 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Larry Baterman. I'm the chair of the Ambassador's Speaker Series and thank you for coming tonight. This is our last event in this academic year. And before we introduce our guest speaker, I would like to recognize some members in the diplomatic corps, the ambassador of Norway, her Excellency Mona Brother, the ambassador of Sweden. The ambassador of Sweden is Excellency Tepo Torian. The ambassador of Georgia is Excellency Alexander Latsavitz, the ambassador of Kazakhstan, Konstantin Tegolo, and the ambassador of Poland, his Excellency Martin Moszaki, who I think is the most recent to arrive. We have representatives also of the embassies of China, Turkey, Yemen, Japan, Ukraine, of course, and the delegation of European Union, and the Department of Foreign Affairs, trade and development, other ministries and agencies of the government of Canada, Carlton University, the University of Ottawa, as well as those from the private sector and some of my former colleagues and good friends who are former ambassadors abroad like Craig McDonald, Devin Mann, and Chris Westall, whose ambassador to Ukraine and to Russia. And have I forgotten any other former? No. And the last but not least, the ambassador of Chile, his Excellency who I just want to say, oh, and I'll just say that the ambassador of Chile who's been here some four or five years and a close friend has just been named the new ambassador of Chile to Peru. So we only have him for a few more months. And finally, and not least, former ambassador of Canada to Kazakhstan, Margaret Skalk. It is my pleasure to ask the Dean of the Faculty of Public Affairs of Carlton University, Dr. Andre Furot to introduce our guest speaker. Thank you, Larry. Welcome to, on behalf of the Faculty of Public Affairs, welcome to Carlton. This should be a very interesting evening. Ambassador Vadim Pristayko graduated from the Kiev Polytechnic Institute in Computer Science and then studied for his master's degree at the Ukrainian Academy of Foreign Trade. In 1994, after working in the private sector where he founded one of the first Ukrainian Internet providers, he entered the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations following his family's tradition of government service. In 1997, Ambassador Pristayko joined the economic section of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responsible for developing trade with Asian countries. His first foreign post in 2000 was at a consul in Sydney Australia. In 2002, he returned to Ukraine where he was assigned to the Foreign Policy Directorate of the presidency of Ukraine. In 2004, he was posted to the Ukrainian Embassy in Ottawa as political counselor. Four years later, the Ambassador was appointed Deputy Director General for NATO in Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2009, he was named Minister Counselor and Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of Ukraine in Washington. And on November 12, 2012, the President of Ukraine appointed him Ambassador to Canada. Welcome back. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Ambassador Vadim Pristayko. Thank you very much. Thank you to all of you for gathering here today. It's great privilege and honor to be here and to be able to talk to you and tell you a couple of words on my own and listen to your questions and try to talk to those questions you have. I will try to be short. I have like 20 minutes that was told. Maybe, maybe a bit more for the Q&A. So I will try to save the time for Q&A's and I will focus my today's presentation around three wide major and quite logical points as I believe. First, I will look up a little bit of what Ukraine is going on right now and how Ukraine changed over the fall of the Yenakhovich regime and how we tried to reset ourselves and the democracy and European integration path and how the first political government in our history trying to make reform is hopefully for the events of all Ukrainian society, Ukrainian business and our partners around the globe. Second, I can just a word talking about Russian, Russian invasion, invasion to Crimea. I will try to give you some some things so you'll be able to consider whether the Ukrainians, events in Ukraine are opposing threat to sovereign democracy in Russia and whether aggression and extation of Crimea and encouragement of separatism in Ukraine intended to prevent our European boss with just the effect of what he is doing. The third one is about international community. How the events in Ukraine are perceived by international community, our partners with the whole globe. Whether the international community is taking this last example of the execution of rights of stronger, whether it will take that the old international mechanisms being built and carried by all of us are so easily destroyed to the to the wish of some of the Security Council members, nuclear powers. So the major points for those of you who've been hibernating during the winter of 2013-2014 and the first part of spring, basically not all the parents were hibernating all this time, some of them were proved to be quite, quite effective. I'd like to remind you what actually happened in Ukraine. So our government was about to sign the European Association Agreement on 28th of November, but just a couple days before government decided to change the pass and opt for the $15 million loan from from Russia, the Russian Federation. It's still within the powers of the government to decide the course, although this course was was the key, key course of the Ukraine's 23 years of independence to Europe to West, he decided to change so that brought people on the streets for the peaceful demonstration, which turned ugly after in the 30s of November when the government decided to dispel the students from the major street of Ukraine, which actually just infuriated Ukraine, especially Kievans. Close to one million people came on the streets to show that it's not acceptable. We won't be accepting, we won't be tolerating this. In turn, government decided to go even stronger. So by the end of February, the stubborn demonstrations were met by force, with force, with law enforcement agencies and eventually was authorized on the streets of ancient city of Ukraine, of Kiev, which brought 103 people dead and more than 1,500 injured and wounded. We are talking about military injuries, less arms abutated, eyes closed, serious stuff. What happened next days? Lithuania and Russia fled the country and resurfaced in Russia, read the prepared statements, calling everybody in Kiev fascists, neo-Nazis, and expectedly invited aggressor to come to Ukraine to help to reinstate him back on the struggle. This event, I know that the more than since then are much more well known to the public. I don't want to play the captain obvious, but just wanted to bring the very important crucial moment to you right now for the sake of our next conversation. That's so-called the issue of legality of the Ukraine government has been used by Russian propaganda very extensively. So what we have now? People according to this government we have now in Terry, it's a mistake, even our Canadian friends are calling this government Terry. My point is that we still preserve the parliament we had over the two years and this completely legal parliament elected the new prime minister and the government itself. Only two ministers are in Terry. Minister Foreign Affairs, my boss, and Minister of Defense, who is supposed to be appointed by president and expecting the presidential elections on May 25th. Also, Russian friends already hinted that they won't recognize it. The interesting point here is so-called agreement in sign between three leaders of position. It's another question, how they represented the people on Maidan, on the major square of Ukraine. But let's leave it aside for a minute. This agreement was signed by Mr. Yanukovych, the leaders of position, and co-signed by ministers Foreign Affairs, who came as negotiators and interlocutors and intermediates, intermediaries, friends, Germany and Poland. Russian representative was also in the room, but refused to sign the agreement. Decided that it's too much. Also, Russians forget about this particular point and now they're referring to the agreement without even taking any care to the fact that they didn't sign it in the very first moment. Mr. Yanukovych, on the next day in the morning, when he signed it, he will reinstate the constitution in Ukraine 2004, which means that his powers will be balanced by the parliament's power. He didn't fulfill this first close of the agreement and he fled. By this, he was the first one not to respect the newly signed agreement. Since then, ever since starting, you know the history, I just tried to explore it in a bit of a couple of words. So the first positive results, like reinstating the constitution, bringing back the presidential parliamentarian model, I have to say that's important now part of the globe. Out of 16 countries of the Soviet Union or republics of the Soviet Union, only three introduced the parliamentarian system from the very beginning. Three Baltic nations and there were the most successful ones. All the rest, 12 of us, took the presidential, strong presidential powers and all of them, all the republics came to the same more and the same point when these governments and this president became more and more tyrants, circus style of government. So we managed to make many, many political things but all the issues were outshadowed by the submerging economic performance. The GDP falls 3% at least. Huge debts and balance budget and social complications. These things are serious. Separatism, the huge territory of Ukraine, it's not as big as Canada, but still biggest by square mileage in Europe. Divided loyalties, you can see only on streets and you can see from TV that's how how divided loyalties of Ukrainians themselves. Ridiculization of certain, certain sectors of society. That's also true. What task were assigned to the new government of Mr. Yatsenyuk? He himself, as we call his own government, is a chemicatic government. So these tasks are simple. Take unpopular and painful steps to avoid default in Ukraine. You see, Baltic state budget reduced public spending, cold, very transparent presidential elections, begin national political reforms and so on and so on and so forth. Proposed by many, including Russians, the federalization of Ukraine and second official language will hardly enforce Ukraine, Ukraine statehood and frankly it's not Russian business to what to introduce in Ukraine. But we'll definitely will have to draw the lessons from the from the past and we already decided to introduce the model close to Polish model, we do this as a very good example, how to give more powers to the to the regions. It's not federalization, it's rather decentralization. We're talking about budgets for information, language, education, many many things how the regions will self-govern themselves. Stabilizational state finance system, we have to sharply cut the expenditures, save the budget, review the taxation system, cut subsidies to the to the vulnerable centers of economy. It's a very painful decision. By now we already cut 10 percent of subsidies to mining region, which is Eastern region, which is less loyal to a government, but that's the only the only pass we can take. I have to tell you, I feel it myself, we now we're cutting our state staff by at least 10 percent, which is we're already talking about 24,000 people to be fired next month. And these people are well-educated bureaucrats and it's not easy to to find a job for these 24,000 people immediately. We're selling all the state cars and residents, official residents, all the stuff we can we can live without. In return, we hope to have a, sorry, we are not reducing, we have a couple of things to increase, for example, taxation and domestic territories. These things will probably hopefully bring us the loans from the IMF and other financial institutions. We are talking about 14, maybe 18 billion dollars immediately. That's that's the the big chunk of money we have to have to divert the immediate crisis to the finance of Ukraine. We managed to sign this association agreement with the European Union partially. We have to, you know, we enjoy it in as a sour fruit of real politics. The European Union was ready to sign the agreement with government of Yanukovych, even after they ever since started, they were reminding Yanukovych that the association agreement is still in the table. By a couple of days ago, we were able to sign part, political part. It's complicated, I am not going into details, but we have to sign the rest of it properly after the presidential elections, if we manage to have them on the May of 2016. It's not easy, but that's the way. Although I also have to admit that the European Union made a very good step by opening, you know, literally the markets for Ukrainian companies. We are talking about 500 million dollars by the end of the year in benefits of the opening of the European markets for Ukraine. To ensure the independence energy independence, which is extremely important in Ukraine, we have to talk with the European Union and try to find other ways to how to resupply Ukraine. We need around 50 billion cubic meters a year. We are individual biggest consumer of Russian gas. I know that the European Union is very much preoccupied with Russian gas, but I have to remind you, we are the biggest consumer of the Russian gas. We end today, from today, they actually decided to raise the price at least $100. I will come to this just in a second. We have to do a lot of reforms. I don't want to bother you with things that are like judicial system prosecutors, officers, security service, police. We have to do something with the police, especially how to deal now with police forces, those people who are shooting at their fellow countrymen. And of yesterday, we decided finally to give it order to each and every paramilitary structures to return, to discern and return the weapons which they have in their positions to the internal military, internal affairs. All the things we are doing, we are doing for us and for our integration in Europe. Some believe that all the things can seem to be perceived in Russia as a threat to the system they have, and that's why it can be ignored, can be avoided, and so it has to be dealt with. I'm not sure if it is the case, but what we see, that's what we have now in our hands. The regardless, the rhetoric they are using, the one fact is obvious. They are not only just betraying the brotherly nation, they're close, they're probably the closest nation they have historically. They're showing again that there is still a rule of stronger in this world and it's still in full effect. We have to admit these things, the steps which are taken by Putin, that's the proper government, that's so-called Putin's tourists in Ukraine, the commanders which are coming secretly to Ukraine's territory. It's always working to some extent. The system, the Ukrainian government, is put to the stress. We have to, instead of going through the reforms, we have to pour our limited resources in the army, trying to prepare it for the battles. We are digging up the anti-tank ditches, you know, in the middle of Europe it's quite unexpected, for me there's wide ditches, we didn't want, nobody would expect to happen in this part of the globe. About economics, or what happens and the effects. What is Crimea? It's two million people, it's a huge, huge island, it's actually peninsula, which is connected with just one road. Two million population. In Ukraine's term is 3.7 percent of GTP of Ukraine and 4.3 percent of Ukrainian of Ukraine population. Expert in program 1.5, 1.6 percent, not significant to our survival. At the same time, the energy independence and survival of Ukraine has actually been hurt, and quite significantly. We lost the fields of oil and gas and gas concentrate around around the Ukrainian territory. We're talking about 170 billion millimeters of gas, 47 million tons of oil, 18 million tons of gas condensate. At the end of 2014, Ukraine developed only 4 percent of these of these deposits. Our companies were exploring and were extracted around 7 million cubic meters of gas annually. We should be in turn consumption of Crimea around 1.4, 1.5 million, so the 4 million cubic meters were exported to the mainland of Ukraine for the use of the whole Ukraine. Again, to the prices. I can't just avoid it to call it hypocrisy, sorry. We had this agreement with Russia that we will pay less $100 for this, we will allow them to stay to station their fleet in Crimea. Today, just today, Mr. Medvedev mentioned that because of the changed geopolitical reality, we called it this way. They don't need any more to pay Ukraine this $100 for keeping definitely, because they are not keeping fleets in Ukraine. That's their own territory from the day yesterday. So we have today from today the price increased for $100 again. Close to Canadian to Canadian reality. We have to postpone the launch of the satellite which we built with MTA, the Canadian company, and we paid $260 million for the satellite, because we lost communication system which was in Crimea. Now we have to rethink where we can, where we will be able to control this satellite and then probably we'll launch it later on as soon as we find out how can we operate it. What it brought to us, I mean all this, you know, there are some some positive things which brought all this nightmare or the conflict. That's the maturity, that's a great maturity of the Ukrainian society. We went through very painful changes and there are some very interesting things like, you know, the propaganda is talking about the Ukrainians, Nemnazis, Antisemis. They're touching all the sensitive streams around the globe, understanding what people can react to, to which signals they will react. I have to tell you interesting facts. For example, one of the of the squads in Ukraine, in Maidan, in the central Maidan, was just Jews. They decided to have Jew hungry or absolutely unexpected thing. The Muslims in Turkish, the Turks, the Tatars, Crimean Tatars, invited Ukrainian Orthodox to have services in their mosques because they deprived from the churches they had before, chance to make them, to have their services in Crimea. For example, in the statement of the Ukrainian Jewry to the President Putin. Most likely you have mixed Ukraine and Russia where Jewish organizations have noticed the growth last year of Antisemism. Our few nationalists are under the control of the society and we can take care of. And the new government in Ukraine, which cannot be said about any Ukrainian government, which cannot be said about the neonism in Russia, which is encouraged by your intelligent agencies. Many, many things I don't want to to waste much of your time. I just want to come to the last point of my presentation, the international community and the approach to what's happening in Ukraine now. We, that's very bad signal for so-called threshold countries. I'm talking about now the Ukraine, as you remember, in 1991 decided that we inherited the third biggest arsenal of nuclear weapons. Our weapon arsenal, nuclear arsenal was bigger than Chinese, French and Britain combined. In return, in 1994, in return for giving up this nuclear arsenal, we were promised to be protected by five nations. One of these nations just was an aggressive, aggressive to our territory, occupied piece of our territory. This signal was picked up by many threshold countries, at least Israel already mentioned. Look at them. The only chance we can protect ourselves is to expand our nuclear program. And, I believe me, the Iranians are thinking the same. Maybe they're not doing it quite publicly, but they're thinking about the piece of paper in which the agreement signed, and the real nuclear powers. We sent to all the countries who supported us, and especially the UN resolution. The UN resolution showed that this time more countries were trying to be united and protect one of their members against the invasion. 100 votes to support Ukraine's integrity independence. 11 voices against. Russia, Belarus, Bolivia, Venezuela, Armenia, Zimbabwe, Khurba, Nicaragua, Nostria, Sudan and Syria. That's the list. Just one last word about the Canada. I really grateful myself, and I'm proud to be representing Ukraine here in Canada. The only member of G7, leader of G7 countries, it was Sima Harper, came to Ukraine in very, very difficult and delicate moment to show that the standing behind Ukraine, trying to help, he brought 220 million dollars as a loan. If you compare it to the billion which has been promised by, for example, United States, and compare it to economies that proportionately Canada, who spare more money to help Ukraine, even in these difficult difficult situations. We have a lot of different programs. I don't want to bother you and bore you with all these names of ideas and the reforms and everything. Believe me, there are very interesting things. I just discussed with the Ministry of some, the Ministry of Immigration and some of them. So the Canadian government and the Ukraine government working hard, and we understand that we don't have much time to to proceed with that. And why sincere graduation go into Ukrainian community, which was, as never, strong, united, and helpful. Trying to push and pushing all the initiatives, and the standing behind all the initiatives, gathering money, sending delegation, pushing people out, having the beautiful programs like providing medical treatment to those injured on my down. Hundreds of people. Instead of bringing a couple of dozens here, they decided to send a mission and mission is leaving tomorrow. Doctors, equipment, people are working problem. This and many, many other projects are now on our consideration of our work. So thank you very much. I will stop here and give you some time for questions. The ambassador is open to questions. I would ask those who wish to ask a question to come to this microphone, identify yourself, and proceed. Who will be the first person to ask a question? Yes. Mr. Krzysztof, I'm Dennis Kowalski. You know me well. Could you please enlighten us on what is happening in the border regions with in Eastern Ukraine, Luhansk, Kharkiv, the Netsk, and Odessa? And so on, Mikolayev, the protesters, pro-Russian protesters going on. I haven't heard much on it. Could you enlighten us on both that, please? Thank you. We are talking about different realities here. One reality is 100,000 troops. And today Mr. Lokrov mentioned, OK, why all this fuss? Just simple, simple exercises, military exercises. And you know, some of our colleagues, for example, Foreign Affairs Russian, they mentioned their statement. For those who consider seriously the invasion in the Ukraine territory, it has to be prescribed with painkillers. They're even using this new type of diplomatic language, which is painkillers. Another reality is the protest movement in the cities, in the southeast. As I mentioned before, there are many factors divided loyally. People are still calling President Yanukovych to come and to restore order. They still don't get the lesson from the history. This guy stole so much from them. He was building the palaces and all the gold and everything. And people, simple miners who are spending their life, wasting their life on the ground for the couple of dollars, they're coming out of it back and voting for the guy and asking him, begging him to get back and to restore order. They believe that this guy, what he was doing was to make an order. In other realities, Russian so-called Putin's tourists, we, our security services have to pick them up very quietly because it will, you know, ignite the call process much more. One by one, sometimes with weapons, sometimes with materials, sometimes just with the documents of Russian, Russian military, Russian army. So there is a mix of people. Those who are sincerely don't understand what's going on, sincerely believe the propaganda. The figures who just came to me recently and it's really bothering me. 39% of Ukrainians, I haven't the news, daily news about Ukraine, about their own life from Russian TV. I'm not talking about 92% of Ukrainians here to be encountered by TV. It's different. I'm talking to people taking every word of what's going on next to them, from the TV, from the next neighbor. That's, that's very interesting and it's very unique, I believe. You also have a chance to listen, to access to the United States media. At the same time, you are quite well understand what's going on next to you. Imagine people 39% of them thinking and seeing through the eyes of Moscow, Moscow TV. These people seriously don't understand what's going on. They seriously believe that there are neo-Nazis who took over the power in Kiev and they're coming. I was just to give you an example how it is working. The mayor of one of the cities was talking to the crowd and he was using two examples just to tell them how better the European Union is. First example, that they're making cash flows out to Ukrainian women in Europe. Second one, that a million army of neo-Nazis was just stolen by brave Donetsk region people from entering Donetsk, a million. And both of these states were welcomed by the crowd. I'd like the women to part more in this California. You know how seriously you have to be valued. You know how seriously you have to be open for this sort of propaganda even to take it seriously and say come on, we're just talking about it. Next question. Yes, Ines? Hi, I'm Stephen Dump from the University of Geneva. I was wondering, as Switzerland is making a lot of great efforts to try and get some of the money that's been laundered into the country by some of the main figures in this movement. But I was wondering if you could comment a bit on that, if you think the money will be recovered and what are the plans for it? Thank you. You know what, I will take a close example, Canada. Canada already introduced the law signed in the law of 19% of Ukrainian previous Ukrainian government with an idea this time, not just to locate this movement, not just to freeze, but if they are located here to return to Ukrainian economy. That's different from what we saw like 10 years ago when one of our corrupted politicians, Prime Minister at the time was picked up by FBI and he is now still in California and in jail. Unfortunately, these funds were not returned to Ukrainian economy and being seized by American authorities. This time we tried to be clever and we talked before and the ideas to fight and to repatriate. Canada, European Union, United States, and some other countries on bilateral agreements that are doing it. Hopefully they will find, I still wait to hear the results. Hopefully they will be able to find this money. It's not easy to understand, but we will count in on at least some of them. Hi, thank you for joining us today. I'm a remorse and I'm an alumni from the Northern Patterson School of International Affairs. As you mentioned, energy security is a primary concern to both Ukraine and the European Union. Although there are a number of options on the table regarding supplementing natural gas supplies, it seems unclear at this point exactly how that can be done and who will be involved. I'm a quote from Whitney Stanko where she argues that spurred by Russia's takeover of Crimea, we believe the foreign policy arguments in favor of energy exports are gaining momentum on Capitol Hill. Nevertheless, it remains unlikely that Congress will coalesce around the plan on liquid natural gas exports and highly unlikely that Congress will act on crude exports in the near term. So given that you have these barriers to supplementing this energy shortage, what do you envision Canada's role to be? During your interview several weeks ago on the CBC, you implied that Prime Minister Harper's visit was not just to show him support, but an opportunity to enhance specific arrangements and agreements. I don't know if you can answer this, but was there any discussion on Canada's role as a natural resource supplier? If not on the expertise exchange, how does that help our relationship going forward? Thank you very much. Thank you. You know that we are putting a lot of hope on the share of gas. We are currently producing a third of the natural gas ourselves, but we are also producing one of the biggest items on our expert list is the fertilizers. Mostly they are taking the gas as the pipeline. So that's not about burning it and people are thinking, why don't you burn less? Yes, we can burn less, but it's not about this. We are using this gas to create the fertilizer. So we'll be able to sell less, to expert less. So that's the whole vicious circle. At the same time, what we hope to have is the share of gas as our friends in Pond are doing, and we are sharing the same geological structure. We believe if they were able to find, we will be able to find. We're now exporting it to two fields, two international companies, Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil, United States ExxonMobil are now they want the tender and now exporting the gas and trying to find and understand whether it is good for business or not. In this particular business, we see the Canadians right away. And we have, there are Canadian companies which can provide their expertise in how to deal with share of gas or be used as a subcontract. So they are doing it, it's already set and done. Another one is about the really LNG bringing to Ukraine. You know the LNG working this strange way that you can transport it for the short distance, which is very logical, but that's how it works in the business. By this price we have now is becoming feasible, economically feasible, to bring the gas from Canada and the United States. They will be ready to export around two, three years both Canada and the United States and we believe that it can be done. If it is done, honestly we have to think how to get the gas to Ukraine, how to make our friends from Turkey to allow our tankers to go through, which is not very easy. How to use the system's pipeline system, which are already existing, or to build new ones. How to get this gas up, up north to Ukraine. That's another question and believe me we are dealing with it right now. Thank you. Antonis Klasny, I work here in Ottawa speaking in personal capacity. Ambassador, let's talk about the May 25th election, a very important election. I'm wondering, is Ukraine planning to invite international observers, for example, to help out countries like Canada, some large delegations. And also a second question, if you have time. What can landmines in countries or out, you know, countries that are interested in Ukraine's future, such as Canada, what can they do today, tomorrow, in the short term, to help out with this crisis? Dr, thank you very much. Thank you. Elections of 25th. Canada actually said twice, what a record of sending the biggest of the nation. So when I talked two weeks ago of this Prime Minister, he mentioned that I'm not going to be there, but let's see. So we hope that the last time it was 500 people, it's considerably more. And it's considered two big, big jugs. The one is Galneta and Aswan, supported by the Ukrainian community, which is doubling the number of observers. Again, Ukraine is a pretty big country by itself. This, even this big number, it's not enough to cover all the polling stations. But I understand the observers are becoming much more clever. They are coming to places they knew before, had problems over there. They know how to observe, how to pick up all the small and big things. And I have to tell you that Ukraine is, because sometimes we are shortening this cycle in 2004 and now, it allows us to make more cycles and the society is maturing much, much faster. What I'm bringing, where I'm bringing it, we are sort of trying to make the system fair, not because people immediately turn and it's becoming fair, no, because we are having the political competition. And then people do not know who will be their boss next day. They're becoming immediately very sort of loyal Biden citizens. And this is a very good sign, because in Canada, for example, over 200 years you went through ups and downs, we just had 20 years to decays, which is, I mean the situation is different. Imagine in 20 years we came from the system where we have just one party, one newspaper, one TV channel, to the 80 parties in the parliament and 15 people, candidates for the president. Today we refused one very particular candidate, Darth Vader. The guy changed his name to Darth Vader. The government, all including the government, and came to and then put in the raising documents. We had some lawyers had to work out to, you know, to sort of derail the idea. But the guy was serious. So now we have around 15 of them, which is, you know, now this case is good because we have two million, two million grievances you have to put on a table when you're trying to get in the parliamentary, in the presidential elections. If you are out of the post, at the end, the money stays with the, with the government budget. By this we are reaching, anybody wants to become a great president? Please, by all means, just two million grievances about the help of, of Canada to Ukraine. Some things I already mentioned. There are 200 millions through the, through the IMF, another million to National Bank. To 20 millions a year we are receiving as a technical assistance. That's by the way, the only European country who is still in the program of SIDA. Over all the 20 to 23 years, it's mounted up to $410 million. Military exercises. We, this year we'll have seven exercises in a half of them. Grenadiers will take place on Ukraine and so on, and they will educate Ukrainian military officers here for the peacekeeping languages. There are medicines. I don't want to, to skip any. I don't want to offend anybody. But believe me, there are so many things university degrees. A lot, a lot of things. Thank you. As you know, I've been in and out of your country since 1991 and most recently in the last two years. One of the important, perhaps losses is the ports in the Crimea that are open 12 months of the year. It's used as a strategic point and after the loss of the Baltic fleet, Belmys News and Black Sea fleet would be paramount. So it's a question of what your plans are for shipment afterwards. And then the second question is everybody is very focused on energy as they should be. But when I was in Ukraine in the last couple of years, one of the statistics from 2010 is that you have 43 million hectares of arable land. Major exports of grain, mostly wheat, but also feed grain. Some barley go to them in mostly Russia. I was wondering about agricultural economic reform. Ports, ports are strategic importance and Ukrainian ports are the only so-called world water ports. As with the big Soviet empire, Russian Empire, Soviet Union, their just support was the only port which is opened for navigation the whole year. To lose this port it was, I mean, greatest advantage for the Soviet Union, for the Russian Empire. And sometimes port of Odessa was responsible of 11% of the whole wealth of Russian Empire over some 200 years old. This Odessa port is on the mainland. In Crimea we do have ports, mostly military ports, naval ports. They are important to us, not as much as Odessa port, which is a number of ports scattered around the Black Sea banks of Ukraine mainland territory. To lose that it would be a real disaster. We can live without ports in Crimea, but Odessa port is extremely important to us. That's why we're hearing that Russia and France are going to liberate the east and southern part of Ukraine because that's important. And I have to remind you the, for example, meters in fact, the Crimea is supplied by Ukrainian water, by mainland water. We have 400 kilometers channel going from the major river to Crimea to supply 82% of water. They cancel out without this water. Niza agriculture, not just domestic consumption. So they depend on this water on energy. What we decided at some time where we are continuing seriously, how can we, how can we supply these people with our water? And then we decided just to open it was 19th of March. We had the season of opening the channel. We just opened it. We can deprive people from this water. Regardless of what they choose as, whether they choose to say in Russia or in Ukraine. About the agriculture, just a couple of words. You're right. And on some of the things we are, it's like, back with, I know it's not very important, popular here, but in our part of the world, very, very important. That's, you bring us number one exporter in the world. Sunflower or number one. Weak, number four. So we are, we are in a very serious business in agriculture. And the most important thing is how to privatize the land or the land. This, this very painful issue we're still not in the position to resolve it right now. We know that it's important for the business. It's not there yet. What we are considering now is how to help business, micro-creating, all the things, transportation, how to build up with the abilities of this, of the farms, how to, how to bring people to this, you know, historical understanding of value of this land. We do possess the strength of the black soil, soils in the world. And we check with this, gross gift. And we're trying to, to make it not maximum today. I probably have to take it from Carlson University. Ambassador, thank you very much for all these detail answers. Part of my own ancestry goes back to the Ukraine. During the height of the Cold War, when a lot of new states were emerging, they were forced to choose one side or the other. But many chose not to do so and emerged as not aligned and then benefited from both sides. Why has it been a situation where for the Ukraine is either or, instead of both Europe and Russia in the past and assuming we survive this crisis period? Is there a possibility that in the future the Ukraine will end up being a partner of both Russia and Europe? We can change our geography. We are attached to this piece of land and there is nothing we can do nor our, our neighbors. And that's we will be there and we will reset our relations with Russia as soon as the possibility is open. That's, that's quite understandable. At the same time, each and every time I hear about taking or not taking lines is I have to remind you that in our surrounding in our neighborhood surround no, no bloc countries, more or less. Russia itself had a part of the bloc of the military bloc. Every time they ask us why would you go for any military bloc? Why would you stay no bloc? Yes, it's a good question from the country which is already part of the bloc. Stashken Park. So there from one side is NATO from the other side is Stashken Park and everybody asking so why would you stay neutral sort of? But history is saying for example take the neutrality of of Austria which been breached twice by Germans during World War II. In interesting, interesting fact why we've never been neutral in our constitutional oil documents? We never had it. Regardless of despite all the things where you might hear we never had this part of the constitution. Because each and every time we were considering neutrality even theoretically we have to think what we will do with Russian base on our territory. Because you can be neutral having somebody else military base. Now the decision is all by Russians. We don't have any base on our territory because this territory belongs at least in their hands to Russian themselves. So immediately today they restarted this conversation. So guys why would you be neutral? Because before we were talking about non bloc which you know there is no such thing in the non bloc state. It's very difficult to to even address what you mean. You're not aligned to any bloc and how it is how it is written in the in the international documents how it can be protected defended as as a status itself. For maybe I'm wrong guy to ask because I was working for Ukrainian NATO negotiations team and I believe in what was saying that Ukraine has to be a part of the European nations family those in European Union and NATO. Some people might bring a better example like I've been hearing things like why would you want to go behind the bars of NATO and throw the bear from it? It's not our idea. We don't want to poke anybody we just want to be as safe as those who are inside NATO or inside European Union. We don't want at the same time we don't want to go to touch impact because we've been before towards attack. And we see even now when between Belarus and Russia it was milk war some two years ago. And Belarus was chairman of the Tashkent Pak at the time. They wanted to have the military exercises and Belarus because they've been so so angry by Russian war the trade war decided not to have you know exercises happened anyway. So that's so much about the way of running this business. It's not like NATO which is consensus built organization although in the books it is consensus built but that's that's example of whether it will be respected this consensus building system or not. Last question. Thank you Your Excellency it will be a hard lighted question for you. So I hope you're enjoying kind of the new winter it's your second winter and we all coming from hibernation here. So imagine that you are hibernated here in Canada and you wake up. Sorry if I've been the same way. But you wake up science can do it in 10 years and what kind of Ukraine you would like to wake up in. Give us a few what kind of Ukraine you should report. Thank you. It's a good question. It's not because you have Polish roots. Because my friend Ambassador Poland here present but that's more or less what we see Ukraine is. More or less by territory by population it's very close mentally historically also with what a couple of times because we're all very senior. But I believe that's very good example if we are not going in details that's more or less same we would try to do. We know not to complicate. I believe that Poland also went through quite painful process and they're still running in some obstacles and problems. But that's more than the system we can expect to be in 10 years when later on I don't know maybe some maybe Kenny will see. Thank you. I would like to ask Canada's former ambassador to Russia and to Ukraine Christopher Westall to thank our ambassador. Thank you Larry. Excellent seas and ladies and gentlemen and excellent sea. It's a great pleasure for me to have a chance to thank you. I thank you for your speech. I thank you for those answers. You heard us all riveted and listening very carefully. I learned I'm sure we all did. But I want to thank you for more than that. I have been watching the head's admission ambassadors and high commissioners and senior diplomats and many here have also been watching a head's admission reform. I've been doing it for 40 years and I was one myself for quite a while. And I have been watching your performance day after day now for three months every day. And I was aware of it before that. I know you've been doing 14 months and I know you were here four years before you're uniquely qualified for this job. But I can say having seen you on the television regularly having seen you on the front pages having met with you having imagined the almost unimaginable complexity of the circumstances that you dealt with over these 14 months and particularly the last four if one one stops to think of the complexities of the developments at home and the gradual disintegration of faith in the government and then a sudden unexpected change in the government and you are representing that country throughout and then the change and the complexity of your audience here in Canada where there are a million people with relatives and ancestors in Ukraine and there are many millions including me and many others who have been taking this crisis to heart for four months now and watching it. I can say in all in all of that time that I've been aware of what ambassadors are responsible for your performance has been one of the finest that I've ever witnessed and I think that it's very timely that that example be now in this city and that that example of what a diplomat can be and must be when he must rise to an occasion as I say probably more complex and daunting than ever I can imagine a Canadian diplomat has faced we have not had such tumult on the home front to represent and we have not had the circumstances that you have in terms of of who you represent now listen I could go on I don't want it too much but I want to thank you for that performance I want to thank you for that example of professional excellence a very timely example I also just want to thank you for the years you spent here you're 20 years into a career you have a stunning CV you've got much more time to go than you yet spent and you're already in a leading an important position of responsibility in your country and I'm sure that you will have more and I wish you well enough I know I speak for everyone here in thanking you for what you've done this evening here and what you've been doing for your people with such excellence for the last 14 months so truly thank you this is the last act before we go to the adjacent room for a reception where you'll be able to have a chat with the master best cycle but last I would like to ask the director of the Norman Patterson School of International Affairs Dr. Dane Rollins to present a souvenir this evening to our ambassador so I'm sure you don't need a reminder of these times that you're placing but I think this is a token of our appreciation for having taken time under the special uh we'd like to present you with that as a reminder of your benefit to grant us your guidance thank you please let's go to for a grant we have a four I'm sorry it's been a long time I'll have to work on it I'll have to find a way to do it Jason alright I'd hope to hear lastly from our director of the Marvious I'll get a drink him in please he's a guest of mine there you're right you've got too much to do it's a work a drink what is a drink I'll take one oh all right I have a cup like a cheers to that night ok let's our thank you your