Canada plans justice ahead of war’s anniversary
“Ever since it started, it seems to be like a nightmare,” said Halyna Dmytryshyn, sitting at the kitchen table in the small apartment she shares with her son and stepson in Ottawa.
For months after the invasion she stayed in her home community, just outside of Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine. Finally, she decided conditions were getting worse for her child and she left.
“I want the war to be finished as soon as possible, but I know it’s just impossible and the worst thing is that everybody is getting used to it, and the world as well.”
Even in Lviv, a relatively safe region in the west of Ukraine near the Polish border, air-raid sirens sound several times a day as a reminder of the constant danger faced by civilians. Many people pay the warnings no mind, no longer willing to run for cover in basements every time they go off.
Since the initial invasion, Ukraine pushed the Russian military out of the capital and forced the invaders to abandon territory in the northeast. The Ukrainians also regained some captured communities in the southeast of the country.
Still, the war took a heavy toll on the people of the country this winter as fierce fighting continued along the Russian border and Russia appeared to focus airstrikes on energy infrastructure, leaving Ukrainians without power or heat in the dead of winter.
Western allies, initially apprehensive about escalating the conflict by offering Ukraine weapons that could incite Russian President Vladimir Putin, have sent increasingly advanced and lethal weaponry to aid Ukraine in its defence.
In a recent bid to head off a spring offensive, Canada joined other allied countries in donating modern battle tanks to Ukraine’s arsenal.
“The boundaries on what counts as a weapon that can be provided to Ukraine has steadily changed,” said Roland Paris, international affairs professor at the University of Ottawa and Trudeau’s former senior foreign policy adviser.
In the last year, Canada has dedicated more than $5 billion to supporting Ukraine, including more than over $1.2 billion in military assistance.
While no one can be sure how the conflict will end, Paris said the most convincing assessments suggest it will continue for a long time.
He said it could become a “frozen conflict, where you have ongoing hostilities at varying different levels of intensity with maybe periods of lulls and even ceasefires.”
That’s a possibility that weighs on Michalchyshyn’s mind, but he said his fear about that scenario is muted by talk of international justice, criminal tribunals, and accountability.
“That’s what kind of gets us through,” he said.
No matter what comes of those trials, Dmytryshyn said in some ways, the nightmare Ukrainians have shared will never truly be over.
“I always pray for the finishing of war, but it’s not an issue because it will never leave us,” she said.
“We’ve changed. We changed a lot and nobody will be the same.”