About 75 members of Sudbury’s Ukrainian community and their supporters lined Paris Street Sunday afternoon to show their concern about the Russia-Ukraine standoff.
Russia recently amassed more than 100,000 troops to Ukraine’s border, according to media reports. Troops are equipped with everything from tanks and artillery to ammunition and air power.
The Ukrainian Canadian Congress of Canada, an umbrella organization for all Ukrainian organizations, issued a call earlier this week to rally in support of Ukraine.
One of the organizers of the protest, Halia Buba, said she came to Canada from Ukraine when she was one year old.
However, she said her sister left Canada as an adult and moved to Ukraine when the country gained its independence in the early 1990s, and set up a L’Arche community in that country. She said her sister is now back in Canada.
“Every day she gets a message on the internet or on the phone that everybody is terribly, terribly nervous,” Buba said.
“People are planning escape routes. I mean, can you imagine, the women and children are learning how to use weapons and guns to defend themselves.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that he sees the fall of the Soviet Union as a disaster, she said.
“Putin is obsessed with having an imperial Empire again,” Buba said, pointing to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. “He wants Ukraine, and he cannot imagine an imperial empire without Ukraine.”
Buba called on the Canadian government to provide defence weapons and impose sanctions upon Russia.
Among those who attended Sunday’s protest was Sudbury MPP Jamie West. He said he showed up to support fellow community members.
“A lot of the signs here and the flags here are about Ukraine, specifically,” he said. “But this really is a worry that the world has. Nobody wants war. And if just showing up helps delaying it or preventing it, that’s a great thing that we’re all doing.”
