Canada’s ambassador to Russia is under fire for publicly commemorating the 1942 establishment of diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union, prompting outrage from lawmakers and activists who say the gesture ignored the brutal legacy of Stalin and Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine.Blacklock's Reporter says Ambassador Sarah Taylor on June 12 posted on Twitter: “On this day in 1942 Canada and the USSR established diplomatic relations,” alongside a photo of herself holding flowers outside the original Canadian embassy in Moscow. The post drew swift condemnation, particularly from Sen. Denise Batters of Saskatchewan, a descendant of Ukrainian homesteaders, who called the tribute “revolting.”“Russia’s current murderous dictator Putin has sustained his brutal invasion of Ukraine for three years,” said Batters. “Why on Earth is Canada’s ambassador celebrating this?” .She said the Soviet regime was responsible for mass atrocities including the Holodomor and the gulag system, and that recognizing the 1942 anniversary was tone-deaf given present-day aggression.Batters added that honoring the diplomatic milestone effectively signaled support for a regime responsible for the deaths of millions. “Giving Putin’s bloodthirsty tyranny, it’s increasingly difficult to justify even having our ambassador in Russia,” she told the Senate..Sen. Marc Gold, the government’s representative in the Senate, declined to comment on the tweets directly but reaffirmed Canada’s opposition to Russian aggression. “There is no question about where Canada stands in relation to the current government and its actions in Russia,” he said.Batters also referenced a Toronto Sun commentary by Marcus Kolga, a human rights advocate and fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, who detailed the Soviet Union’s crimes across Eastern Europe. “In 1942 my grandfather was among thousands of Estonians imprisoned in the Soviet gulag,” wrote Kolga. “Hundreds of thousands of others —Ukrainians, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians — were swept up, too. Many never came home.”.Kolga noted that while some Nazi collaborators have faced justice, few Soviet agents or collaborators have been held accountable. “Two years ago I was horrified to discover Soviet collaborators have lived freely among us in Canada,” he wrote.Canada’s diplomatic relationship with the Soviet Union, initiated in 1942 during they Second World War, quickly turned contentious. By 1945, a major espionage scandal emerged, with the discovery of a Soviet spy ring operating from the Russian embassy in Ottawa. A 1946 royal commission named 17 Soviet agents, including MP Fred Rose of Montreal, who was convicted under the Official Secrets Act and sentenced to six years in prison. Another MP, Dorise Nielsen of Saskatchewan, lost her seat in 1945 after coming under RCMP surveillance and later defected to communist China.
