Military backing for Ukraine seen as crucial as war rages on | POWER PLAY WITH MIKE LE COUTEUR

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As the world prepares to Mark the second anniversary of Vlad Vladimir Putin’s fullscale invasion of Ukraine tomorrow Canada the United States and the UK have announced new sanctions against Russia as you heard there from US President Joe Biden the Americans are impose imposing more than 500 sanctions on Russia in

Response to both the war and the death of opposition leader Alexi navali a week ago today Canada is also slapping new San on 10 individuals and 153 Russian entities Russia’s ambassador to Canada calls the move a quote Act of empty symbolism according to Russian media well those sanctions were announced US

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and four other Democratic senators traveled to Ukraine today to meet with President Vladimir zalinski there is still a standoff in Washington over billions of dollars in military aid the package is worth 6 billion and is currently stuck in the House of Representatives zinsky

Is urging US Congress to approve the funding saying failure to do so will cost Ukrainian lives and tomorrow’s anniversary is being marked with solemn ceremonies right around the world today zalinski was joined by the Danish Prime Minister where they paid tribute to Fallen Ukrainian soldiers at a cemetery in Lviv

According to the United Nations more than 30,000 civilians in Ukraine have either been killed or wounded earlier today we spoke with Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada Julia Koval leave Ambassador Koval leave thank you so much for joining us thank you thank you for inviting me today now today Canada the United

Kingdom and the US announced additional sanctions against 10 individuals and 153 entities that support the Russian military there’s also an export ban on Goods to Russia from Canada that could have been used to make weapons what’s your reaction to these sanctions uh we highly welcome that decision uh to impose addition

Additional sanctions especially those which are link to the military sector uh because as um we have a lot of witnesses that uh the weapons that Russia has been using uh continue to uh have Western spare parts including Canadians in those weapons and while we are fighting and

Keep fighting for our country um and we are very grateful for the Military Support to Canada to uh us UK and the other partners it is important to deprive Russia uh from their ability to produce weapons and the sanctions including for those uh companies and ban for providing this spare part that can

Be used in producing weapons is an important further step uh to um decrease Russian ability to continue the war yeah and we know that these sanctions do take time to really take effect and have an impact do you think that countries need to ramp up these sanctions as it’s now

Nearly two years since the War uh was Unleashed by Vladimir Putin and the Russian military and it seems like they are undeterred and in a sense unaffected by them so far I think that that’s a that a that’s not exactly correct the sanctions indeed take time uh to uh have

The result but we as we go back for this two years and look on uh the sanctions that have been imposed on Russia and the consequences that Russia is facing I think the aviation sector is one of those we can see definitely that uh because of the sanctions R Russia is not

Able to maintain and Russian companies are not able to uh maintain their by the way stolen a lot of stolen from the Western companies um their planes so um they have lack of capability to continue the the flights and the industry is decreasing the same comes to the

Military as we are seeing uh a lot of Russian uh shaky drones missiles destroyed we see um many of the best in spare parts it gives us on the one side stand that Russia cannot um use other than Western Technologies in their weapons so the industry is uh quite poor

Uh on the other side that gives us um important call uh to uh impose more sanctions and what is also more important is to be very strict on those who try to circumvent the sanctions so that deprive totally Russia from the ability uh to continue producing their

Weapons yeah and with all due respect though this has been a tough week for your country not only are we marking the second year anniversary of the war but the eastern city of uh of divka was also taken by Russian forces so uh with that

In mind uh you know on the sanctions and on the ability to stop Russia it would seem like they continue to March forward but how do you rate morale within Ukraine right now with the week that we’ve seen there I think we need all to uh understand the fact that um any of

The day of delay of the promised Military Support whether it’s artillery shells whether it’s the air defense whether it’s the armored vehicles or other military packages from our partners of course it has the consequences on the battlefield um now uh we we need a lot of more artillery

Shells because the r particular parts of the front that Russia is significantly prevailing in their ability and access to uh the artillery shells and uh of course like uh the on the other side as we see in Ukraine uh moral is high uh morale is high but if you also ask the

Soldiers who are on the battlefield they are as motivated as they were in the first days of the war but they need more weapons so they just cannot spend the cold days and nights in the trenches waiting for the weapons to be delivered to UK Ukraine the biggest support for

The motivation of Ukrainian soldiers is providing them more weapons so they can use them they can advance they can further protect our cities and uh liberate them yeah and to your point we are hearing that there are reports Ukrainian military is having to ration rounds is there anything that you’ve

Been able to push the Canadian government on to help on that front with ammunition uh we are working with uh with the government with our partners including uh with um Canadian government and we are delivering message that we need artillery shells we need air defense we need armored vehicles and uh

Of course there is also the shortage of production the thing what we started to talk back in November 2022 that it’s not only we need today not only to talk about the stockpile of the artillery which is running lower but we need all together to ramp up

Production we are doing it in Ukraine we significantly increased our ability to produce uh artillery shells but I think we all together need to work with the defense industry and increase the production in all the ways possible so has Canada been open to that and and why hasn’t there been more progress on

That uh we hope that we are working towards this progress and we hope that there will be more support uh for us in terms of the uh artillery sh I wanted to ask you because there’s this massive Aid package worth $60 billion that continues to be held up in the US House of

Representatives what are you and your fellow Ambassador in the US doing to a Lobby American politicians to make sure that that money does get to Ukraine I think like uh my colleague in us our members of the parliament our government ukrainians and all of the partners uh the European partners are delivering the

Message how important it is to further continue to provide support for Ukraine and uh I think we need to understand that it’s not only for the uh Ukraine it’s for the interest of all of democracies all all all the countries who are NATO members because today Ukraine is protecting NATO border today

Ukrainian soldiers are between Russian troops Russian Invaders and NATO Waters so we are fighting and we are today protecting NATO countries from Russia from Russian barbarism from Russian um um ability to you know we are standing between today the NATO we are protecting and of course Russia is also uh the

Neighbor to many other countries who are now NATO members and Russia is uh actually a neighbor to Canada through Arctic and it’s important that the fight which is Ukraine fighting today it’s important for us to be able to defeat Russia so so Russia won and forever will

Learn this lesson that it does it cannot you know rewrite the borders of The Sovereign countries despite that argument though there are recent public opinion surveys here in Canada that have shown support for the war in Ukraine has slipped does that worry you at all and and are you

Concerned that support not only in Canada but Around the World As We mark this second anniversary that that there is this fatigue about the war um the word fatigue is of a you know it’s a it’s a very complicated word you cannot come to the mother who

Lost her son on the battlefield saying it’s fatigue you cannot say to soldiers for their today fighting saying that fatigue you cannot say to those parents who lost their children uh because of Russian bombing saying that it’s fatigue and we cannot we need to work with this

Fatigue uh we need to overcome it because um it’s important for all of us to realize that it is something that have the impact for each of us it’s not only for us ukrainians that has already for this two years we all saw the impact

Of Russian war to each of us whether it was the food prices that caused um the inflation whether it was the energy shortage in the uh in the Europe whether it was the cyber attacks whether is the hybrid War with Russian disinformation so we all are failing this and we all

Need to stop it for the sake of us for the sake of Our Generation and for the sake of all of us to continue to build the rule-based order Ukrainian ambassador to Canada Julia kovali thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today we appreciate this thank you

Ukrainian Ambassador to Canada Yuliya Kovaliv says Ukrainian soldiers need more weapons to advance on Russia.

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