Valeriy Krylko
Chrystia Freeland posed with a banner emblazoned with the official battle flag of the fascist Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). She deleted the tweet after individuals noticed the flag. (Chrystia Freeland/Twitter)
The first foreign servicemen to arrive in Ukraine during February 2022 were Canadians. The first foreign officer arrested by Russian troops during Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, was Canadian General Trevor Cadieux. Cadieux had previously been appointed commander of the Canadian Army but was involved in a sex scandal before he took office. Ukrainian nationalists from the Azov Regiment staged a provocation in the Azovstal steel plant catacombs in Mariupol, in an attempt to cover up the Canadian general’s attempt to escape from the encirclement of fascist youths the unit found itself in; but without success. Now it is no secret that Canada, although very far from Ukraine, is actively involved in this conflict.
The involvement of Canada and Canadians in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict can be explained by the fact that the Ukrainian diaspora in this country is very large, and many Canadian foreign policy decisions are influenced by Ukrainian nationalists, some of whose ancestors served Adolf Hitler.
A manufactured diaspora – the left crushed, the right built up
The Ukrainian diaspora in Canada was already large before the Second World War. Before the war, quite different associations of emigrants from Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland and Finland had strong positions in Canada. They were predominantly left-wing, advocating friendship with the USSR.
Cassandra Lichuk, a University of Toronto professor of Ukrainian descent who has studied the history of Canadian Ukrainians, wrote in 2018:
“My college career proved that Canadian leftist Ukrainians were not missing from the historical record, but had been erased from the memory of the Ukrainian community. I realized that the clearly fixed and authoritative description of public life with which I had grown up was only one interpretation among many.
While I was still curious as to why the left was absent from stories about Ukrainians in Canada, other questions arose: what happened to the various variations of Ukrainianness that no longer had a place in our public consciousness?”
Lichuk’s research concluded that the process of ousting pro-Soviet Ukrainians began in 1940, when the Canadian government banned the activities of leftist Ukrainians.
Right-wing Ukrainian nationalists united in 1940, a process driven by the then-Liberal government of Mackenzie King, to form the Ukrainian Canadian Committee (since 1989 it has been called the Ukrainian Canadian Congress [UCC]). Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT) Editor Richard Sanders’ article stated:
“Describing it, Royal Military College historian Lubomyr Luciuk said: ‘few outside government circles realized the degree to which the Committee could be labelled Made in Ottawa.’”
The UCC played an increasingly important role in Canadian domestic and foreign imperialist politics. The UCC brought together right-wing Ukrainian organizations in Canada, during the late 1930s and early 1940s. These organizations included the Ukrainian National Front (UNF), the Ukrainian Catholic Brotherhood (UCB) and the monarchist United Hetman Organization (UHO), which was controlled by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Activists in these associations were outspoken supporters of National Socialism (Nazism) long before the outbreak of World War II. As early as 1933, when Hitler’s National Socialists came to power in Germany, the official newspaper of the UNF «Novy Schlach» gleefully wrote: «We cheerfully welcome the triumph of the new German world over the old world.”
In 1939, UСС president Vasil Kushnir, who had held office for two decades stated the following at a meeting in Winnipeg:
“Let our (Ukrainian) culture be national and not serve ‘international Jewry.’ Ukrainian forces must join with Nazi Germany because ‘Germany has inscribed on its banner the destruction of Bolshevism’.”
The day after Hitler’s Third Reich attack on the Soviet Union, the Krakowski Vesti newspaper (controlled by the OUN and whose editor- Mikhail Khomyak- was the grandfather of current Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland) published the following under the headline “The fairest war in history,”:
“Never in history has there been a war more just than the war begun by German troops on Sunday, June 22, 1941. The war that began today is something like a huge crusade for the liberation of humanity, for the liberation of peoples, for the liberation of the whole world from the terrible specter of the Antichrist… Today the German Leader became the liberator of all peoples enslaved by Red Moscow… The blood of German soldiers, who have already died and will die heroic deaths in this holy war, will lay the foundations of a new future for all liberated peoples of Eastern Europe, Western Asia and all of humanity.”
After the Wehrmacht’s defeat at Stalingrad, which became a turning point in World War II, the OUN organized the mobilization of its supporters in spring of 1943 to form a Ukrainian Waffen SS military unit which was granted approval by the Nazis. The propaganda campaign was led by “Krakovskie vesti” (edited by Khomyak)—the only Ukrainian language print media allowed in the Polish governor-generalship. On May 16, 1943, this newspaper wrote:
“The long-awaited moment has arrived when the Ukrainian people will again have the opportunity to come out with arms in their hands to fight their worst enemy, Bolshevism. The Fuhrer of the Great German Reich has agreed to form a separate Ukrainian volunteer military unit called “SS infantry division ‘Galicia'”… You must stand shoulder to shoulder with the invincible German army and destroy the Bolshevik beast once and for all…”.
At that time, as part of the same propaganda campaign, “Krakowskie Wesen” published articles by volunteers who joined the ranks of the 4th Waffen SS Division “Galicia”, including Alexander Moch, who later worked as a publisher in Toronto. Moch, who had established himself as a respectable Canadian, published a number of problematic articles in May and June 1943 with headlines such as: “How the Jews Corrupt Europe,” “How They (the Jews) Helped the Bolsheviks”, and “Conscience and Sodom.”
Ukrainian Nazis and Nazi collaborator-sympathizers in Canada
After the defeat of Hitler’s Germany and its allies at the end of World War II, the UCC coordinated a massive campaign to gain asylum in Canada for the Ounovs and Ukrainian SS members of the Galicia Division. The UСС succeeded in its plan since the Canadian ruling elite at the time was cooperating closely with the U.S. and British authorities to relocate the Nazis to North America.
The intelligence services of those countries (especially the CIA in the U.S.) were particularly interested in using Nazis, including Ukrainian Nazis and collaborators, in their Cold War against the USSR and the Socialist camp countries. According to Canada’s government website, more than 157,000 refugees arrived in Canada between 1945 and 1951. The largest immigrant groups were Poles and Ukrainians, there were also significant numbers of Holocaust survivors and Jews, as well as Croats, Czechoslovaks, Estonians, Hungarians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Romanians and Yugoslavs.Immigrants supplied the Canadian state with the needed labour and manpower for industries to succeed.Each immigrant candidate was screened by a “special team” of intelligence officers and officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, based on information received from U.S. and British intelligence. While pro-Communist immigrants were rejected, Ukrainian nationalists, were welcomed in Canada.
Canada began to accept Ukrainian refugees from displaced persons camps on a massive scale in 1948. It was then that supporters of the OUN and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army arrived from overseas for permanent residence in Canada. Among them was Chrystia Freeland’s beloved grandfather Mikhail Khomyak.
Incidentally Khomyak, who worked under the direct control of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, never denied his collaborationist past. On the contrary, he staunchly defended the OUN. It is thereby unsurprising that Freeland similarly holds views and political leanings that uphold Ukrainian right-wing nationalism in Canada.
At first, the veteran SS members of the Galicia Division were forbidden to enter Canada. The SS units were declared a criminal organization at the international Nuremberg Trials and, consequently, all members of the Galicia were designated war criminals. But the lobbying activities of the UСС and the policies of Ottawa and Washington resulted in more than two thousand of the Galicia personnel being relocated to Canada, where they were protected from prosecution for war crimes.
That said, almost 35,000 Banderites (followers of infamous Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera), who also actively cooperated with the Nazis and destroyed not only Russians, but also Poles, successfully immigrated to Canada.
The Ukrainian diaspora has been influencing Canadian policy toward Ukraine especially noticeably since the early 1990s after the collapse of the USSR and the proclamation of Ukraine’s independence.
In the 1950s there were regular clashes and fights between leftist and rightist Canadian Ukrainians in the streets of Canadian cities. The police usually only intervened in service of the aims of the right-wing nationalists.
Now we can see the same far-right attacks in Ukraine being used against opposition organizations or media outlets. Knowing full well that Canadian state authorities aren’t committed to protecting their safety or interests, the pro-Soviet faction of the Ukrainian diaspora has gradually assimilated, preferring not to emphasize its origins anymore. In fact, a particular faction of lower-income Ukrainian Canadians sympathetic to the pro-Soviet Association actually moved towards the “Banderite” Ukrainian Canadian Congress to be recipients of financial assistance by the Canadian government. For this reason, even Canadians of mixed ancestry (e.g. French-British-Greek-Ukrainian) prefer to call themselves Ukrainians, as this guarantees certain subsidies from the government.
Since the 1950s, official diasporas have been collaborating with the Canadian government to mobilize their respective constituencies in elections. In fact, in order to win elections in certain regions of Canada, it is not enough to run a campaign aimed at all voters; rather prospective political leaders must negotiate with the leaders of the official diasporas to bring their people to the polls in an organized manner.
After the creation of NATO, the official diasporas of Eastern Europe in Canada tacitly embraced this new global war effort, supporting the Canadian and U.S. governments in world wars and invasions, under the alleged and precarious justification that the Soviet Union had aspirations for world domination. As a result, they also supported any dictatorial regimes in the Third World which was anti-communist, justifying a distribution of Canadian military supplies to these regimes (particularly advantageous for the government since Canada was the largest supplier of military technology at the time. In return, the Eastern European Canadian diasporas received government funding to pursue their own interests. These immigrant organizations in Canada aimed to form Christian nation-states based on ethnicity and fanatical anti-communism. Their goals coincided with U.S. and Canadian policy which unsurprisingly exploited their nationalist ambitions.
In 1981, a congress organized by Oleg Romanishin of the League of Ukrainians of Canada, was held in Canada to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the 1941 declaration of “independence” of Ukraine. Mahmoud Khalili, one of the field commanders of the Afghan Mujahideen Ahmad Shah Masoud who fought against the Soviets, was also present celebrate this congress in 1981.
Throughout the Cold War, Canadian organizations of so-called “enslaved nations” formed alliances that lobbied the Canadian government and promoted their political agendas through the media of big corporations. These Canadian alliances included the Canadian chapter of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), the Baltic Federation of Canada, and the Black Ribbon Day Committee.
Black Ribbon Day has been celebrated by the European Union since 2009 and has also become an official holiday of Lithuania and a number of Eastern European countries. It is celebrated on August 23, the day the Molotov-Ribbetrop Pact, the 1939 non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, was signed. Black Ribbon Day is a propaganda day, used to equate the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, but is marketed as a day to remember the “victims of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes”.
The inventor of Black Ribbon Day in Canada is Markus Hess, a Canadian of Estonian-German descent and former head of the Toronto-based Estonian Central Council, which included many former Estonian SS members. In 1986, Hess began promoting the idea of Black Ribbon Day, meeting in Toronto with representatives of other collaborators’ organizations, the Lithuanian-Canadian Community, the Latvian National Federation of Canada, and President of the Ukrainian Canadian Committee (now Congress) Jaroslav Sokolik. The latter’s support was especially crucial in promoting the concept across Canada and Europe.
The congress is predominantly led by members of the “Bandera” faction of the Ukrainian diaspora, which Canada uses to suppress any opposition. The Banderite faction of Ukrainian nationalists remains the strongest of any of the Eastern European immigrant groups supported by the Canadian government. By the 1980s, the Banderites had long been a leading force in combatting socialists and in organizing support for Canadian, U.S., and NATO policies. These Banderite émigré groups hailed the Nazis as liberators during World War II and were the driving force behind the Hess plan – to unite all groups of “enslaved nations,” using the annual protest to draw public attention to anti-Soviet fears and hatred of Cold War communism. He chose a black mourning ribbon as a symbol. This protest would be called Black Ribbon Day.
The most prominent example of Ukrainian influence in Canadian policy was the proclamation of Ukraine’s independence. Even before the formal dissolution of the USSR on December 1, 1991, Canada formally recognized Ukraine’s independence.
In 2000, the Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta received a $2.7 million grant from the Canadian government to develop Ukrainian legislation and a draft agreement between the governments of Ukraine and Canada. Canadian experts worked with Ukrainian lawmakers, officials, and experts on this project.
In 2004, Canada and its liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin took part in Washington’s preparations for the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. Canada’s ambassador to Kiev, Andrew Robinson, organized meetings with colleagues from 28 countries to bring Viktor Yushchenko to power. In a subsequent effort toend Ukraine’s policy of using Russian gas (established by the first Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk) establishing Yushchenko was advantageous for U.S. interests to explore use of oil fields in the Caspian Sea.
The political crisis in Ukraine beginning at the end of 2013, largely provoked from NATO forces outside of Ukraine including Washington, was an occasion for the UCС to strengthen its influence in Canadian official diplomacy. Paul Grod,who became president of the World Congress of Ukrainians in 2018, was part of the Canadian delegation that visited Ukraine in December 2013 and February 2014.Canada’s enthusiastic support for the disastrous Euromaidan coup was emblematic of the influence on politics by the multimillion-dollar, nationalist Ukrainian-Canadian population. The Canadian Embassy in Kiev was used as a safe haven for several days by anti-government protesters during the uprising that toppled former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. The Canadian government, with the desires of the right-wing Ukrainian nationalists matching its imperialist ambitions, follows the lead of Ukrainian nationalists, both in Ukraine and Canada.
New diaspora relations after the Maidan coup
These policies greatly contribute to the growing tensions between the Ukrainian and Russian diasporas in Canada itself. Before 2014, there was little to no antagonism between these diasporas, although Russians and Ukrainians in Canadian cities tended to live in different neighbourhoods and kept apart from each other. Although the Russian diaspora is less visible and its activities are not as colourful and spectacular as those of the Ukrainian Canadians, the processions of the “Immortal Regiment” on May 9, the concerts and performances of World War II veterans, and the New Year and Christmas balls are regularly organized by Russian Canadians and are, nonetheless, recognized favourably by the Canadian public.
But now that right-wing Ukrainians in Canada are particularly active and emotional in supporting their like-minded people in Ukraine, their contacts with the Russian diaspora are likely to end in provocations and open confrontations. This is certainly concerning for the stability of Canada and could negatively impact the lives of other Canadians themselves.
In 2014, after right-wing Ukrainian nationalists overthrew legitimate Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, Canada, in cooperation with the United States, Great Britain, Sweden, Poland, Denmark and Lithuania, organized Operation UNIFIER to train Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) personnel. Canadian military personnel from the 1st Battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment were the first to offer training to Ukrainian servicemen. Canadian instructors rotated their support in Ukraine every six months until February 2022, eventually growing to 260 instructors. A total of 726 training courses were organized by the Canadian military, where 3,346 Ukrainian servicemen were trained. They were taught sniper training, artillery training, engineer-sapper training, tactics and strategy training, as well as military police work. At the same time, Canada provided “non-lethal” military equipment to the AFU. In total, about $900 million worth of military equipment was supplied to Ukraine between 2014 to 2022 (even before the start of the Russian Special Military Operation (SMO). Canada’s military spending in 2021 totaled $26.4 billion; Ukraine having received, almost $1 billion of Canadian military dollars is certainly a gift of exuberant proportions. During January 2022, Operation UNIFIER was renewed until 2025.
Today, the Ukrainian community can be divided into two groups: first, descendants of first-wave immigrants who were born in Canada and have never been to their ancestral homeland; and second, native Ukrainians who arrived in Canada in the last 25 years. Of the 1.25 million people who identify as Ukrainian-Canadians, only 102,000 claim Ukrainian is their native language (less than 10 per cent). Despite this, the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada regularly embrace the national “brand” of their Ukrainian identity. At any major holidays necessarily passes a column of Ukrainians in their national costumes and attire.
There are also many seemingly apolitical organizations in the country that tacitly embrace and/or support the Ukrainian diaspora’s political aims.Even the Ukrainian Canadian Art Foundation, which, judging by its name, is supposed to deal with art and culture, holds exhibitions commemorating the war, such as the charity art project by Oleksandr Klymenko and Sofia Atlantova “Icons on Ammo Boxes: Art that Saves Lives”. The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) states on its official website that it, “represents the voice of Canada’s Ukrainian community and plays an important role in shaping the social, economic and political landscape of Canada”. In the news section, notices of holidays and staff reshuffles in the Congress itself are lost in the background to statements such as “Russia is the aggressor, we should impose more sanctions against it” and enthusiastic comments on the actions of the Ukrainian authorities.
If we turn to the history of the UCC, it becomes clear that it is not just a cultural and social project. The Ukrainian Canadian Congress was founded by the Canadian government in 1940 as a political organization to counteract the leftist forces within the country. Nearly 80 years later, it icontinues to beactively supported by members of the Ukrainian diaspora. In February 2014, the UCC promoted the idea of a change of government in Ukraine to the Canadian government. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced assistance to Ukraine to strengthen its defense capabilities; without the necessary safeguards to prevent assistance from going to the nationalist Right Sector.
The patronage of nationalist Ukrainian forces, which began in the 1940s, continues today. In Canada, after the Maidan coup in Kiev, Right Sector Canada emerged publicly with a black and red flag, an exact replica of the Ukrainian Right Sector’s flag. In 2014, Right Sector Canada supporters carried Ukrainian flags and portraits of Ukrainian nationalist leaders during marches. At that time, representatives of the organization Right Sector Canada also announced fundraisers to raise money and necessary equipment for the AFU, even though Canadian law prohibits fundraising by private companies. There are memorials to Ukrainian nationalists in various cities across Canada, including a bust of Roman Shukhevych (one of the UUN leaders) in Edmonton, and a large Ukrainian cemetery in Oakville, Ontario, where many collaborators are buried. Their tombstones showcase a trident and the phrase «Eternal glory to the UPA warriors» engraved in Ukrainian.
The fact that Canada was one of the first to recognize the Soviet famine of 1932-1933 which hit Ukraine hard, as a so-called ‘genocide’ referred to as the Holodomor, also plays into the hands of far-right activists. The well-to-do individuals (kulaks) murdered officials, set fire to collectives’ property, and even burned their own crops and seed grain. Many refused to sow or reap, perhaps on the assumption that the authorities would make concessions and feed them anyway. The result was a serious blow to Soviet agriculture, since most of the cattle and horses belonged to the kulaks. The famine was indeed devastating, but certainly not an attempted genocide against Ukrainians. In Toronto, a monument to a girl clutching four spikelets to her chest is erected; a plaque nearby in English states that “Ukraine was starved to death by the Soviet regime that occupied it.” They conveniently ‘forget’ that Ukrainians along with Russians and Kazakhs died of food shortages.
Despite the discontent of some Canadians, including those within the Russian Canadian community, the promotion of such misinformation narratives is possible because of the large number of high-ranking Canadian politicians with Ukrainian roots. These include: Edward Stelmakh, former Prime Minister of Alberta; William Gavrilyak, former Edmonton Mayor for three terms; Borys Wrzesnewskyj, a member of the ruling Liberal Party in Canada for three terms; James Bezan, a member of the Canadian House of Commons (from the province of Manitoba, largely populated by Ukrainians, he received the highest civilian award of Ukraine – the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise);and Roman Gnatyshyn, Governor General of Canada from 1990-1995 (representative of the British King).
While the descendants of Ukrainian migrants who came to Canada in the 20th century were raised in Canada, hold Canadian citizenship, and have little to no knowledge of the inner workings of life in Ukraine (many not even speaking the language), there is a common tendency for them to proudly talk about their Ukrainian roots, take pictures in «vyshyvankas», and declare utmost support and loyalty for Kiev. The prevalence of such a well-established Ukrainian identity was facilitated by the transfer of Ukrainian nationalist values to Canada and enabled by the support of Canadian authorities. The effect has been enhanced by external political decisions, primarily through the work of numerous organizations aimed specifically at the Ukrainian diaspora, and the development of Ukrainian-led media. All of these factors have made it possible to bring up a powerful Ukrainian lobby that influences the political life of both Canada and Ukraine. That lobby, publicly fronted by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, regularly meets with Canadian government officials and ministers.
In January 2021, the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT) devoted an entire 64-page issue of its magazine Press for Conversion! exposing the Canadian government’s ties to Ukrainian nationalist and fascist organizations, and the history of their relationship.
COAT Editor and author Richard Sanders points out in the introductory article that for decades the Canadian government has generously supported militants and Nazis around the world financially and continues to do so now. It is the Ukrainian diaspora that plays a central role in forwarding the aims of these Canadian foreign policy efforts.
Sanders writes:
“The Canadian government has long supported associations of Eastern European emigrants, whose founders and leaders are veterans of Waffen-SS units and other fascist armed formations responsible for the Holocaust and other ethnic cleansing campaigns, officials of Nazi puppet regimes, CIA propaganda agents, members of Cold War terrorist groups such as the U.S.-armed Nicaraguan contras and Afghan mujahideen, and other fierce ‘freedom fighters’.
In the last few years alone, the most influential of these right-wing nationalist émigré organizations in the Ukrainian diaspora have received millions of dollars in grants and donations from the Canadian government. For many decades, the financial generosity of the Canadian government has helped subsidize the daily activities of the most influential of these groups, their offices, meeting halls, events and publications. By doing so, the Canadian government continues to support such associations and fund their campaigns to glorify and build a cult of adoration for World War II and Cold War fascists.”.
Right-wing diasporas are now united within the Central and Eastern European Council in Canada. Equating Nazism with Communism is their key strategy. Canadian nationalist immigrants at the same time actively cooperated with their counterparts in the United States, Western Europe, Australia, and South America, promoting their political programs through controlled media, where many Nazis and collaborators moved after the war.
Especially disturbing is the fact that Canadian instructors also trained fighters from the Ukrainian Azov Regiment—an openly fascist group that idolizes Hitler and the Nazis. It is also noteworthy that the Canadian military actively concealed its contacts with Azov, including a meeting between Canadian officers and diplomats with Azov nationalists that took place in 2018, despite the fact that Ottawa has repeatedly said since 2015 that the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) would never train and support the Azov regiment. It seems peculiar how the Canadian general suddenly found himself in the Azov bunker in Mariupol.
Historically, Canada aided the Ukrainian SS and the Banderites by giving them shelter and asylum; today though, it is actively enabling Ukrainian Nazis, pushing towards a hot war fraught with unpredictable consequences, up to a potentially apocalyptic World War III. This is what following the recommendations of the UСС has led to for the Canadian people. These developments don’t protect Canada’s national security. The Canadian people would be better off if their government limited clashes with the Russia on the hockey arena – the most popular team sport in both Canada and Russia.
Valeriy Krylko is a freelance journalist, and translator of news articles in online media (English-Russian). These articles are published in English, European and Russian-language media.
INTERNATIONALIST 360° 