Ex-Canadian foreign minister appointed economic advisor in Ukraine

By AFP
January 5, 2026


Chrystia Freeland is of Ukrainian origin and was the first woman to serve as Canada's finance minister - Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File Drew Angerer

Liberal politician Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s former minister of finance and foreign affairs, said Monday she will leave Parliament in Ottawa to work as an economic advisor to Ukraine.

Of Ukrainian origin, Freeland was appointed by President Volodymyr Zelensky while serving as the Canadian prime minister’s special representative for the reconstruction of Ukraine, after holding several political leadership roles in recent years.

“Ukraine is at the forefront of today’s global fight for democracy, and I welcome this chance to contribute on an unpaid basis as an economic advisor to President Zelensky,” Freeland wrote on X.

Freeland, 57, a former journalist, speaks Ukrainian, English, French, Italian and Russian fluently. She was the first woman to be finance minister in Canada and served as deputy prime minister.

Zelensky praised Freeland in a post announcing her appointment Monday, saying she “is highly skilled” and “has extensive experience in attracting investment and implementing economic transformations.”

“Right now, Ukraine needs to strengthen its internal resilience – both for the sake of Ukraine’s recovery if diplomacy delivers results as swiftly as possible, and to reinforce our defense if, because of delays by our partners, it takes longer to bring this war to an end,” Zelensky added.

A year ago, Freeland ran to replace Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberal Party and as prime minister after his dramatic resignation from government. She lost and ultimately agreed to join the government of her opponent, Prime Minister Mark Carney.

During US President Donald Trump’s first term, Freeland led trade negotiations for the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, known as the USMCA.

The reality of the front belies the Kremlin’s little music

Monday 5 January 2026, by Daniel Tanuro

‘Russia can only win the war’, ‘Russia has never been beaten’, ‘How naive to think that we could defeat a country that has atomic weapons’... etc etc.

This little (inaccurate) tune, which originated in the Kremlin, is emphatically disseminated by the right, the extreme right and a certain “radical” left.

This was recently illustrated in Belgium when all the parties represented in Parliament, from Vlaams Belang to the PTB, supported De Wever in the case of the Russian assets frozen at Euroclear.

Only a few courageous individuals, such as Cogolati, refused to join forces. The others should ask themselves serious questions: by their attitude, they have helped to strengthen the most right-wing, violently anti-social and anti-democratic coalition the country has seen since the 2nd World War. You only have to read the praise for the Prime Minister in the press to understand this. At a time when trade unions are mobilising against austerity, this support for De Wever-Bouchez is a nasty snub to the social movement.

What’s worse is that we’re hearing more and more of the same, even though it doesn’t correspond to the reality on the battlefield. Of course, Russia dominates (what a surprise, given that it is the second most powerful army in the world!). But it is only nibbling, not breaking through. And it is nibbling ever more slowly, at the cost of terrible losses in men (1.4 million!) and equipment. Whether in armoured columns or by small groups of infantrymen, the Russian attacks are decimated by the drones, which the Ukrainians manoeuvre brilliantly.

The Ukrainian resistance is truly admirable, despite the Western brakes. It is more than just resistance. In Kupiansk, the counter-offensive drove the Russians out of the town that Putin himself claimed to have definitively won. A real slap in the face for the Kremlin! In Pokrovsk, the Putin soldiers are still not in control (after 700 days of assaults!). North of Pokrovsk, the Ukrainian army has retaken 5 villages. In Ulaipole, the invaders boasted that they had won, and even occupied the territorial defence HQ. That’s true, but Ukrainian troops are counter-attacking and have regained a foothold in the town.

It’s a war of attrition. Russia is holding out mainly because its neo-fascist regime has completely atomised society, because it attracts goons with salaries several times higher than the average wage (thanks to oil revenues, etc.), because Trump and his henchmen support it and because Europe is relying on Putin to maintain order just in case. Ukraine is holding on because its people have enjoyed the freedoms won since 1991, after decades of colonial oppression (the Tsar, Stalin, Hitler, then Stalin again and his successors...). The vast majority of the population, despite the terrible difficulties, the bombing of their towns and the power cuts, do not want to be subjected to this neo-fascism, the effects of which they can see in the occupied territories... and on the tortured bodies of the prisoners of war exchanged from time to time with Moscow.

Which of the two will crack? Trump is clearly doing everything to ensure that it is Ukraine. The neo-fascist and extreme right-wing international supports him, as does China under a bureaucratic dictatorship. Nothing but normal. What is not “normal” is that most of this left that calls itself “radical” and “authentic”, or even “Leninist”, led by the PTB, is in practice on the same line as the worst enemies of the working class: against the right of peoples to self-determination! A right which Lenin, to remind the Marxist-Leninists, considered to be an ‘absolute principle’, without which ‘there is no internationalism’...

Which of the two will crack? It is quite possible that it will be Russia. Behind all the talk of Russia being ‘invincible’, things are indeed going badly for Putin. Very bad indeed. Oil refineries are burning, ghost oil tankers are sinking and the war industry can no longer compensate for the losses in tanks, radars and other equipment. That’s why the music is getting louder and louder. This is also why there is no question of the Kremlin agreeing to a ceasefire, let alone a territorial compromise on the basis of what it has acquired by totally destroying it.

Why is there no question of this? Because, if Putin doesn’t get at least the whole of Donbass, people in Russia - the crippled veterans and their families in particular - will rise up and demand an accounting: 1.4 million dead and crippled for that? The news from the front shows that Putin is a long, long way from getting the Donbass. Trump, Witkoff and Kushner wanted to force Zelensky to hand it over, but it won’t work. Zelensky is a liberal, but not a puppet. He is not prepared to commit hara-kiri so that Trump and his gang can do juicy business with the Kremlin. Ukraine cannot agree to give Putin what he has been unable to conquer, despite all his cruelty. And the EU cannot afford to ignore Ukraine’s refusal.

‘You have no cards’, Trump told Zelensky last February. In reality, it is Putin who is holding fewer and fewer cards in this game. Putin, and consequently also Trump, his accomplice.

So, is Ukraine an impossible victory? In the 20th century, at least two small countries - Vietnam and Afghanistan - won against superpowers with nuclear weapons. Quite apart from the obvious differences, these two countries won because their invaders, despite having enormous resources at their disposal, were unable to prevail. The political and economic cost of their gun-toting policies became unbearable. Who will be surprised if the extreme right tries to erase these historical facts from people’s minds? On the other hand, it is painful, and in fact shameful, to have to remind left-wing activists of them, especially when they claim to be anti-imperialists.

SLAVA UKRAINI! SOLIDARITY WITH THE UKRAINIAN PEOPLE!

27 December 2025

Translated by International Viewpoint from Facebook.

Attached documents

the-reality-of-the-front-belies-the-kremlin-s-little-music_a9351.pdf (PDF - 908.9 KiB)

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Daniel Tanuro

Daniel Tanuro, a certified agriculturalist and eco-socialist environmentalist, writes for “La gauche”, (the monthly of Gauche-Anticapitaliste-SAP, Belgian section of the Fourth International). He is also the author of The Impossibility of Green Capitallism, (Resistance Books, Merlin and IIRE, 2010) and Le moment Trump (Demopolis, 2018).