Andrea Chandler talks to CTV News about the ongoing situation in Ukraine. With the Canadian government pulling diplomats’ families out of Ukraine, and with Russian military buildup along the border, how do we evaluate Putin’s stance? Where is the provocation coming from? What other options are at his disposal?
Professor Chandler explains more on this subject in the story “Why Now? What Vladimir Putin Has to Gain in a War with Ukraine?”
“There was some very dramatic rhetoric by Mr. Putin about Ukraine that raised a lot of eyebrows,” says Professor Andrea Chandler, a fluent Russian speaker and expert on the region. “He implied that the eastern part of Ukraine was historically part of Russia and that Ukraine only existed because it had been created as a republic in Soviet times. That indicated that he doesn’t respect Ukrainian sovereignty and is disparaging of Ukraine’s existence as its own culture and its own nation.”