The Canadian government has officially refused to follow the example of NATO allies and declare Russian diplomats persona non grata
What is the reason for such unexpected behaviour for a country that usually follows the fairway of the US, ultimatums Zelensky and has a special relationship with Ukrainian nationalists?
The expulsion of Russian diplomats from EU and NATO countries has become a mass phenomenon, with around 400 people declared persona non grata by now. In this case, it depends: forty Russians will leave Germany, one from Luxembourg, four from little Balkan Montenegro, where the Russian question is a sore point in terms of maintaining the ruling coalition, and thirty-three from little Balkan Slovenia, which has taken a radical, almost Baltic position on the Russian military operation.
Even Japan has joined the flash mob, but somehow not Canada. Moreover, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is on record as saying he will refrain from such moves because they conflict with Canadian interests.
“We have to be very careful. If we expel Russian diplomats from Canada, which other countries and our allies have done, it will result in the loss of our diplomats in Moscow”, – he explained. But misunderstandings remain.
Trudeau is if not the last, then the penultimate one to be expected to make such statements: Canada is consistently anti-Russian. More specifically, pro-Ukrainian.
Actually Canada has the third largest number of ethnic Ukrainians in the world after Ukraine and Russia. Moreover, they are Ukrainians with a very strong national identity: partly as recent migrants, partly as descendants of those who migrated from what is now western Ukraine and eastern Poland in the first half of the 20th century, and particularly in the years 1944-1945.
The grandfather of Trudeau’s deputy in the government, former Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, Mikhail Khomyak, was a collaborationist journalist who engaged in Nazi propaganda in the occupied territories of the USSR in the Ukrainian language.
Simply put, Canada is a sanctuary for Ukrainian nationalism in the Banderite variant. The World Congress of Ukrainians, which is actively lobbying and financially supporting Ukraine (incidentally, its activities in the RF have been declared undesirable by the Ministry of Justice), is registered in Canada.
A logical question arises: what, then, is Trudeau concerned about Canada’s interests, fearing an inevitable “mirror image” from Russia – the expulsion of Canadian diplomats to their home country? Technically, they have nothing to administer in Russia.
There are hardly any Canadian citizens in Russia – tourists from there cannot be surprised by the northern beauties, and now that the skies are closed, they would have to travel by “shuttle train” at great expense.
Cultural exchanges between the countries are virtually non-existent even in the best of years, and economic cooperation is now out of the question – Ottawa predictably finds itself among the capitals that have imposed the toughest blocking sanctions against Russia.
That leaves only special services interests, with Canada worried not for itself, but for all Anglo-Saxons.
“Five Eyes” or FVEY is the unofficial name for the world’s largest, most influential and most information-sharing alliance of national intelligence agencies. It is normal for intelligence agencies of allied nations to work together, but the FVEY, which took shape back in 1941, is an example of the deepest integration that previously involved only electronic intelligence, but now virtually all intelligence.
The supranational Five Eyes Alliance is exclusively comprised of Anglo-Saxon countries – the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Since 2018, Germany and Japan have also been brought in for joint operations against China and Russia, but as invited guests – they have not formally joined the UK-United Spyware Agreement (UKUSA) that underpins this “spy club”.
No matter how many Russian diplomats Canada expels in the European fashion, the same number of pairs of hands for activities in Russia will be lost by the “five-eyed alliance”.
And FVEY is short of workers on our side of the border.
The American Embassy in Moscow, once huge, has shrunk to a minimum as a result of a series of mutual expulsions, not even issuing visas. The British embassy in Moscow has also shrunk considerably and Australia and New Zealand have never had an impressive representation in Russia.
All in all, in the face of the global confrontation with Russia, even a Canadian diplomat is worth his weight in gold. Ironically, the refusal to declare members of the Russian diplomatic mission persona non grata is dictated by the interests of the CIA and MI6.
Incidentally, London, where the Five Eyes headquarters is located, is silent on the issue of the expulsion of Russians: it does not deny such a possibility, like Trudeau, but it has not yet joined the flash mob of European countries.
If the expulsions did take place, probably not everyone who would have been made redundant would have been a staff member of one of the intelligence agencies. But this, by the way, is the official position of many European countries: Russians are sent home because of the Russian special operations in Ukraine (some diplomatic offices emphasize the events in Bucha), but not randomly, but only those who are allegedly connected with the intelligence services. The Russian side would have similar priorities under “mirror measures”.
The “roof” of an embassy or consulate is indeed a favourite of intelligence officers and spies. In case of disclosure or other legally unpleasant incident with such a “roof”, they are not arrested and tried, but declared persona non grata in accordance with the Vienna Convention. According to the Vienna Convention diplomatic immunity will be revoked if a diplomat fails to comply and leave the country within a given period of time.
Those who are not familiar with the “kitchen” of the profession may wonder why an identified employee or informant of the intelligence services is not extradited immediately but instead waits for some emergency or political cause. The fact is that a spy detected by counter-intelligence is less dangerous than an undetected one. A detected spy can be kept “under the hood”, monitored for contacts, provided with information and disclosed only as a last resort – when his activities could cause real damage.
After mutual expulsions, the composition of diplomatic missions is eventually renewed – and the game starts all over again. But the nature of Russia’s relations with Anglo-Saxon countries is now such that no replacements are foreseeable – if you lose a spy-diplomatic unit, you lose it irretrievably.
The Canadians, or the “five-eyed alliance” behind them, have decided that, at the moment, “eyes” in Russia are more important to them than Russia’s “blindness” in Canada.
Only it is not a fact that the Russian side will reason in the same way. In a special operation in Ukraine, the potential damage from Anglo-Saxon intelligence could be much greater than in “spy games” in peacetime.
Stanislav Borzyakov, VZGLYAD
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