OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government said it will be giving some of its battle tanks to Ukraine despite the fact the Canada’s own military has aging equipment and is woefully underfunded compared to some of its allies.
On January 26, Canada’s Defence Minister Anita Anand announced that Canada will be gifting Ukraine four of its 82 German-made Leopard 2 battle tanks, along with the training and resources to use them. The tanks are expected to be delivered to Ukraine sometime later this year.
Anand was in Ukraine in early January, which is when she was asked by her Ukrainian counterpart Oleksii Reznikov for the tanks.
Last Thursday, Anand said that “[Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy has specifically asked for tanks,” and that “This donation, combined with the contributions of its allies and partners, will significantly help the armed forces of Ukraine as they fight heroically to defend their nation’s freedom and sovereignty.”
She noted that there could be further donations in the coming months of military equipment to Ukraine.
The Russian Kremlin said that NATO countries giving tanks to Ukraine means they are in “direct involvement” in the war.
“Everything that the alliance and the capitals I mentioned are doing is seen as direct involvement in the conflict. We see that this is growing,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.
The donation of tanks to Ukraine comes after the Canadian government under Trudeau announced in early January that it would buy Ukraine a $406 million air defense system, even though Canada’s own military has been asking for the same system since 2012 to no avail.
The Trudeau Liberals announced in November of 2022 that it will send 200 armored vehicles to Ukraine by this summer, as part of a $500 million package.
Overall, the Trudeau government says it has since early 2022 committed over $5 billion “in direct financial, military, humanitarian, and other assistance to Ukraine.”
This massive expenditure of taxpayer dollars for a foreign nation’s army comes despite the fact that the federal government has been criticized for continually underfunding its own military, with even some former Liberal MPs calling out the Trudeau government.
After hearing of the news Canada was buying the air defense system for Ukraine, former Liberal MP and retired army commander Andrew Leslie who characterized his reactions as “‘Excellent, we’re buying this for Ukraine’ to ‘Now, why the hell aren’t you buying it for Canada?”‘
LifeSiteNews has reported extensively on the Ukraine-Russia conflict, most notably since it escalated after Russian troops went into many parts of Ukraine in February 2022.
The escalation in the war between Russia and Ukraine has caused a major humanitarian crisis, with millions of people forced to flee their homes.
The war has also seen propaganda from both sides take center stage, and has caused anti-Russian sentiment to increase drastically worldwide.