Canada appoints new ambassador to Russia amid strained relations

Longtime Canadian diplomat Sarah Taylor is replacing Alison LeClaire as ambassador to Russia, Global Affairs Canada announced Wednesday.

Her appointment comes as Canada has suspended its bilateral co-operation with Russia since the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, only maintaining limited engagement with Russia in “multilateral forums,” a press release says.

Taylor will continue to work with Canada’s allies and partners in her new role “to hold Russia to account for its actions,” it says.

“Diplomats are our eyes and ears on the ground and at a time when Russia’s illegal and unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine continues to have major impacts around the globe, Canada must maintain and strengthen its diplomatic network in the region,” said Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, who made the official announcement regarding Taylor’s appointment.

“I offer my most sincere thanks to Alison LeClaire, who has done a tremendous job in representing Canada in the region, and I congratulate Sarah Taylor, who will continue this important work over the coming years.”

Taylor was previously the ambassador of Canada to Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, beginning in 2020, and was the former deputy head of mission in Beijing.

LeClaire had been ambassador to Russia since 2020.

1:04 Moscow claims West is waging war on Russia ‘until the last Ukrainian’

A new internal military report obtained by Global News suggests that Canada’s military must rapidly retool to defend against hostile nations — particularly Russia and China — that already “consider themselves to be at war with the West.”

The document called for a drastic reimagining of how the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) views warfare ahead of the Liberal government’s long-awaited defence policy update, and while the CAF’s top brass are warning they are not prepared to properly address modern threats.

“We must remember that Russia and China do not differentiate between peace and war,” Gen. Wayne Eyre, Canada’s chief of the defence staff, wrote in the foreword to the document.

“We must therefore counter the daily actions of our adversaries to deny them incremental gains and to preserve the rules-based international order.”

— with files from Global News’ Alex Boutilier and Mercedes Stephenson.