WATCH ABOVE: Russian Ambassador to Canada says if Kyiv doesn’t start negotiations with rebels to reshape Ukraine it could face a ‘humiliating military defeat.’
While Ukrainians were asking Prime Minister Stephen Harper for help with visas and weapons this weekend, Russia’s ambassador to Canada offered starkly different advice for the role Canada should play in the European conflict.
That arrangement, the ambassador said, would include “deep constitutional reform” and instituting Russian as an official language.
WATCH: Russian ambassador comments on what Canada should do in Ukraine
As it stands, Ukrainian leaders still “harbour the illusion” they can win a military conflict, Darchiev said, adding that sort of thinking “could only lead to another humiliating defeat.”
Reaching out to Prime Minister Stephen Harper during his visit to Ukraine this weekend, leaders there asked him to allow more Ukrainians to come to Canada and to push the West to arm their military and fight their Russian aggressors.
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Harper left Kyiv promising to make the plight of Ukraine in its fight against Russian-backed rebels a top G7 priority.
Harper’s third visit to the country in a little more than a year came amid a major flare up of violence in Ukraine’s restive east.
That has again raised the issue of whether the West ought to be arming Ukraine’s military to help it better defend against Russian-backed rebels.
Harper reiterated his answer from earlier in the week that the decision to arm Ukrainian forces would only be taken in conjunction with Western allies. The prime minister said he expected the issue to be discussed at the G7 leaders summit that opened Sunday in Germany.
Darchiev has yet to meet with Harper since Moscow appointed him to his post in Canada late last year.
It’s no exaggeration to say that not since the depths of the Cold War have relations between Canada and Russia been as frosty. All but the lowest levels of discussion between Moscow and Ottawa have been cut off. Harper has gone so far as to say that, as long as Vladimir Putin is the president of Russia, the country won’t be allowed back into the G7.
For his part, Darchiev said he believes dialogue is the cornerstone to diplomacy.
“In this particular case, silence is not golden,” he said on the eve of Harper’s trip to Ukraine and then the G7 summit in Germany.
Several times throughout the interview with Tom Clark, Darchiev suggested Western reports on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine aren’t accurate.
“There are very conflicting reports from both sides, and the other the other side of the story is heavily underreported in this country and in the West in general,” he said.
“The other side of the story is the brutal shelling of presidential areas of the Donetsk, and with many civilians killed, children killed … and the very root of the problem is that there is no direct dialogue between the two parties.”
However frosty the relations get, though, Darchiev said there is no chance Russia and the West will end up in armed conflict.
“Not under any circumstances, because this would mean a third world war and nobody wants war,” he said.
“We need to sit together and have a very serious, honest dialogue … on new security infrastructure in the Euro-Atlantic region. That is what should be done, and done immediately.”
With files from The Canadian Press
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