Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau formally apologized last month after the Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons, Anthony Rota, praised 98-year-old former soldier Yaroslav Hunka in the chamber while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was present. Rota acknowledged his mistake and subsequently resigned from his position.
Putin criticized Rota's actions, asserting that he had essentially equated Nazi collaborators, Nazi SS troops, and the current Ukrainian military forces fighting against Russia. He argued that this episode supported Russia's stance that denazification is one of its objectives in Ukraine.
It later came to light that Yaroslav Hunka had served in the Waffen SS, which was an autonomous military corps affiliated with Adolf Hitler's Nazi party and recruited a significant number of non-Germans into its ranks during World War II. This included thousands of Ukrainian nationalists who viewed the invading German forces as liberators from Moscow's oppression.
Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland responded to Putin's comments, emphasizing the importance of countering Russian propaganda and not allowing Putin to exploit the former speaker's grave error. She urged collective efforts to push back against everything Vladimir Putin says and does.
The Canadian incident fits into Putin's narrative that Russia's military intervention in Ukraine last year aimed to "demilitarize and denazify" the country. In contrast, Kyiv and its Western allies argue that Russia's actions constitute an unprovoked war of aggression designed to seize territory. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who is Jewish, has dismissed Moscow's claims that his administration is dominated by Nazis as absurd.
