Anita Anand: “the most important thing right now, to ensure that there is a diplomatic solution”

New Pathway – Ukrainian News.

During Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's visit to St. Demetrius the Great Martyr Ukrainian Catholic Church in Etobicoke, ON on Friday, March 4, NP-UN spoke to Canada's Minister of National Defence Anita Anand:

NP-UN: Do you have any comments about the ideas that the Ukrainian Canadian community is promoting: a no fly zone over Ukraine to be enforced by NATO and supplies of anti-aircraft weapons to Ukraine.

Anita Anand: Canada doesn't act unilaterally in these instances. We are acting with and in concert with our NATO allies. Our mission is to leave no stone unturned in terms of the aid that we can hand over. I've announced three major tranches of military aid, in particular lethal weapons including anti tank missiles, grenades, ammunition and sniper rifles. We will keep doing whatever we can from a defense standpoint to provide non-lethal and lethal aid. The $25 million of non-lethal aid that we announced last Sunday is a large portion of this aid. Bottom line is, we're just not going to stop. We're going to keep going and trying to give whatever we can for the fight.

NP-UN: What about other kinds of assistance, like diplomatic ones, maybe helping Ukraine find some diplomatic solutions in this situation?

Anita Anand: Of course. My colleague, Mélanie Joly [Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada] is very active in terms of the diplomatic side of things. She is actually in Europe right now. She's in Geneva and she's working very hard on the diplomacy angle with the other foreign ministers. My angle as a defence minister, is to make sure that we get the supplies in the hands of the Ukrainian soldiers so that they can use those in the fight. And as I said, this is not over and we will keep working very hard.

NP-UN: What's your estimate in terms where the solution to this war could lie – in military or diplomatic actions, what could be the most effective?

Anita Anand: We need a diplomatic solution, we need to find a way for Putin to exit this aggression and this conflict. And that, to me is the most important thing right now, to ensure that there is a diplomatic solution so that we can save more Ukrainian lives and, frankly, more Russian soldiers’ lives because those mothers are also grieving. And we need to make sure that as few lives as possible are lost. When you see large installations like nuclear plants being taken by the Russians, this is a very important call for diplomacy. We can't let this continue.

NP-UN: But Russia's President Putin is demanding that Ukraine abandons its NATO plans. What do you think about that?

Anita Anand: I think we are going to continue to support democracy and we are going to support the NATO alliance and we are going to support Ukraine as a partner of NATO. And, in fact, when I was at the Defence Ministers Meeting, Ukraine’s defence minister Oleksii Reznikov joined us by video. I speak with Minister Reznikov frequently and visited Kyiv a few weeks ago to have a conversation with him about what Ukraine needs. We will continue supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes.

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