Melanie Joly, Canada’s foreign minister, will visit Kyiv next week to reiterate Canada’s support for Ukrainian sovereignty and to bolster efforts to discourage Russia’s “aggressive measures,” Ottawa announced on Saturday.
Moscow has stationed around 100,000 troops along Ukraine’s border, and the US stated on Friday that it fears that Russia is creating a pretext to invade if diplomacy fails to achieve its goals.
Since the takeover of Crimea in 2014, Canada, which has a sizable and politically significant Ukrainian ethnic population, has adopted a hard line with Moscow.
“The concentration of Russian troops and weaponry in and around Ukraine jeopardises regional security. This type of hostile behaviour must be stopped,” Joly remarked.
She also added that Canada will cooperate with its foreign partners to maintain the international rules-based order.
Joly will meet with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal and fly to the country’s west to speak with a 200-strong Canadian training mission that has been stationed there since 2015.
According to a statement released by the US Department of State on Saturday, Canadian Deputy Foreign Minister Marta Morgan and US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy R. Sherman spoke on Friday and pledged continued close coordination to deter further Russian aggression against Ukraine and called for Russian de-escalation.
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