Opinion: Canada must confront the Kremlin’s agents at home - National Post
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets with Prime Minister Mark Carney at the SAIT Point Trotter campus in Calgary on Thursday, September 10, 2026. Photo by Dean Pilling/PostmediaArticle contentLast week, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took an important step toward the long-term defence of Canada and Ukraine.
The new long-term Canada-Ukraine partnership will expand co-operation on the joint production of drones, counter-drone technologies and priority munitions. Such investments help Ukraine protect its cities while strengthening Canada’s own defence-industrial capacity through Ukraine’s hard-earned battlefield expertise.
But helping Ukraine resist Russian aggression abroad must be matched by a willingness to impose consequences on the Russian state and its agents here in Canada. That means continuing to pursue accountability for Russian war criminals and scrutinizing the unusually large Russian official presence in Canada. Parliamentary testimony has put that presence at more than 60 Russian diplomats. Not every Russian diplomat is an intelligence officer. But it would be equally naïve to ignore Russia’s long-standing use of diplomatic postings as cover for intelligence and influence operations. Those who abuse diplomatic status to undermine Canadian security should be expelled.
Columnist Jesse Kline keeps you up to date with what’s happening in Israel and the effects of antisemitism on life here in Canada. Friday mornings.
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In August, a man walking in front of the Russian Embassy in Ottawa approached a blue and a yellow balloon on a pole left outside by anti-war protesters. He punctured them and walked away. The video posted on X by Bulgarian investigative journalist Christo Grozev would be almost comic if the context were not so serious. Grovez identified the culprit as a Russian diplomat.
Canada’s security service (CSIS) has previously warned us about the hostile activities targeting Canada that the Russian mission is engaged in. A recent Senate Standing Committee on Security and Defence report concluded that in Canada, “Russian disinformation has been growing and evolving at a rapid pace.” These disinformation activities are designed to sow discord in our society and create or increase social fractures that challenge our democratic institutions. They include but are not limited to seeking to discredit Canada’s Ukrainian community by branding it as “neo-Nazi;” blaming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for Russia’s genocidal full-scale invasion of Ukraine; spreading falsehoods about the West’s response to its aggressions and more. These narratives are designed to erode Canadian public support for Ukraine and to delegitimize and incite hate towards Canadians of Ukrainian heritage.
The hate that such narratives seek to incite has violently manifested itself. In February 2022, Toronto’s Future Bakery was vandalized with pro-Russian graffiti, including the words “Russia is power.” Weeks later, its Stand With Ukraine banner was slashed and splattered with paint.
