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The Trudeau government is extending Canadas military deployment in war-ravaged Ukraine by two more years, a training mission that Russia has previously decried as counterproductive and deplorable.

It comes as the war in eastern Ukraine between Kiev and Russian-backed separatists has escalated, killing more soldiers and civilians and leaving ceasefire agreements in tatters.

The decision by Ottawa to prolong the commitment at the continuing level of 200 troops comes despite past statements by the Liberals about rebooting the relationship with Moscow following poor relations during the Harper era.

Read more: As Russia-U.S. ties strengthen, violence escalates inUkraine

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan announced the measure Monday.

Asked what message Canada is sending Russia by extending the military mission, Mr. Sajjan replied: We stand by Ukraine.

The defence minister noted that Canada is also preparing to send 450 troops to Latvia as part of a NATO reassurance mission to counter Russian expansionism in the region. Its nearly three years since Moscow seized Ukraines Crimean peninsula and annexed it.

We are sending a very strong message of deterrence, Mr. Sajjan said.

Ukrainian Canadian Congress president Paul Grod applauded the move, calling it a significant gesture of support for Kiev at a time when the fighting in eastern Ukraine has mounted.

He alleged Russia had been pressing the Trudeau government not to prolong the mission.

There was a lot of pressure being put on by the Russian embassy not to do this, Mr. Grod said.

The Ukrainian-Canadian leader said the show of solidarity from Western countries towards Ukraine is a rebuke to Russia.

Why do the Russians care? Its the symbolism that Canada and the United States and Great Britain and some European companies have physical military presence in Ukraine, which Russia views as its sphere of influence and thats why its so offensive to Moscow, he said.

Back in 2015 when the deployment to Ukraine was first announced, the Russian embassy in Canada rejected the mission as unnecessary, saying it would not help in any way the settlement of the internal fratricidal conflict in that country.

Follow Steven Chase on Twitter: @stevenchase

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Liberals extend military mission in Ukraine by two years - The Globe and Mail

Canada to Extend Military Mission in Ukraine Wall Street Journal (subscription) Canada said Monday it plans to extend its military mission in Ukraine by another two years as the country's Liberal government maintains a defiant tone against Russian aggression in the region. Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan and Foreign ...

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Canada to Extend Military Mission in Ukraine - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

(JTA) Ukrainian Jews protested the attendance at an international symposium on the Holocaust by a state historian who praised a Nazicollaborator whose troops killed Jews.

Eduard Dolinsky, director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, last week condemned the planned attendance of Volodymyr Vyatrovych, director of Ukrainian National Memory Institute, at a conference planned forParis this week under the title: Holocaust in Ukraine New Perspectives on the Evils of the 20thCentury.

Vyatrovych, who has been running his state-controlled institution since 2014, is a falsifier and manipulator of historicalfacts who has not only blamed Jews for the Great Famine, but denies the anti-Semitic ideology and practices of the Organization of UkrainianNationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Dolinsky said in a statement.

Known as OUN and UPA respectively, the two groups fought during the first half of the 20th century against Soviet domination and briefly collaborated with Nazi occupation forces before turning against them. Encouraged by the anti-Semitic vituperations of many of their leaders, UPA troops killed thousands of Jews during the 1940s, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

In an interviewpublished in January in the magazine Novoy Vremya, Vyatrovych named Roman Shukhevych, a former leader of the UPA, as one of five eminent personalities who have changed the course of history, along with Winston Churchill, Johannes Gutenberg, Vaclav Havel and Elon Musk. According to some historians, Shukhevychs wife rescued a Jewish woman during the Holocaust.

According to the Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder, UPA militiamen under Shukhevych were responsible for murdering thousands of ethnic Poles and Jews.

Today,Shukhevych and other Holocaust-era nationalists are reveredin Ukraine as heroes for their opposition to the Soviets. This sentiment became more pronounced following the overthrow in 2014 of former President Viktor Yanukovych in a revolution lead by nationalists who opposed his corruption and perceived subservience to Russia.

The veneration of Nazi collaborators and attempts to equate Nazism with communism have proliferated in Eastern Bloc countries in recent years. In some of these countries, attempt to promote such equivalence serves also to obfuscate popular support and even enthusiasm for the murder of Jews during the Holocaust, according to Efraim Zuroff, the Israel and Eastern Europe director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Last week, the government of Croatia, a country which used to have a collaborationist government under the Nazis, set up a body responsible for issuing recommendations for the legal regulation of the use of the insignia and symbols of non-democratic regimes, language that elsewhere in the region was used inlegislation that banned both Nazi and communist symbols.

In Slovakia, a state-run scientific and cultural institution last month pulled from the interneta 5-minute video it produced arguing that the countrys Jews would have been murdered even without the formation of the Slovak protectorate state of the Nazi collaborator Jozef Tiso. The video, entitled Without March 14 a reference to the date in which that state was established in 1939 promptedvocal objections by anti-fascist groups and several Jewish organizations.

The same institution, Matica Slovensk, has announced plans to release a new video focusing on Soviet atrocities.

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Fan of Nazi collaborator to represent Ukraine at Paris Holocaust symposium - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Published time: 6 Mar, 2017 11:07

The blockade imposed by right-wing Ukrainian radicals on cargo trains coming from Russia is more proof that the current Kiev government is neither stable nor recognized by its own citizens, a senior Russian senator has said.

Reports that the organizers of the Donbass blockade have set up yet another checkpoint only add to the impression that in three years Ukraine has failed to establish a stable and universally recognized state power system, the head of Russias upper house committee for international relations, Konstantin Kosachev, wrote on his Facebook page.

When practically anyone can disrupt railroad communications with a neighboring state we see a serious hint at the possible collapse of statehood, he added.

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The comment came soon after Ukrainian police launched a criminal case into attempts to stop Russian cargo trains passing through Ukrainian territory near the town of Konotop.

The radicals who imposed the blockade have received support from a number of Ukrainian MPs, in particular Semyon Semenchenko of the Self-Reliance Party.

Kosachev also warned that the activities of Ukrainian radicals threaten various international agreements, and pointed at the lack of logic in situations where violations were committed on the Ukrainian side but the blame and sanctions were put on Russia.

He said that in the current situation the provocations could last indefinitely as they have become a tool through which various Ukrainian political clans were fighting for power and assets.

Earlier this year, the Russian upper house passed an address to the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, in which senators called for an end to the aggressive actions of the Ukrainian military against the self-proclaimed republics in Donbass and demanded that Ukraine fulfill its obligations within the Minsk Agreements.

The step came after a major outbreak of violence in the regions, including armed raids and mass and indiscriminate shelling from Ukrainian government forces.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has also accused Ukrainian forces of using heavy artillery to shell residential areas in Donetsk, adding that Kiev seems to favor a military resolution of the Ukrainian conflict. The shelling resulted in casualties among civilians and the destruction of several infrastructure facilities, the ministry added.

Russian diplomats called on the Ukrainian government to stop armed provocations in Donbass immediately, to adhere to the existing ceasefire agreements and to proceed with responsible implementation of all provisions of the Minsk Accords, including political reforms.

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'Collapse of state power': Top Russian senator blasts Ukraine over railroad blockade - RT

MyStatesman.com (blog)

How Diana Denman's singular stand for Ukraine revealed the Trump campaign's soft spot for Russia MyStatesman.com (blog) The Ukrainian people deserve our admiration and support in their struggle, and in their efforts to strengthen the Rule of Law, forge a Free Market economy, and expand democratic governance. We therefore support maintaining (and, if warranted ...

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How Diana Denman's singular stand for Ukraine revealed the Trump campaign's soft spot for Russia - MyStatesman.com (blog)