Does Canada really care about Ukraine? Canada's approach to the crisis in Ukraine misunderstands the country's deteriorating realities and comes at the expense of critical long-term Canadian interests
- Share on Facebook - - - [image: Reddit this!] <http://www.reddit.com/submit> [image: Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, right, speaks with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Kiev, Ukraine, March 22, 2014.] Andrew Kravchenko / AP Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, right, speaks with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Kiev, Ukraine, March 22, 2014. *By:* Irvin Studin Published on Fri Apr 11 2014 Foreign policy has two legitimate functions: to advance a country's interests and/or to change the world. A country that uses foreign policy primarily to talk to itself engages in the basest form of the art: it misleads its own people into thinking they are improving the world just as key national interests are being compromised. In the matter of Ukraine, where there are no angels, we in Canada have been unique among the nations in convincing ourselves that we are on the right side of history in near-complete abstraction from Ukraine's deteriorating realities and at the expense of critical long-term Canadian interests. To see how this can be so, I would urge readers to consult the Facebook page of our minister of foreign affairs<https://www.facebook.com/honjohnbaird?ref=br_tf>. Facebook and Twitter are instructive because they are apparently where Canada does much of its important foreign policy these days. Having made devastating cuts to our real, already modest international affairs infrastructure, we have correspondingly glorified the import of virtual media in solving the world's great problems. On Feb. 21 of this year -- a pivotal date in the crisis -- the minister declared on Facebook: "Canada welcomes the agreement reached today between the Ukrainian government and opposition leaders. We will remain vigilant in monitoring progress under the agreement and stand ready to promote the full implementation of its commitments." This was an agreement between the now ousted president Viktor Yanukovych and Ukraine's leading opposition leaders, witnessed by France, Germany, Poland and Russia, to hold presidential elections by December of this year, reinstate the 2004 constitution and, among other things, address the problem of illegal weapons on the Maidan. Yanukovych was overthrown<http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/02/22/ukraine_president_leaves_kyiv_as_protesters_take_over_capital.html>within 24 hours of that agreement. We would never mention the agreement again. On the contrary, within a week, on Feb. 27, the minister declared on Facebook: "I welcome the appointment of a new government today in Ukraine ... [T]he appointment of a legitimate government is a vital step forward in restoring democracy and normalcy to Ukraine." If the minister declared the government legitimate, then might we safely presume it was installed according to Ukraine's constitution? Alas, it was not: impeachment or replacement of the president requires the procedures and conditions articulated in articles 108 to 112 of the Ukrainian constitution. These were not followed, on any serious analysis. And so we have ignored the breach of a central agreement in Ukrainian governance and arrogated unqualified legitimacy on a government of dubious constitutionality. Who was central to the breach of the agreement and overthrow of Ukraine's president? Answer: Pravy Sektor, the well-armed, organized and highly motivated Ukrainian militia that was pivotal to the escalation of the protests against the incompetent Yanukovych government. A scan of the minister's Facebook page shows not a word about Pravy Sektor or any militia involvement in the Ukrainian revolution. Indeed, a survey of the tweets of leading Canadian political actors shows similar silence about Pravy Sektor. There is almost nothing written about this militia in any of the leading Canadian media sources, English and French alike. Last week, Pravy Sektor surrounded the Ukrainian parliament to demand the resignation of the new minister of the interior. The minister bravely refused to resign. In Canada, again, incuriosity and silence. But let there be no illusions: Pravy Sektor delivered the revolution, opportunistically capitalizing on the frustrations of thousands of regular Ukrainians. The militia is not beholden to the new Ukrainian government, and may again turn on it. It will not be assimilated easily into mainstream institutions. In the meantime, a clear majority of Ukraine's population is rightly skeptical of the legitimacy and quality of the new government, and very cognizant of the inability of the new governors to control the militias that brought them to power. In illegally annexing Crimea, Russia, which knows Ukraine far better than any other country, has not been naive to any of these dynamics. Yet we continue to insist that we and the new Ukrainian government are somehow on the side of the angels -- all in the name of the Ukrainian people. This Ukrainian government must be shocked at its good fortune in finding in us today a country that, on matters international, is really mostly interested in its own self-esteem. The wonderful people of Ukraine are not holding their breath. They deal in bald realities, not morality plays. The people of Russia, similarly wonderful, are no different. Only that, while in the Cold War the Russians were to our "east," today, in the context of this century's great Arctic game and Canada's great northern interests, the Russians are due north of us. *Irvin Studin is Editor-in-Chief of Global Brief, a policy professor at the University of Toronto, and co-founder of Ukraine's Higher School of Public Administration.*
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