(Ottawa) Ukraine’s designated ambassador to Canada wants Russia to be held accountable for sex crimes committed by its soldiers, including those perpetrated against children.
Posted at 6:20 p.m.
Yulia Kovaliv told the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development that Russia uses sexual terrorism as a weapon of war. She believes that the rapes and other sexual assaults should be investigated as war crimes.
Mme Kovaliv told MPs that the Russian invader had abducted Ukrainian children to Russian-occupied territories, and now to Russian territory proper. But Ukraine is working with partners to find these children and repatriate them, she said.
“A few days ago the Russians killed a young mother and tied her child, alive, to her body and placed a mine between them,” the ambassador said, fighting back tears. She said the mine had exploded.
The Ukrainian diplomat said that all of Russian society, not just President Vladimir Putin “and his proxies”, should take responsibility for the war against Ukraine, as more than 70% of Russians support this invasion.
Addressing the Commons Committee, Ms.me Kovaliv thanked Canada for its continued support, including heavy weapons, vehicles, financial aid and sanctions against Russia.
But she added that the coming weeks will be crucial for Ukraine’s defense and that additional military and financial assistance is needed, including the removal of trade tariff barriers.
To help rebuild Ukraine, she said, that country would need, using frozen Russian assets, a recovery strategy similar to the Marshall Plan, the vast US program to rebuild Europe’s economies after the Second World War.
Take back Crimea too
Mme Kovaliv paid tribute in the Canadian Parliament, where MPs symbolically voted to label Russia’s targeting of Ukrainian civilians as genocide.
“The history books will commend Canada for its firm stand, together with Ukraine, against Russia’s barbaric war,” she said. Ukrainians will never forget that Canada was on our side during these dramatic moments in our modern history. »
Before the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr.me Kovaliv said Ukraine’s goal is to liberate all of its sovereign territory, which includes taking back Crimea as well, annexed by Vladimir Putin in 2014.
In an update on the military situation in Ukraine, including in “temporarily occupied towns and villages”, she said many missile attacks came from Belarus, a close ally of Moscow.
She said that although a civilian evacuation of a steel plant in the besieged city of Mariupol had begun, Russia had fired on many humanitarian corridors.
Russia has repeatedly violated international law, kidnapping mayors, local MPs and civil activists, some of whom have been tortured and murdered, she added. It is estimated that half a million Ukrainians have been “forcibly deported to Russia”, she argued.
The ambassador-designate described the Russian military as vulgar looters, stealing Ukrainian grain reserves and trying to ship them to Crimea, under Russian control. It reminds Ukrainians of Stalin’s practices in the 1930s, she said.