Anja Karadeglija
National Post, Sept. 26, 2023
“The narrative of Canadians honouring a Nazi as a hero fits into multiple Russian regime narratives that are used to try to legitimize the horrors that Russia is committing in Ukraine.”
On Tuesday, a Russian embassy account posted online that Ukraine was issuing stamps with the face of Yaroslav Hunka, who received a standing ovation in The House of Commons before it was revealed he served in a Nazi unit during the Second World War.
The “completely false” post from Russia’s U.K. embassy uses a fabricated stamp and is an example of how Russia is already using the incident for its own purposes, said Marcus Kolga, senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
“Not only are they aggressively amplifying the facts, the unfortunate facts… but now they’re even fabricating images to cause further damage to Canada’s reputation using this incident,” Kolga said.
On Tuesday afternoon, Anthony Rota resigned as speaker of The House of Commons following the incident, which took place Friday during a visit to Ottawa by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Rota introduced the 98-year-old Hunka, who lives in his riding and was in The House gallery for Zelenskyy’s speech, as a “a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero.”
🇨🇦 The standing ovations in honour of an elderly Ukrainian Nazi at the Canadian Parliament became Ottawa’s instant disgrace and stirred worldwide outrage. ,.. [To read the full article, click here]