Canada’s Defence Minister Bill Blair recently announced Canada would be open to sending members of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) into Ukraine to assist training The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU.)Great! But they were there before. So why did they leave in the first place?The question isn’t so much aimed at Minister Blair, but at NATO. Why does NATO all of a sudden want troops back in Ukraine?First let’s go back to early February 2022.Back then Russia was still vehemently denying that it had plans to invade Ukraine. Yet in a series of moves that fooled no one, they had concentrated an incredible number of troops and equipment along the Ukrainian border to do exactly that.In anticipation of hostilities, Canada, along with the US, the UK and others, paused their training mission called ‘Operation Unifier’. Once paused, Canada withdrew its roughly 260 personnel from Ukraine to Poland on February 12, 2022.Anita Anand, then defence minister, provided the following statement regarding the relocation of the Canadian contingent. "Force protection is the top priority for our training mission, of which operational security is a key component. Thus, while we can confirm we have relocated some of our forces outside of Ukraine, we will not discuss numbers, locations or future intentions." NATO countries including Canada, could have left their troops in Ukraine when Russia was posturing to invade. Afterall, they had every right to be there. They were conducting legitimate non-aggressive training with a friendly nation which was interested in joining the alliance.They held the ground, which is a distinct tactical advantage, yet they decided to withdraw their personnel. In doing so NATO removed the most significant deterrent that was keeping Russia from invading — themselves.Sure enough, twelve days later on February 22, 2022, Russian troops crossed the Ukrainian border in a massive escalation of a conflict which had started back in 2014.NATO’s move to withdraw was what I’ve decided to call a coward's gambit. A gambit is a chess opening move in which a player risks pawns or other minor piece to gain an advantage.Essentially NATO unlocked the door to Ukraine before it left, leaving the country to the whims of Russian President Putin. It was cowardly, but also calculated because in doing so, NATO gained a strategic geopolitical advantage. The moral position to convince other nations, namely the Nordics — Sweden and Finland — to join the alliance.Just like in chess, NATO’s gambit was terribly unfair to the poor pawn, in this case Ukraine, but it paid massive dividends. NATO sacrificed one potential new member but gained two as a result.Finland joined NATO on April 4, 2023 and Sweden’s accession to the organization was guaranteed after Hungary’s parliament approved their membership on February 26, 2024.However, what no one expected was for that sacrificial pawn to fight Russia to a bloody standstill.It was widely presumed by military analysts around the world that the invasion of Ukraine would be over in 24 to 48hrs. Except Ukraine proved them all wrong and it’s now been a full 24 months since the invasion began.Had Ukraine simply been steamrolled as predicted, NATO would have simply redrawn their battlelines and resumed their status quo of impotently watching Russia flaunt its most recent conquest and tolerate its ongoing unscrupulous behaviour.But that’s not what happened and now with their Nordic prizes secure, NATO is suddenly talking about sending coalition troops back into Ukraine — convenient or coincidence? Either way it still leaves them, and by extension Canada, in a bit of quandary. You see, when we pulled our training mission out of Ukraine we crossed a line that we can’t really step back over. That is of course unless NATO and Canada get dragged into a real shooting war with Russia.We ceded that territory.How in the world would NATO, or Bill Blair and the Canadian government ensure ‘the operational security and force protection’ for our CAF personnel in an active war zone? They apparently couldn’t do that in a pre-war Ukraine, so what’s changed?Apparently Mr. Blair thinks this could be achieved by having the training take place “far from the front lines”, but that’s a simpleton's assessment. There’s no such thing in a modern conflict, especially this one. The whole country is a designated target area for Russia.It’s one of the reasons why the training of AFU personnel has been so successful in other countries — they aren’t being bombed.Whether its ballistic missiles, rockets, or drones, Russia’s military has the means and ability to reach out and touch every corner of the country. A concentration of AFU personnel in a training centre would be a tempting and legitimate target. And if there were any NATO casualties it would be regrettable collateral damage. Afterall, they chose to re-enter a country embroiled in a war, there are inherent risks to that.But realistically, if we were to put Canadian, or NATO troops on the ground, it would come with the responsibility to protect them. That would mean establishing no-fly zones and enforcing them with NATO aircraft and air defence systems. NATO hasn’t got the guts to do any of that, the UN is a useless entity, and Canada lacks those critical capabilities.Perhaps we should be offering to bring AFU personnel to Canada to train. We did something similar during the Second World War called the Commonwealth Air Training Plan. Pilots from commonwealth countries came to Canada and learned how to fly, navigate and shoot before going off to war in Europe or the Pacific.It was wildly efficacious then and there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t be again.Ultimately, I think there are better ways we can support the AFU than sending the CAF haphazardly back into Ukraine. Any option would be better and we need to explore them all, while also making preparation in case the day comes that we must reluctantly do so.
