senator Massicotte: Paul Massicotte from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Greene: Stephen Greene, Nova Scotia.
The Chair: I’m Raynell Andreychuk from Saskatchewan.
The committee is authorized to examine such issues as may arise from time to time relating to foreign relations and international trade generally. As part of this mandate, the committee is pleased to welcome experts to provide the committee with an analysis of the 2019 presidential election in Ukraine.
What we are more interested in is where Ukraine may be heading as a result of the election. What is your perspective on the recent changes in Ukraine? Are they significant, or will they be minor? Will the understandings that the Canadian government and previous Canadian governments have worked under still hold? We are looking for a little bit of crystal ball gazing as well as a little reflection on what has happened and why the election turned out as it did. We did have parliamentary monitors in Ukraine, so we have received some updates. The committee received government officials from Global Affairs Canada last March to discuss the general situation in Ukraine, pre-election, and we’re now interested to understand the consequences of the people’s voice in Ukraine.
I will welcome, on behalf of the committee, Paul Robert Magocsi, Professor and John Yaremko Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Toronto. By video conference, we have Matthew Rojansky, Director, Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C; and Sergiy Kudelia, Associate Professor, Political Science, Baylor University in Texas. We have a broad geographic representation here and all backgrounds. The senators have had the opportunity to read and see your backgrounds.
I’m going to turn to our witnesses by video conference and go to Professor Rojansky first, following the order in which they were on the agenda. I remind our witnesses that senators enjoy and need to ask questions, so we have limited time. I’m going to ask for opening statements to be brief, as the clerk has advised you. With that comment so you understand the procedure here, I will turn to you, Professor Rojansky. Welcome to the committee.
Matthew Rojansky, Director, Kennan Institute, Wilson Center: Thank you, so much, Madam Chair. Thank you all for being with us today and for raising, in a prompt and timely fashion, this very important subject, important of course to Canada, to the United States, important globally, important to us at the Wilson Center and, I would note, very important and meaningful to me personally.
I had the great privilege of serving as an embassy policy specialist, which is basically an embedded scholar, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on the eve of the Euromaidan, what became the revolution of dignity in Ukraine in late 2013. I have witnessed over this last half decade, of course, many challenges and many difficulties, but a great number of successes.
That is capped off by the idea that here we are, half a decade later, and rather than falling into another revolutionary scenario, another scenario of elevated expectations and disappointment, Ukraine has just conducted an overwhelmingly free and fair election. We don’t yet a date, but it is set to inaugurate a new president, freely and fairly elected. It has often been said about Ukraine that the baseline, the idea of a sovereign and independent country that is able to manage a pluralistic democratic process, that that alone is an achievement that is laudatory, and I think this recent election underscores that.
Were there problems with the election? Yes, there were. You can read the reports from the observers, and you can read the OSCE report. I don’t want to go into detail on that now, but we can in the Q&A if you wish. Fundamentally, this is one where the process of voting was about as free and fair as it could be. The result was representative of the will of the Ukrainian people, as measured by plenty of public opinion polling. In other words, there was no surprising weirdness or manipulation, as some observers had expected to see, despite attempts to technically monkey with the candidates on the ballot, such as the famous case of Yuriy Tymoshenko, whose name was suspiciously the same as Yulia Tymoshenko when abbreviated, and things like that. The results were not dramatically affected by that in either the first or second round. Overall, it is absolutely worthy to congratulate Ukraine and to underscore that this was a significant accomplishment.
What we have is a president-elect who is very different from Ukraine’s previous presidents. Who is he? This point cannot be overlooked. Volodymyr Zelenskiy was born in 1978. Wherever he was born and whatever language he was born speaking, he is by far the youngest president Ukraine has elected in its independent history, and he is fundamentally a post-Soviet president. His entire adult life has taken place after the end of the Soviet system, after the end of control over Ukraine out of Moscow. It is an interesting counterpoint to those who will say he has done business in Russia, he speaks Russian and may have more of an orientation towards Moscow. He is not someone who has ever lived, as an adult, in a Ukraine that was dominated and run out of Moscow, that was run by the KGB. He doesn’t have that kind of history, and he certainly doesn’t behave as if he has that kind of outlook on the world. That is an important distinction.
He’s a smart guy. A lot of folks want to equate the idea of a comedian with the idea of a clown. I would describe him as a political satirist. He has a legal education. He comes very much from an intelligentsia family, but, at the same time, one that I think many Ukrainians can identify with, by no means wealthy, coming from Kryvyi Rih in central southern Ukraine. His start in comedy came through this very classic youth comedy competition where he excelled, starting at the age of 17. This is a guy who has had potential, vision and who built himself a tremendously successful business from an early age. It is understandable why many people are excited about him.
His recent work is his television show in which he stars as the president of Ukraine — coincidental, right? — “Servant of the People,” though there he plays a different figure than he himself is. He plays a teacher who made a viral video rant about corruption. Basically, someone videos him shouting these things that all Ukrainians think, feel and say over drinks to their friends but basically don’t do anything about. This video of the teacher, Holoborodko, goes viral, and he is then elected in a crowd-funding, crowdsourcing campaign as president of Ukraine.
There is not a lot of good evidence for this, but I submit that, somewhere in the hearts and minds of many Ukrainian voters, when they overwhelmingly by a three-quarters majority elected him president in the second round last month, many were thinking about President Holoborodko. The question, of course, is whether that is what they’re going to get, or is President Zelenskiy going to be less like the character he played on television and more like the Ukrainian politicians who have come before?
I have already told you that generationally he is different, and his educational background is definitely different, but the Ukraine into which he comes as leader is different in some ways and the same in other respects. It is, of course, different because there has been a path of reform for the last five years. It has been mixed results, some of them very negative for the majority of Ukrainians. In fact, Zelenskiy himself campaigned on the message that life in Ukraine has become unaffordable, and this resonated with a tremendous number of people — people who are complaining about paying the so-called kommunalka, the costs of sustaining their lives in their apartment buildings, paying for energy tariffs that have increased as part of a reform package, demanded, frankly, by us in the West. It is a country at war, which is mixed. On the one hand, Ukrainians have never felt their national pride, sovereignty and unity as they do today. On the other hand, it is a nation in which some people are suffering and serving disproportionately, and other people are largely disconnected from that. You can see and feel that in Ukraine today when you contrast the feeling in the southeast of the country versus the feeling, for example, on the streets of Kyiv or in the west of the country.
But I think it’s notable that Zelenskiy did well in almost every single category and almost every single oblast. The only oblast he didn’t win a majority in was Lviv. He did well with every demographic, from the very wealthy to the very poor. He did well with ethnic Ukrainian speakers, bilingual speakers and Russian speakers. This was by no means a candidacy of the southeast against the west or vice versa, as we’ve seen in Ukraine’s past.
It comes to the question of whether he is going to be fundamentally different. Here I see a couple of dilemmas. First, we don’t have a platform from president-elect Zelenskiy. He has not announced what his positions will be. He said he is broadly pro-Western, that he favours NATO and the European Union but that wants to do a referendum on those questions. That’s something many Ukrainian politicians have called for. President Poroshenko simply moved forward on those issues. Zelenskiy is not necessarily throwing the brakes on, but he seems to want to take this crowdsourcing approach to fill in the policy content of what his positions will be.
Very similarly, we don’t know who his cabinet will be. We have seen a number of names, and some are encouraging, talented people. For instance, former Minister of Finance Danyluk is closely associated with him, cited as a pro-Western person, very well educated and experienced. There are a few others, but Zelenskiy has been clear that he’s not going to announce any of his cabinet picks until he is inaugurated, and a detailed technical issue that’s important is there is no inauguration date yet, so we haven’t learned what Zelenskiy’s cabinet will look like, and, to the extent that people are power in a place like Washington, D.C., or Ottawa or Kyiv, we don’t know what the power will look like.
The other big dilemma is we don’t know how the real President Zelenskiy, not the television character Holoborodko, who had a very non-traditional style of dealing with Ukraine’s power elite, the oligarchs and the politicians, but how will the real President Zelenskiy, who has been doing business with the oligarchs for many years, in particular, Ihor Kolomoisky, the person who owns the television channel on which Zelenskiy’s television show, “Block 95,” has appeared, as well as “Servant of the People,” deal with these folks in reality? The only significant message we have gotten from him so far was in his one-on-one gladiator match debate with the incumbent President Poroshenko, when he was challenged on: “Are you going to enforce the law against someone like Kolomoisky?” And his answer was, “If Kolomoisky breaks the law while I’m president of Ukraine, he will go to prison.” Okay, it’s a promise, and we have yet to see how that is implemented in reality.
The other dilemma Zelenskiy may face is that the deck in some ways is being stacked against him. For example, the Rada recently passed this language law, which was very clear. Zelenskiy opposed spiritually, if you will, if not in explicit terms. His campaign was against this sort of thing. He was campaigning on inclusive, all-Ukrainian national identity, and his critique of the language law, which essentially issues punishments for not meeting a 51 per cent threshold of Ukrainian publications in booksellers, magazine stands and newsstands for not using Ukrainian exclusively in public life and settings, which doesn’t happen to this day in parts of Ukraine. His message was, why take this negative approach? Why create another opportunity for potential corruption by having language inspectors going around the country who can issue fines or can turn the other way if they receive a bribe? Instead, let’s come up with positive incentives to encourage people to learn and master the Ukrainian language. Zelenskiy himself admitted, “I’m going to get a Ukrainian language tutor and get better at it,” and I thought this was quite brave, because, for example, Yanukovych famously bumbled his way through Ukrainian but never acknowledged it. Zelenskiy’s message is very positive here, but he’s being saddled by a law which, now that he is the chief law enforcement officer of the country, he will have to enforce — a law he disagrees with. It’s unlikely to be the only one like that. The Rada is now considering laws designed to hem in the powers of the presidency, and kind of the sword of Damocles of impeachment may hang over his head.
This brings me to the last big challenge, the Rada election itself. That is currently scheduled for the fall. We can talk about the mechanics and logistics of this in greater detail, but the essence is Zelenskiy’s position vis-à-vis the Rada. Those of you who know the Ukrainian system know how important control in the Rada is to getting any part of your agenda done. His position in the Rada election will never be stronger than it is today. Right now, he has a dominant position. If the Rada elections were next week, he would probably be able to form a majority. You all understand politics, probably even better than any of us experts do on Ukraine. You can do the math. If he is governing for six months and he is forced to fulfill these promises he has made to people that he will make their electricity less expensive and their lives will be better, that he will tackle corruption, this deeply entrenched oligarchic system, when he inevitably doesn’t move fast enough on all of these challenges, that will play into the hands of his opponents in the fall Rada election. Therefore, my expectation, limited crystal ball that I have, is that he is probably not going to be able to deliver the majority he wants, even in coalition with other forces.
We can go into greater detail about who those folks are. Obviously, Petro Poroshenko is one of them. Poroshenko has been a larger-than-life figure, enormously important in the last five years in Ukraine. Unlike past Ukrainian leaders who have gone gently into that good night, and I’m thinking here of in particular of Yushchenko, Poroshenko retains what is now popularly being called the 25 per cent. I mean, he was defeated badly, but he won a non-trivial minority. It is not 3 per cent. He won a quarter of Ukrainian votes largely concentrated in certain sectors, what you can call the “national patriotic vote.” He has a constituency in Western Ukraine, and he is playing to that now by rushing to push through the language law and other measures. He has a constituency in the military, which nonetheless went for Zelenskiy, but only marginally, and he has a constituency among people whom he has made his allies. That is why you see him rushing with every single judge on the Constitutional Court, to replace key members of the presidential staff, and even the presidential security detail.
If you go back to the television show “Servant of the People” and think about the challenges that the teacher Holoborodko faced when he walked into this heavy established oligarch-dominated Ukrainian political system, you can’t help but feel for this guy Zelenskiy because it does seem like he’s going to walk into exactly the same problems. The problem is he doesn’t have Hollywood magic and screenwriters and producers to help him get through them. He has to get through them with the reality of Ukrainian politics, and that’s no easy challenge. I’ll leave it there.
Thank you very much.
Sergiy Kudelia, Associate Professor, Political Science, Baylor University, as an individual: Madam Chair and committee members, thank you for inviting me to this meeting. I will mainly address and reflect on the election itself, and in Q&A I will be glad to talk about the implications of this election for the future.
Ukraine’s 2019 election had three singular political outcomes. First, the conduct of the election was free and largely fair despite growing authoritarian trends under President Petro Poroshenko and continued security risks associated with the armed conflict in Donbas. Second, the incumbent president was defeated by —
The Chair: Mr. Kudelia, I have to interrupt you. Unfortunately, the interpreters are indicating they cannot translate for technical reasons, I believe. It’s something about the audio where you are, I believe. I don’t know if our technicians can correct that.
I’m told that we cannot continue, so I have to apologize that we will not be able to get your presentation today. I hope that you will be able to come back at another date. Hopefully, we can accommodate your schedule to get your presentation. With regret, we often have this problem with video conferences. We have to accommodate translation into two official languages, and sometimes the electronic feeds just don’t work well. We have moved into a new building, and it may be that we’re having some technical difficulties. I hope you’ll accept my apology.
Mr. Kudelia: Sure. I submitted my remarks to the clerk, so if you could add that to the transcript, I would appreciate it.
The Chair: We will certainly distribute the comments, and we’ll look for another time to have a dialogue with you. Thank you, Professor Kudelia. We live under these circumstances. We call it new technology. Sometimes we think the old technology was better.
Professor Magocsi, I will turn to you. You’re here before us, and hopefully your microphone is working.
Professor Kudelia, if you can hear us and wish to continue, that’s perfectly acceptable for us, but if you have other things to do, on behalf of the committee, I thank you for your indulgence.
Mr. Kudelia: Thank you.
The Chair: Professor Magocsi, welcome, and I trust that we can have a dialogue here.
[Translation]
Paul Robert Magocsi, Professor and John Yaremko Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Toronto, as an individual: Thank you. I feel that you will be able to listen to me, whichever language I use here. I normally speak in English, so I will give my presentation in English.
[English]
Let me say a few words of introduction. We were asked to say something five or six minutes, so I will not keep it long because it’s questions that you have here, but there are five points that I might just make briefly and not elaborate on any of them, but if you want to follow up on any of them, they will be reflective, in a sense, of what I know.
The first thing is that I’m very uncomfortable in this setting or any kind of setting that in some ways violates or questions the very discipline in which I’m trained, and that is a historian who knows something about the past and almost by definition is very reluctant to say anything about the future. This is not, I don’t think, unimportant — the idea of having to have this crystal ball. It doesn’t make a difference what the future is, whether what we’re talking about is in the present in general, future events, presidential elections, et cetera. So I put my cards on the table of my reluctance as a professional in one discipline and not in another. This is not to say that political scientists and some of our other colleagues don’t do this for a living, but that is my position on that.
The second point that I would comment on, which some of you may wish to follow up on, is the phenomenon of Ukrainian Canadians and knowledge of Ukraine. The fact that people are of Ukrainian background, whether second, third, fourth or fifth generation, or that they may even study Ukraine as professionals in the West, does not necessarily make them knowledgeable about real life in a country that they may visit from time to time in a quick jaunt to the capital and maybe venture to Lviv because it’s beautiful. But that says not very much about the entire country. Even if they visit their family, they’ll pop into a village and get the opinions of their sister, brother, et cetera, but that’s not very representative. So this whole question of depending on insights from people who live outside the country as opposed to those who live and work in the country is something that I also put on the table for reflection.
Having said that, then, what should committees of this kind do, and what should people like us do, who are sometimes called upon to either comment in a meeting of this kind or to write something — op-ed pieces, et cetera? It would seem to me that the only thing that could be done and should be done is to look at everything through the prism of a Canadian, from a Canadian perspective, and what are, first and foremost, the needs of Canada as a country? Canada is a country that does play a role in the international world and has a special relationship with Ukraine. Ukraine is not just any other country in the world, as we know. It’s next to Russia, there’s a war going on, and so forth and so on. The only thing I would think we need to be concerned about is not necessarily wondering how some events are going to play out, but just simply make it clear what a Canadian agenda is vis-à-vis, in this particular case, Ukraine. Most people have these things on their mind anyway, like the EU, a conflict with Russia and military things, and it’s to just keep pressing that and keeping one’s eye on the policies of any regime, let alone a new one.
The other element that I’ll throw out as a potential topic for discussion is this: We usually have, in this crystal ball exercise, people who try to speak with some authority about what is likely to occur when facing, in this case, an individual who has been elected who has no policy at all anyway. The other approach is, well, something bad is going to happen. This is, again, we have tragedy around the corner. We’ve been hearing this in any case from people who try to look to the future throughout the last 25 years, and certainly at moments of political crisis. We can go back to the establishment of Ukraine as an independent country in 1991. There were all of these very negative scenarios — “This is going to be a bloodbath.”
I would just share with you that I have personal observations, more importantly, of developments in the distant past as well as in the recent past. I actually have great confidence in the people of Ukraine, probably more so than Ukrainians themselves have, and certainly more than Canadians of Ukrainian background have of Ukrainians and Ukraine. They have actually come to the fore. They have been successful. They have a country that has been operating for more than a quarter of a century. If you look at the historical developments of the 20th century, there are a lot of countries that have not made it that far. When there has been a problem, they have done their Ukrainian thing and fixed it by taking to the streets. There is a likelihood that might happen. It could happen, but looking at the past, it didn’t get worse; it got slightly better. I don’t see the point of being concerned with the kind of potential tragic scenario or super problematic scenario.
The last point would be that I see this election, and now we’ve seen it so we can talk about it historically, as an enormous success because it says something about Ukraine that hasn’t been alluded to so far here and probably hasn’t been alluded to too much. We should never forget that Ukraine is a multicultural society and a multinational society, and I’m not just talking about ethnic Russians or Russian speakers. We have peoples of an enormously wide range of ethnic and religious background.
We also know that traditionally there has been a problem in the West, more so than with Russians, with the image of Ukraine as a destructive place where Jews get killed. All throughout history, rightly or wrongly, interpreted correctly or incorrectly, at certain times, Ukraine and Ukrainian society have been accused of being anti-Semitic. This was the card that Putin played during the Maidan. Let’s stop and think about this. That element played no role in this election because people in Ukraine do not think in these terms, thankfully. We in the West and in the diaspora do think of that, but it’s not reflective of reality there. Stop and think about it. Where do you now have a person who is both president of the country and prime minister of the country who is of Jewish background in an alleged anti-Semitic place? This is extraordinary. More extraordinary is that was irrelevant in this election. People don’t think in these terms any more, and that’s a very healthy reflection, to my mind, of this society.
Those are the kinds of points that were on my mind. If you have any questions, I can follow up to the best of my ability. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you. We’ve heard an array of comments. We will have Mr. Kudelia later, but our two witnesses here have elicited some questions.
Senator Saint-Germain: My first question is for you, Professor Rojansky. In a post-electoral analysis that you published on the website of your institute entitled What to Expect from Ukraine’s Next President, you said first, with regard to Russia:
For the Kremlin, which has not yet formally congratulated Zelenskiy on his victory, the “anyone but Poroshenko” enthusiasm appears to be shared with Ukrainian voters.
You also said, referring this time to Ukrainians:
. . . Ukrainians expect the new president to deal with the seemingly endless war with Russia in addition to economic hardship and corruption. Many are frustrated and angry that after five years of war and sacrifice, they are no better off. Zelenskiy addressed this frustration with a twofold message of hope.
Are you as hopeful as the elected president is that the relationship with Russia will improve and that the economic situation will improve as well?
Mr. Rojansky: Thank you, if I may, senator, for the very good, very sophisticated read of what I published. First of all, this is not by way of excuse, but we’re in a situation where we know so little about what Zelenskiy can actually do and intends to do that, day by day, one can revise one’s opinions.
For instance, on this question of anyone but Poroshenko, my initial impression had strongly been, of course, the distaste of Ukrainians for the incumbent is nothing the same as the distaste of Russia for the incumbent. It’s two different issues, but they are both fundamentally anti-incumbent.
I then saw statistics that indicated that, of self-identified Zelenskiy voters in the second round election, the one in which he won 73 per cent of the electorate, only about 40 per cent said they were principally voting against Poroshenko. Over 50 per cent said they were voting for Zelenskiy. I found that very interesting. They see something in him. It may be stylistic, it may be generational and it may not be not terribly substantive the way that a policy wonk like me would like to see in a White Paper, but they see something in him that they positively proactively support, and not just because he’s not Petro Poroshenko. That was very interesting.
I think, for the Kremlin, overwhelmingly, they really want to stick it to Poroshenko, and yet they have held back any ammunition that might have strengthened Zelenskiy’s hand. Coming right out of the gate, what does Putin do? He cuts off energy, coal and gas shipments to Ukraine. He threatens to passportize Donbas and basically go around handing out Russian passports, to do the thing Russia has done throughout the post-Soviet space of claiming citizens on someone else’s territory. That doesn’t make life easier for Volodymyr Zelenskiy. That said, it may actually improve his credentials and credibility with Ukrainians because he pushed back hard and said, “Hey, two can play at this game. We have plenty of discontented Russians who don’t have free speech or basic rights. If you want to come to Ukraine, you can come and be Ukrainian citizens.” He has already started in this back-and-forth with Putin, but it’s not looking promising.
This brings me to the second question, about what he can actually deliver and am I optimistic. With full deference to Professor Magocsi’s point about the crystal ball, none of us have a crystal ball. What Zelenskiy has, and this should not be underestimated, is a mandate. I do not dismiss him as a politician. No one who comes from essentially nowhere in the political universe and wins three quarters of a free and fair election is not a strategic thinker. This guy has been planning to do this and he has been putting together the vision that makes this possible. If you want to get conspiratorial about it, you can even imagine that his television show was entirely aimed at essentially building free political advertising for himself for several years.
Whatever it was he did, it worked extremely well. He now has a mandate when he goes into a room with Vladimir Putin, which he says he will do, by the way; he says he has no problem whatsoever negotiating directly with the Russians. Whether he is willing to negotiate with the thugs who run the Donbas separatist entities, he has been less clear about that. The Russian position is, of course, they are the separatists and you have to negotiate with them. We all understand that’s a fig leaf. He wants to negotiate with Putin. He has a mandate, and that means he can walk away from the table saying, “The Ukrainian people voted for me. This is my position. They won’t go for this. What do you want me to do? Go against three quarters of the Ukrainian people?”
That’s very different. I want to be deferential to the service that Poroshenko has rendered, but at the end of the day, he is an oligarch. He is a creature of the old system, and Putin and Poroshenko had a certain kind of understanding that was premised on that old system. Moreover, Poroshenko, for the bulk of his term, within about a year of his election in 2014, was a minority president. He was already polling in the single digits or low teens, so he didn’t have that mandate.
Zelenskiy has those strengths and, if he uses them in negotiations with Putin, it is potentially possible for him to gain some ground. Obviously, we are dealing with Russia here. Russia will not give anything away for free. They always reserve the option of undermining Ukraine by fomenting violence at any point.
Whether Zelenskiy is able to simultaneously deliver on the two promises he has made, one to improve the economic situation for people, which is going to require enormous support from the West, and, two, to improve the situation in the Donbas by delivering on peace — you could argue that those two are a little bit contradictory. He will have to walk back or walk a little bit more slowly on plans for integration with Western institutions, drawing closer to the West geopolitically, if he doesn’t want to alienate the people in the East and the Kremlin with whom he has to do business in order to resolve the Donbas conflict. It’s a very delicate, very difficult enterprise.
The last point on this is that it will demand expertise. It will require that he have people who actually have experience and know what they are doing on his team, negotiating on this portfolio. I’m not terribly hopeful based solely on the television show where he appointed an actor-friend as foreign minister. I am a little more helpful based on some of the names he has floated who are experienced people.
Senator Saint-Germain: Thank you for a very interesting answer.
[Translation]
My other question goes to you, Professor Magocsi. I believe that you understand and speak French very well. That is what I heard a little earlier.
Mr. Magocsi: Yes.
Senator Saint-Germain: Of course, I understand that you do not have a crystal ball, so I will not ask you to do any magic or fortune-telling. But I am going to ask you to give us an opinion, based on your expertise and your knowledge of the issues, on both the Russian and the Ukrainian sides. In recent years, under the current government and the previous one, Canada has sanctioned people, both Russian and Ukrainian, for their roles in the situation in the east of Ukraine. Canada has also taken a very clear, not to say firm, position in Russia’s alleged role in the conflict. In the knowledge that Russia is a major player in Europe and that the Canadian position does not seem, in my view anyway, to be having any significant effect on the situation between Russian and Ukraine, do you believe that it is time for Canada to change its approach to Russia in this conflict?
Mr. Magocsi: I think it would be best for me at the moment to answer that in English, given that most people here are anglophone.
[English]
I would preface my remarks by saying that, despite what many people, experts, observers, say and would hope, Russia will never change its position and attitude toward Ukraine. Even a slight change is, to my mind, false hope. I’m not saying that as someone who is trying to look into a crystal ball but rather based on centuries of the historical past.
I might also add that this has next to nothing to do with Putin. Putin is by far not the first person who is concerned with Ukraine not being part of Russia, and he is far from the last. In some ways, in terms of contemporary Russian politics, if you listen to the rhetoric, he is — let’s say — not the most extreme.
Let’s turn, then, to the question of whether Canada should reassess its policies toward Russia. Well, if we begin with the premise that I have just put forth, then the answer would be, yes, it probably should reassess its policies toward Russia to the degree that they may also reassess or strengthen certain aspects of its policies toward Ukraine, presuming that the relationship between the two countries based upon centuries of the historical past is not going to change.
Let me just say one thing as an example. I’ve said this before in public, and some people do not like to even hear the term “cultural genetics.” This is not a statement of racism; it is a statement of how individuals and societies are formed and what is there in their intellect, conscious and unconscious, because of the world in which they have lived and where their ancestors have lived, et cetera.
Russians love Ukrainians just like they love Belarusians. Why? Because it is part of them. You know, you don’t like your left arm, as an individual? You don’t like your right arm? How can you not like your left arm and right arm? From their perspective, it is part of one body. That society has been so acculturized by centuries of experience, by less centuries of universal education but now universal education, to drive the point home. It is inconceivable, inconceivable, for Russians of any kind, any shape, any size, any gender, any age, to think of Ukraine and Ukrainians as something different from their left arm or their right arm.
That being the case, if it is in Canada’s interests, here we have, I would say, two matters — the political and the moral. In political terms, if Canada’s economy could improve by not imposing sanctions or by dropping some of the sanctions because it could do better business with Russia, and if Canadian economic interests or any other kind of interests could be enhanced by recognizing that Crimea is part of Russia and that something has to be done in the East, well, on political grounds — realpolitik, as one used to say — why not? What comes first? Does Ukraine come first, or do Canada and Canadians come first? Well, for Canada, it should be Canada and Canadians. But then there is the moral issue. Canadians, in particular, like to feel that their strength in the world is not based, as we know, on military power or even economic power. It is based on certain principles of co-existence in which, in some ways, sometimes, Canada is the moral guardian.
If one is looking at a potential change or evolution in the policy of Canada vis-à-vis Russia, the first decision has to be made is, where will one feel comfortable with their convictions? On moral grounds or on realpolitik? After you do that, the rest is clear, if you realize that Russia is never going to change their view of Ukraine.
Senator Massicotte: Mr. Rojansky, what happens very often around the world is that the new political player will devise all kinds of solutions. They are usually easy to package because he or she does not have a full understanding of the real world. Some in the West are saying that your proposed new president is of that character. In other words, he has developed opinions — very good; it ties in together — but it may not work in the real world, especially with Putin who is actually quite wise, very strategic and quite powerful. Is there a real possibility of that, or are you quite convinced that this fellow knows what he’s doing? We won’t be in a war in a year from now? We will not be manipulated into certain circumstances or situations? Can you give us your specific thoughts on that?
Mr. Rojansky: Look, if we think about what Professor Magocsi said about the dynamic with Russia, there are some problems here that are not solvable. For instance, let’s start with the conflict over Crimea. You all know Russia took Crimea by force and formally annexed it to its territory. Is there anybody in this room who seriously thinks that any version of the Russian government that is plausibly possible in the next several decades will hand it back, at any cost? I think the answer just realistically is no, that’s not going to happen. Even take the Donbas conflict where Russia does not acknowledge that it is occupying territory in Ukraine and does not acknowledge that it is the lifeline for the Donbas separatists or that it controls them. In that case, that conflict begins to resemble what are called “protracted conflicts” or the so-called frozen conflicts of the post-Soviet space. I don’t like to call them frozen because they are never frozen. People died. There is blood. Not a single one of those conflicts, not one — not in Moldova, not in Georgia, not in Armenia, not in Azerbaijan — has been resolved. Those conflicts have gone on. When Russia has been directly involved, they have become instruments of Russian policy on an ongoing basis.
Therefore, has Zelenskiy come in as a typical outsider critic, a typical crusading political outsider, scoring points on promising solutions to problems that the insiders could not solve? You bet he has done that. Has he done it knowingly and intentionally? I suspect he has. I don’t think he’s naive about his ability to solve the problems; he is a very smart guy, and he has smart people advising him.
The question is, which problems can he actually solve and which must he just manage indefinitely to avoid the worst outcomes? I submit the conflict is probably in the latter category. I don’t think he will solve it by negotiating with Vladimir Putin, but think of the economy, for example, and the tragedy of Ukraine. I remember this line being repeated in 2013 by Ambassador John Tefft, for whom I worked. It was a line originally from Bill Clinton who spoke on Mikhailivska Square in Kyiv. He said that Ukraine is a place of unlimited potential. The tragedy was, 20 years later, that’s still true. The vast potential of Ukraine’s economy, of its human capital — a highly educated population, inventive, creative — is still fundamentally untapped and is still held back by a system that suffers from corruption.
Zelenskiy has a different profile. He has a different style, and he has a different set of relationships than any politician we have had leading Ukraine before. I like to permit myself a little bit of optimism that things can change. If they can, I am hopeful that this guy can do it. Would I be willing to put my very modest salary on the line on that question? Probably not.
Senator Massicotte: Thank you.
Senator Cordy: Thank you both very much for being with us today.
In the reading that I’ve been doing recently, some of the acute challenges being faced for President Zelenskiy are rampant corruption and the weak judiciary system. I know they’ve been working on it. The Rada passed some reforms to curb political influence within the court system and to boost professionalism amongst those who are being appointed to the judiciary. Two thousand judges voluntarily left their positions, but the appointment process has been criticized as lacking transparency.
Professor Rojansky, you spoke about control of the Rada being extremely important if any changes are to come about. Will the new president be able to create a stronger judiciary system? The Rada has said they want it, but it seems they are already running into roadblocks. How will President Zelenskiy be able to deal with overall corruption? At this point, he doesn’t have anybody in the Rada. He is sort of by himself. I think you spoke in your earlier comments about relationships that he might have with some of the oligarchy.
Mr. Rojansky: Thank you very much, Senator Cordy. Both are fantastic questions.
The answer is that there have been attempted solutions to both of those situations over the past five years, almost always championed by us in the West, in Europe, in North America, usually bankrolled either by individual countries, by the EU, IMF, et cetera. They’ve been partially successful. I don’t want to say that “partial” is nothing because it is not, but it is not good enough. That’s why Ukrainian voters have been so frustrated.
Take the business climate in Ukraine. I don’t have the numbers in front of me; I could come up with them. The fundamental story is that more of the Ukrainian economy is owned and controlled today by a small number of what we conventionally call oligarchs than was true, believe it or not, even a decade ago. So even in the post-Soviet period, we are not on the right path in terms of “de-oligarchizing” the Ukrainian economy — if that’s a word. Should we be surprised? No. Five years ago, Ukrainians themselves overwhelmingly elected an oligarch, a billionaire called Petro Poroshenko, to run their country. So to expect an oligarch to “de-oligarchize” the country is probably not realistic — and he didn’t.
There are a lot of the controversies, for example, about the judicial reforms. There is a contrast between Poroshenko’s actions. On the one hand, Poroshenko was nominally committing and getting the Rada to come along with the idea of having external review committees and having civil society suggest candidates to the courts. At the same time the story has now come out, within the last couple of weeks, that Poroshenko was actually pressuring judges using the classical kompromat — we have unfortunately become familiar with that term, the sort of compromising material that the secret services have — and bribes and other measures to get his agenda done in the business lane and to protect his allies. A lot of that is coming out now because judges feel relief from Poroshenko’s pressure because they know he is on his way out the door.
Ironically, what is he doing on his way out the door? You have to ask yourself the simplest question: Why, as a lame duck, is he replacing all 75 judges on the Constitutional Court of the country? Not having done that for five years, why is he suddenly doing it now? Am I saying these are all bad people? No, of course not. I have no idea, to be quite honest. I am sure some of them are perfectly fine jurists, but they all owe their tenure to Petro Poroshenko who, as I said earlier, is not leaving politics. He is going to try to mount a significant campaign for, if not a majority, a big share in the Rada.
On the broader question of corruption — you kind of flagged what I will call the Ihor Kolomoisky problem. The fact is Zelenskiy has this long-standing business relationship with Ihor Kolomoisky whose bank, PrivatBank — previously the biggest private-depositor bank, a sort of commercial bank for retail banking for ordinary Ukrainians — was nationalized under Poroshenko. In other words, one oligarch, Poroshenko, took a big banking asset away from another oligarch. Those two hate each other. So if Zelenskiy is interpreted as being Kolomoisky’s man, this could be described as the revenge of one oligarch against another oligarch.
If you believe that narrative, if that in fact is what is happening, then there is no hope for anti-corruption because it is just the teams switching sides on the pitch. That’s all.
Instead, Zelenskiy could be a fundamentally new kind of leader in Ukraine. This may be overly charitable, but I have to think about his television show where he depicts himself as being that. That was essentially his campaign. His campaign was so short and so non-substantive that that’s what we have to go on. If that’s the kind of leader that he seeks to be, then he does have a chance because he will be willing to take on the oligarchs.
I will just end on this, and this is rumour. Like I said, everything changes from day to day. There have been some reports that Zelenskiy spent the recent May holiday period in Turkey. Aircraft signals that tell you where aircraft are indicated that a number of the key oligarchs or their representatives were in the same area of Turkey at the same time. There has been speculation that that meeting was not necessarily about a backroom deal but rather Zelenskiy went to a place where they could not be monitored by other Ukrainian political forces to lay out the terms of the new deal: “This is how it will work under my presidency.” That could be good; that could be bad. We don’t know what he said.
Senator Bovey: I very much appreciate the presentations you both made. Very interesting in, may I say, interesting times.
Dr. Rojansky, you mentioned that the inauguration date has not been set.
Mr. Rojansky: Yes.
Senator Bovey: Is there a time line within which that inauguration has to take place? I guess the flip side is this: Is there any sense that Poroshenko may not turn over the reins?
Mr. Rojansky: Senator Bovey, that’s a great question. I will never exclude anything. It is possible. I do expect that Poroshenko will go into opposition. He has been very clear that he is not going to disappear from politics, but there has been zero indication from him that — for example, what could he do if he wanted to prevent Zelenskiy from taking office? He could declare a state of national emergency by launching some kind of military campaign in the east, and Russia would react and so forth. He has tried stuff like that before. He couldn’t get away with it then and won’t be able to get away with it now. I expect him to leave.
The question of when is much harder. It’s significant for a couple of reasons. I am so sorry that Professor Kudelia could not be with us, because he knows this area very well.
First of all, history is not their friend. Historically, Ukrainian presidents have never been inaugurated more than two weeks after winning the second-round election. Two weeks have essentially passed by, and he still doesn’t have a date for inauguration. That’s unprecedented historically, and it is troubling. This is a Rada that is not friendly to Zelenskiy; it is friendly to the incumbent, Poroshenko. So we understand why.
The speaker of the Rada has said that on May 14 — so another week from now, next week — they will announce the date of the inauguration. Zelenskiy has asked for the inauguration to be on May 19. His ostensible rationale for that is that important foreign leaders whom he would like to invite and have there — perhaps the Prime Minister of Canada, the President or Vice President of the United States — they need time to arrange their schedules. They are a little busy. That’s actually a fair point.
It is probably secondary to his domestic agenda. Why does it matter for his domestic agenda? If he formally, under the Ukrainian constitution, takes the oath of office — incidentally, from the constitutional court, which has just been packed with Poroshenko’s people — later than the end of May, which is possible — June 2 that would be the last date under the constitution that he could take it — then he loses the right to dissolve the parliament and call for early elections. That’s incredibly significant, because were he to dissolve the parliament, let’s say, in the second half of May, while he still has the constitutional right to do so, and hold elections earlier than October, he would be dominant in those elections. He will never be more popular than he is now.
That’s why there’s this issue of no inauguration date being set. Will it be before or after the deadline? It is so important because it determines whether he has a chance to pack the Rada with his backers.
Senator Bovey: Do you want to add anything to that?
Mr. Magocsi: Not on what was just said, but I do want to mention something about what my colleague said in the first part of his answer, and that is the issue of oligarchs. We’ve been hearing about oligarchs in all countries of the post-communist world, particularly in the Russian Federation and in Ukraine. For everybody, they are the bad guys.
The point was made so aptly by my colleague that, 25 years later, complaining about oligarchs, they have more of the percentage of wealth than they had 25 years ago. It would also be interesting to ask where the percentage of wealth is in what percentage of the population in the United States. We don’t call them oligarchs, but it is the same thing.
I always speculate on this — and maybe this meeting in Turkey is the first step — but oligarchs should not be classified as boogeymen or the bad guys. Some of them have to stay around in order for the economy to exist. Some kind of accommodation should be made to try to bring them more into the system so that they act more, or to a larger degree — and visible to a larger degree, because most of them are behind closed doors, which you can’t get away with in the United States, even though the wealth is the same — as contributing to society and do they look like they are doing something.
And we do have some of these people. Victor Pinchuk usually doesn’t come up as being a bad guy. He has an art institute, and he has all sorts of social programs, et cetera, as does Kolomoisky, who built this magnificent Jewish cultural centre that makes Donald Trump’s towers on 5th Avenue — would be only one equivalent of the five or six that are there.
The allusion here to the meeting in Turkey might be a first step in that direction. You will never be able to get rid of all of them, and they’re not going to go away. But somehow making some kind of accommodation to as many as possible might be the way to go. But to expect that this problem is going to go away, forget it. It’s not going to go away.
Senator Bovey: Thank you both.
Senator Boehm: Thank you for your contributions.
I wanted to focus on the interregnum as well. For the past five years, there has been almost a cottage industry of international bureaucrats, whether at the IMF or discussing the pros and cons of the Minsk accords, the Normandy process — all these things that are going on, related to Ukraine and the reform issue. There will be a Ukrainian reform conference taking place in Canada in a couple of months.
Surely Mr. Zelenskiy must be amassing his advisors now. It is, I would say, very important that the foreign and finance ministers really be people who can connect, particularly in Europe, and in Washington at the IMF. Mr. Poroshenko did have some technocrats working with him, who were quite helpful. There was also a change among others.
I would be interested in knowing, perhaps from you, Professor Rojansky, initially: Where do you think this is going? In the public mind, there’s the first 100 days. Whenever the clock starts, when the inauguration takes place, what will Mr. Zelenskiy do? What policies will he set out? He has talked about reviving the Normandy process. I’m not sure Mr. Putin wants to do that. Perhaps President Macron and Chancellor Merkel would. But I think it is important that he set out his priorities early on. Do you have any thoughts on that and the direction it might go?
Mr. Rojansky: Thank you, Senator Boehm. I wish we knew the answers to your questions about whether he is going to get the technical experts and the respected folks that he needs to engage with Western institutions and governments. The indications we have so far are that there are a lot of those folks who have been in his orbit, for lack of a better term. Whether he appoints them to the cabinet positions that are within his constitutional authority — and those are the key positions. He has foreign minister, defence minister, finance, et cetera. We just don’t know. He has said very clearly that he won’t announce anything until after his inauguration. I suspect that he will. It is to his benefit to do so. Having won the convincing majority that he did, at this stage, he doesn’t necessarily need to hand out positions as a way of buying off other political forces. He may need to do that down the line, but for the first 100 days, why would he compromise his own team and agenda?
Now, when you ask what that agenda consists of, there are certain areas where he simply won’t have a choice. In order to service Ukraine’s debt, he will need to be in the good graces of the IMF. That means he won’t have a choice about making appointments to individuals who can handle that process. I think this will be clearly explained to him. Unless the deal that Professor Magocsi suggests he might have been working on with the oligarchs was to get them to pay down Ukraine’s debt — which would be a Holoborodko, made-for-television solution. I don’t exclude it, by the way. I don’t exclude that he has demanded some type of contribution from the oligarchs.
But fundamentally, he is going to be needing the West for financial reasons. He needs the West in the Normandy process. He has made noises about engaging the United States and Russia directly. The United States, interestingly, is not party to the Normandy process. It suggests to me this desire that many ordinary Ukrainians — not political people, just people sort of spit-balling — will ask, “Why are we doing this strange artificial process with Germany and France, which don’t seem to have the ability to get Russia to do anything?” It is not a criticism of their diplomacy. They simply don’t have that capacity.
The United States may have such a capacity, especially if our president is now liberated post-Mueller report. I don’t want to get into American politics here. After all, we’re a federal memorial institution. But if he is now liberated to have a meeting with President Putin — our Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is going to Sochi next week — the idea that Ukraine can work directly with the United States to negotiate directly with Russia, I don’t think it’s fantasy.
But I also don’t think the Russians are interested in solving the conflict. It will be a question of conflict management, keeping it on a level where he can focus on his domestic agenda. As I said before, I don’t think he has a choice other than to continue to follow through on the IMF-demanded reform agenda, which is going to be as partial a success as it has ever been.
Senator Saint-Germain: With regard to Canada’s help, especially financial help, to Ukraine, I noticed that since January 2014, Canada had helped Ukraine with loans of over $450 million, as well as over $245 million for bilateral development projects, and Canada also contributed to help meet the needs for the security and stabilization of the country for close to $100 million. In a nutshell, my question is whether you are aware of some impacts of this help coming from Canada, and are there some signs that an economic reform with sustainable impacts is ongoing or is on its way somewhere?
Mr. Rojansky: Is that for me?
Senator Saint-Germain: It is for you and for Mr. Magocsi, if he wants to answer. Perhaps you don’t have the answer, which is an answer as well. I would understand.
Mr. Rojansky: My take is that you’re fundamentally asking the question that every grant maker in Ukraine asks every time a grant comes up for renewal, which is, “Did what we paid for get us what we wanted?” And the answer is always yes and no.
Yes, in the sense that what we are doing is developing human capital. This is kind of a “where you sit is where you stand” phenomenon. We are, in effect — and I say “we” because I include the United States and a number of the European grant makers as well — creating through the individual implementing entities — some of which are in government, others which are non-governmental organizations, others are redistributed assistance organizations that are actually Western but resident in Ukraine. Senator Boehm asked: Who are the credible Ukrainians who are going to take positions of responsibility in the government and come and negotiate in Washington? Well, the answer is a lot of these folks are people with experience either in the private sector in the West or people who have had experience in exactly these kinds of implementing entities, generally bankrolled by Western money. This is kind of a minimalist answer I’m giving, but that’s an area where I have 100 per cent confidence. I have confidence that we are creating human capital to the benefit of Ukraine and ultimately to our national interests in the United States and in Canada to the extent we want to see reform in Ukraine.
Can we track the individual reform processes, for example, in the judiciary or in transparency of federal spending? That is so hard to answer because I see reports that are as rosy as can possibly be that show us that the ProZorro acquisition system — and ProZorro basically means transparency — is working brilliantly and therefore all acquisitions in Ukraine are completely transparent. I feel like you have to have been living in a cave for the last 25 years to believe that. It has to be a mixed picture in terms of actual reform implementation, but I’m confident the people we are supporting are, by and large, well worth supporting.
Senator Saint-Germain: If I may comment, you don’t have a crystal ball but you seem to be reading my mind. I was going to ask if there is a way for us, or would it be relevant for Canada, to tag its financial help in order, for instance, to prioritize the reform of the judicial system or the infrastructure or education? Whatever it is, would there be a way for us to make sure that the best interests of Ukrainian citizens are better served by our help?
Mr. Rojansky: Senator, actually you’re reading a number of people’s minds with that question. The good news is that, by default, a division of labour has already occurred in the assistance accounts. There are certain topics, for example, that the United States tends to focus its assistance grants on, and others that the United Kingdom does, others that Canada does, Germany, and so on. It’s an efficiency issue, and it tends to work rather well. I will not go through the list of implementing organizations, but they are well regarded.
The other area where Canada deserves credit is security assistance to Ukraine. The Canadian contingent, proportionally speaking, is very large. It is very well respected in Ukraine. I actually had the unique chance to stay at the same hotel as a group of Canadian officers who were in Western Ukraine. In Western Ukraine, they’re not in the war zone. Canadians are not fighting the Russians in Ukraine, but they were impressive and serious folks. That’s another area where Canada, together with the United States and the U.K., deserves a lot of credit.
Mr. Magocsi: You asked about Canadian investments, since I think you said 2014, several years, and 2016, and there were three subcategories. The first one was loans for $450 million, and then there was security and then the last one human capital. So roughly $1 billion.
My question to you, or in general to help answer your question, is if it’s over two or three years — whatever it is, 2016 to 2019, $1 billion — what’s that in comparison to aid that Canada has given to other countries in the world? Is it the largest amount you’ve given to other countries? Is it second, third or fourth? That’s the first question. How much does that mean?
After that, to go back to what we were speaking about before, it would seem to me that it is in Canada’s interest, functioning in this world, to do everything in its power, maybe increase the amount of money, not to support simply Ukraine — because I’m not speaking now as someone who is a specialist in Ukraine — but also Georgia. If the Baltic states didn’t have the European Union, all of the Baltic states. It is in the general interest of countries in the proverbial West to do everything in their power to stave off worse scenarios by containing a country whose historical record proves that it is not going to change, whoever is ruling it, Putin or anybody else.
Senator Saint-Germain: My question wasn’t aimed at criticizing the amount, and I know it is a relatively small amount. My question was aimed at making sure that we are doing it the right way and that the impact is the optimal impact that we can have. I like to have the perspective of people like you that are independent from the Canadian government and see things on the ground directly. Thank you to both of you.
The Chair: I’m going to resist asking questions because this is something that I spend a lot of time thinking about.
Professor Magocsi, you and I have had many discussions. I view the Russian situation differently than you do, as you know. I think that people are subject to change, depending on the dynamics and the world that they live in. I think Canada is not what it was, and I don’t believe Russia is.
One of our difficulties, and it’s something that preoccupies me, is how much do we really know about Russia today? I think it’s influenced very much by its past, but it’s also very much influenced by international information. What compels me to say that is that I have seen so many Russians leave. They used to deposit their money differently. They used to get educated differently than they are now. What does it say about the Russian population? Perhaps it is because we have those barriers now, whether it is with sanctions — and necessary ones, in my opinion. What do we know? We know the administration. Equally, I think as has been pointed out, what do we really know Ukrainians today, outside of the context we have?
So the admonition that you gave us about Russia, I take it differently. I take it optimistically, that we need to find levers to deal with the Russian people as opposed to just the administration. Equally, I think it’s an admonition we can make to our government as we did to previous governments: Get out of Kyiv. Don’t just talk to the bureaucrats and business people, but go out and talk in the villages everywhere.
Mr. Rojansky and Professor Magocsi, you go there quite often, and I think there is a lot of hope in a lot of situations. I think it’s not futile. I think our concentration on that area is extremely important to Canada’s welfare and Canada’s existence. Beyond the moral, I think practically it’s all woven together.
You’ve made us think. You’ve thrown out comments at us. I think we’re going to see the incoming new president differently, and we need to reflect on the Russian administration perhaps more pointedly and revisit that.
By virtue of all the questions, you’ve served us very well by coming today and opening up this topic. We don’t know the incoming president, but you’ve given us areas that we should look at perhaps a little differently than we just see in our press. Thank you both for coming and sharing your perspectives. It has made us think. As we speak, our Minister Freeland is in Ukraine, and we hope to be debriefed next week by officials to get their perspective. You’ve armed us with questions we will put to government officials, so thank you. Again, I regret that Professor Kudelia couldn’t continue with us. He will bring another perspective, and we have some other witnesses lined up for tomorrow. We will continue with this topic. I think it will help us in our advice on foreign policy to the Government of Canada, but perhaps even broadly because parliamentarians are embedded in so many parliamentary associations — NATO, Canada-Europe — and these are all levers where we can project our opinions and our influence and challenge the world to address these. I forgot you, Senator Ataullahjan. I apologize. IPU is always important because all countries are represented there but for one, and I think this has been very useful. Thank you.
(The committee adjourned.)