Since the war began, Canada has promised over $1 billion in military help for Ukraine, and the Canadian Armed Forces has trained 34,000 Ukrainians
OTTAWA — Two Ukrainian MPs visiting Ottawa urged Canada to help Ukraine obtain more weapons to help repel the Russian forces that invaded the country nine months ago.
MP Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze said that Ukraine doesn’t currently have enough armed forces capacity to win the war.
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“We are very, very, very, very much dependent on your continuous support. And that means more and more weapons, and the quality and quantity and speed of that delivery really matters,” she said at an event organized by the Parliamentary Centre and Carleton University.
“That means real air defence capacity, anti-rocket defence capacity, to protect our civilian targets.”
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MP Mariia Ionova said 80 per cent of Ukrainians don’t support negotiations with Russia. “We hear now a lot about negotiation….The best negotiators are our armed forces,” she said.
A counter-offensive against Russian forces isn’t possible without tanks and armoured vehicles, Klympush-Tsintsadze said, noting Ukraine has been making that plea since March, but still hasn’t received what it needs.
“Help us get tanks. We need air defence, and we need anti-rocket defence.”
She said Canada can help even if it doesn’t have much equipment to share, by joining other countries in helping Ukraine buy it, or “manufacture it for us.”
“It’s time to take a political decision to give Ukraine fighter jets,” she said.
Waiting for Russia to start running out of missiles or expecting it to back away from the war due to losing too many soldiers won’t work, Klympush-Tsintsadze, arguing Russia is willing to use its troops as “cannon fodder” and the country “won’t run out of men.”
She said countries shouldn’t postpone their decisions to help Ukraine, including agreeing it’s OK for Ukraine to hit military targets inside Russia. “Every single postponed political decision cost us lives. It causes ghost cities…they’re leaving behind cities that are just destroyed down to the earth.”
Since the war began, Canada has promised over $1 billion in military help for Ukraine, and the Canadian Armed Forces has trained 34,000 Ukrainians, according to National Defence.
