Commentary

Ukraine has turned to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) over Russia’s seizure of three Ukrainian naval vessels and their crew. Critical hearings are due on May 10-11, 2019 into Ukraine’s application for provisional measures to get the 24 men released. Russia has a long track record of flouting international rulings and has just announced that it will not attend the open hearings on May 10. This ruling will, however, matter and Moscow is currently endeavouring to ‘prove’ that ITLOS does not have jurisdiction over the case. Russia could checkmate itself since one of the reasons why the Tribunal would decide it does not have jurisdiction is if it was proven that this was part of military conflict, which Russia has every reason to deny...

Brazen intrusions into Crimean Tatar homes by men with machine guns have become common in Russian-occupied Crimea, but there were some differences on 30 April. The searches were even more desultory than normal, which was not surprising since they were targeting Crimean Tatar activists and claimed to be looking for drugs which they knew in advance they would not find. None, that is, which they had not brought themselves to plant which was doubtless one of the menacing messages that the raids were intended to leave...

The morning of Ukraine’s presidential election, Lyudmyla Razumova stood in the kitchen of her new house, less than a mile from the front line of a five-year war between Russia-backed separatists [ed. Russia led forces] and Ukrainian forces. Holding her infant grandson, who smiled as he occasionally spit up, she explained how violence has upended life in this coastal village. In 2016 Russian artillery shells struck Ms. Lyudmyla’s property, leaving her old house and a detached garage damaged and burning. Despite living among military checkpoints and minefields, she refused to leave. “I have lived here for 44 years—my whole life,” Ms. Lyudmyla said. “My parents and grandparents lived here”...

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has announced the launch of a special court to try corruption cases ahead of a presidential election runoff next week. The anti-corruption court is being set up as part of Ukraine's $3.9bn loan programme with the IMF, with the intention of rooting out entrenched corruption and insulating court decisions from political pressure or bribery. Poroshenko said on Thursday that the selection process for the judges had taken seven months...

On April 3, 2019 the first group of Roto7 left Quebec to Ukraine to take part in the operation UNIFIER. This group of one hundred soldiers is mainly formed by members of the 5th mechanized brigade group of Canada (5e Groupe-brigade mécanisé du Canada (5 GBMC). They aim to support Ukrainian Security Forces...

It's a long way from the killing fields of Kandahar to the laneways of Lviv, Ukraine — but for Lt.-Col. Pierre Leroux, the newer conflict carries some echoes of the older one. When Leroux arrived in Afghanistan in the fall of 2010, the Canadian army was helping to train Afghan forces to fight in the middle of a shooting war with the insurgent Taliban. In 2019, Leroux leads the Canadian task force training Ukrainian soldiers to fight an equally deadly, hot-and-cold conventional war with Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine's eastern regions...

The more scrutiny that is applied to presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the worse he is holding up. There are the increasingly obvious and troubling connections to billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, including at a Zelenskiy campaign headquarters in Kyiv, in which such Kolomoisky associates as lawyer Andriy Bohdan are regular fixtures. It, however, is not a secret location as the investigation implied. The address, 7 Novoselitska St., in the Pechersk District in Kyiv is where Kyiv Post and other journalists are sent to meet with the candidate and his representatives. There’s also an office on the second floor of the Olympisky Trade Center...

Ater this weekend’s first round of voting in Ukraine’s presidential election, Volodymyr Zelensky, a popular actor, and Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s current leader, have emerged as front-runners. Ukraine’s next president, though, will be either Poroshenko or Zelensky’s alter ego, Vasyl Holoborodko. Holoborodko is the incorruptible television president Zelensky plays in the hit series Servant of the People, now in its third season. A simple schoolteacher, whose tirade against corruption is filmed by a student and goes viral, Holoborodko catapults to the presidency. In real life, Zelensky has kept his campaigning to a minimum. He has let Holoborodko do the work for him, which may mean that the only way to guess at the real man’s views may be to take seriously the fake one’s...

Russia has sent “squadrons” of nuclear-capable Tu-22M3 strategic bombers to Crimea in response to the deployment of U.S. Navy Aegis Ashore missile defense installations in Romania, according to a report in Russian state-run media. “The deployment of American missile defense systems in Romania came as a major challenge, in response to which the Russian Defense Ministry made the decision to deploy long-range missile-carrying bombers Tupolev Tu-22M23 at the Gvardeyskoye air base,” Viktor Bondarev, the head of the Russian Federation Council’s Committee for Defense and Security, was quoted by Russia’s TASS news agency as saying Monday. “This move has drastically changed the balance of forces in the region,” Bondarev said of the missile defense shield. While the bombers are capable of carrying nuclear weapons, it is unclear if those weapons would come with the bombers when they are sent to Crimea...

15 March, 2019. OTTAWA. The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) applauds the announcement by Canada's Department of Global Affairs that 114 individuals and 15 entities have been sanctioned in response to Russia's aggressive actions in the Black Sea and the Kerch Strait and Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea. Last November three Ukrainian ships were captured by Russian naval forces, 24 Ukrainian sailors were captured and are still in Russian captivity in addition to over 70 other Ukrainian citizens who are currently illegally imprisoned in Russia. We welcome sanctions in response to this premeditated and deliberate act of aggression against Ukraine by Russia, which has been waging war on Ukraine for over 5 years...