(Quebec) Liberal MP Paule Robitaille is flying to Ukraine on Saturday in search of evidence of war crimes committed in that country by the Russian army in recent months.
Posted at 4:06 p.m.
Its goal: to bring before the International Criminal Court the officers and senior Russian military officers who committed atrocities in Ukraine.
“It will be very emotional this trip, because when I went there it was just joy everywhere and hope” which reigned then in this country that she loves, confided the deputy for Bourassa-Sauvé , in a telephone interview with The Canadian Press on Friday.
In her former life as a journalist, Paule Robitaille spent several years in Russia and traveled to Ukraine many times. She was there, in Kyiv, when the country won its independence from the “Soviet yoke” in 1991, in euphoria and joy. She keeps precious memories.
Photo Edouard Plante-Fréchette, LA PRESSE archives
MNA for Bourassa-Sauvé, Paule Robitaille
In Ukraine, she will join for ten days a mission sponsored by the non-governmental organization International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR), based in Brussels. The president of the human rights organization is a Quebec lawyer, Brigitte Dufour.
On the spot, the ex-journalist, a lawyer by training, will go to a few towns in the north of the country, meet the victims of the invasion, to try, thanks to their testimonies, to identify the perpetrators of the war crimes committed and to collect as much evidence as possible against them.
Mme Robitaille carries out this mission on a voluntary basis, as a citizen, and not as an MP.
This will not prevent him from trying, at the same time, to meet Ukrainian elected officials in Kyiv, hoping to speak with the President of the Chamber to deliver to him in person the motion adopted unanimously by the National Assembly in February , in support and solidarity with the Ukrainian people.
This mission will not exactly be a piece of cake, because the MP will have to travel through cities that have been largely destroyed, without infrastructure, without drinking water, or five-star hotels. She gets used to the idea that she is going “camping”, literally, carrying her tent, her compass and her dry food in her suitcase.
“I can’t imagine what I’m getting myself into! she says with a smirk, on the eve of setting off on an adventure.
The armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine has deeply upset her, to the point of leading her to question her political commitment. She recently announced that she would not be a candidate for a second term in the next election. In particular, she wishes to devote herself to international aid.
The journalist moved to Moscow in the early 1990s. As a freelancer, she witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union for six years and covered several armed conflicts, including those in Georgia. and in Chechnya, for various media, including Radio-Canada and several daily newspapers.
Mme Robitaille says she was surprised by the “scale” of the Russian invasion in Ukraine, orchestrated by an army that she nevertheless considers “ill-trained, ill-equipped”, and soldiers with a profile from another era, who use ” the same tactics and the same strategies that they used in Chechnya”, not hesitating to sow terror in their path and to kill civilians.
In this context, according to her, the victory of the Russians in Ukraine is far from certain. “I don’t see them winning this conflict,” she said, convinced that the Russian army “at the moment is exhausted.”
She also said she was impressed by the resistance of the Ukrainians since the beginning of the conflict.
Asked whether her choice to end her political career at the end of her mandate would have been the same if Russia had not invaded Ukraine, she hesitates and replies that “probably” she would have been a candidate for the election on October 3.
MP elected in 2018, who will soon turn 60, argues her heartbreaking decision has nothing to do with her party’s continued decline in popularity, arguing it was more a lifestyle choice . She says she asked herself the following question: “What will be the next chapter of my life? »
Without knowing precisely what this chapter will be made of, she now knows that it will be written elsewhere than in the National Assembly.