Ukraine Crisis
The War in Ukraine
The Latvian National Federation in Canada stands with Ukraine and calls on the Latvian community to join the fight against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Our parents and grandparents became refugees when they fled as the second Soviet invasion of Latvia began in 1944. They found a safe harbour in Canada but also insisted that we learn from their experiences and not forget the lessons of World War II. They feared Russia for the rest of their lives and today we see just how justified they were.
The Latvian community in Canada also has a role to play and our advocacy and activism are of tremendous importance. Please follow this page to find out where to join #Stand with Ukraine rallies and use these resources to learn to better understand today’s tragic events. Other resources will also be posted as they become available.
Dainis Īvāns, the Popular Front leader who galvanized the Latvian nation in the 1980s, said on February 25, 2022: “We must help. Ukrainians are sacrificing themselves so that 1940 doesn’t come for us [once again] with mass deportations, repressions, and genocide.” [Mums jāiet palīgā. Ukraiņi patlaban ziedojas, lai mums nepienāktu 1940. gads ar masu deportācijām, represijām un genocīdu.] Read Īvāns’ full address in Latvian at lsm.lv.
Please write to us at politika@lnak.org with your feedback and suggestions as we build this page
Donate
Doctors Without Borders Our Work in Ukraine
Donate to a variety of Ukraine Emergency Relief Efforts via CanadaHelps.org
Ukrainian Canadian Congress Toronto Branch (Help Ukrainians Displaced by War Settle in Toronto)
World Central Kitchen #Chefs for Ukraine
Ziedot.lv Ukrainas cilvēkiem!
Thank your MP for Canada’s Support of Latvia and Ukraine
It is vital that Members of Parliament and the Government hear from their constituents. Please contact them and thank them for what Canada has done and urge them to do more.
- Find your Member of Parliament’s contact information on the House of Commons website.
- Send them an email, write a letter, call, or drop into their constituency office.
- Express your thanks for Canada’s commitment to NATO and the Canadian military contingent in Latvia.
- Urge Canada to stay strong on Ukraine—the future of the democratic world order is at stake.
- Email is an acceptable way to communicate with your MP; letters may be sent by mail to any Member of Parliament postage-free (House of Commons, Ottawa ON K1A 0A6).
- Consider using one of the sample letters below as a template.
- Make your appeal personal and concise.
- Include your full name, address, and telephone number—this is particularly important when contacting your own MP. You are much likelier to receive a response if you are a constituent.
Please copy the Latvian National Federation in Canada on your correspondence (politika@lnak.org) and keep us informed of the responses you receive.
Please consider these guidelines on How to write to your MP from Results Canada.
See a UCC sample letter here. See more sample letters at garaspeks.wordpress.com.
Please also consider writing to the following:
- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
- Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland
- Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly
- National Defence Minister Bill Blair
- Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre
- NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh
- Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet
- Green Party Parliamentary Leader Elizabeth May
- Canadian NATO Parliamentary Association Vice-Chairs Julie Dzerowicz, MP, and Cheryl Gallant, MP
Articles and Reading
Recent Articles
Gordon F. Sander. The Cold War Mystery the U.S. Military Can’t Afford to Forget. Politico, April 9, 2023.
Masood Farivar. Calls Grow for Tribunal for Russia’s ‘Crime of Aggression’. Voice of America, February 21, 2023
Geoffrey York and Stephen Chase. After fleeing to Latvia, exiled Russian journalists deal with how to cut through the Kremlin’s propaganda. The Globe and Mail, June 5, 2022.
Olesya Khromeychuk. Putin Says Ukraine Doesn’t Exist. That’s Why He’s Trying to Destroy It. New York Times, November 1, 2022.
Geoffrey York. In Latvia, the battle over a Soviet monument sparks tensions across the Baltic country. The Globe and Mail, May 31, 2022.
Juris Kaža, No more Russia for the rest of the 21st century? Medium, April 13, 2022.
Masha Gessen, The Holocaust Memorial Undone By Another War. Letter from Kiev, The New Yorker, April 11, 2022.
Lionel Sander, Long before Ukrainian deportations, Soviets abducted Baltic citizens. The Washington Post, April 2, 2022.
Daniel Victor, How to Avoid Sharing Misinformation on the War in Ukraine, New York Times, March 21, 2022.
Katherine Schulten, Michael Gonchar, Jeremy Engle, Teaching Resources to Help Students Make Sense of the War in Ukraine, New York Times, March March 16, 2022.
Cathrin Gilbert. Interview with Volodymyr Zelensky. The Threat of Nuclear War is a Bluff. Die Zeit (English), March 9, 2022.
Vladislav Davidzon, Jewish Ukraine Fights Nazi Russia. The Tablet, March 4, 2022.
Ilya Kaminsky and Selected by Victoria Chang, Poem: We Lived Happily During the War, New York Times, March 3, 2022.
Masha Gessen, Russia Blocks Its Last Independent Television Channel, The New Yorker, March 2, 2022.
Anne Applebaum, The Impossible Suddenly Became Possible: When Russia invaded Ukraine, the West’s assumptions about the world became unsustainable. The Atlantic, March 1, 2022.
Yuval Noah Harari, Why Vladimir Putin has already lost this war, The Guardian, February 28, 2022.
Nicole Bogart, Cognitive warfare: Why disinformation is Russia’s weapon of choice in the war on Ukraine. CTVNew.ca, February 25, 2022.
How to pronounce and spell ‘Kyiv’, and why it matters. The Guardian, February 25, 2022.
Ian Smith, The Disinformation War: The falsehoods about the Ukraine invasion and how to stop spreading them. euronews.next, February 25, 2022.
Dan Bilefsky, Richard Pérez-Peña, and Eric Nagourney, The Roots of Ukraine’s War: How the Crisis Developed. New York Times, February 25, 2022.
Melinda Wenner Moyer, How to Talk to Kids About Ukraine. New York Times, February 25, 2022.
In videos, photos, and maps, how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is unfolding on the ground. Washington Post, February 25, 2022. (updated daily)
Naomi Schalit, Russia Invades Ukraine — 5 essential reads from experts. The Conversation, February 24, 2022.
Matt Gurney, Huh, who’d have guessed. It turns out we needed more Cold War thinking. The Line, February 24, 2022.
The New Yorker, Russia’s War on Ukraine, in Context. The New Yorker, February 24, 2022.
Anne Applebaum, Calamity Again. No nation is forced to repeat its past. But something familiar is taking place in Ukraine. The Atlantic, February 23, 2022.
Anne Applebaum, The Reason Putin Would Risk War. He is threatening to invade Ukraine because he wants democracy to fail—and not just in that country. The Atlantic. February 3, 2022.
Understanding Cognitive Warfare and Deconstructing Russian Lies
Jessikka Aro, Putin’s Trolls: On the Frontlines of Russia’s Information War Against the World. Ig Books, 2022.
Statement on the War in Ukraine by Scholars of Genocide, Nazism and World War II. Jewish Journal, undated.
Enzo Dimatteo, Russian disinformation campaign rallies Canada’s far-right enemy within against Ukraine. NOW Magazine, February 25, 2022.
Russia’s Hybrid War Against Ukraine. Deutsche Welle, February 22, 2022.
Office of the Spokesperson, Fact vs. Fiction: Russian Disinformation on Ukraine. U.S. Department of State, January 20, 2022.
Mohamed Suliman, The Destabilization Experiment. Why Russia is using Facebook to launch disinformation campaigns in Sudan. Rest of World, November 24, 2021.
Christopher Paul, Miriam Matthews, The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model. Why It Might Work and Options to Counter It. Rand Corporation, 2016.
Further Reading
Andrejs Plakans. The Reluctant Exiles: Latvians in the West After World War II. Leiden: Brill, 2021.
Catherine Belton, Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took the West. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020.
Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom. New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2018.
Anne Applebaum. Red Famine: Stalin’ s War on Ukraine. Toronto: Signal, 2018
Masha Gessen, The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. New York: Riverhead Books, 2017.
Bill Browder, Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015
Andres Kasekamp, A History of the Baltic States. Houndmills, Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Olga Onuch and Henry Hale, The Zelensky Effect. New York: Oxford, 2022.
Serhii Plokhy, The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History. Norton, 2023.
Serhii Plokhy, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine. New York: Basic Books, 2021.
Andrejs Plakans, A Concise History of the Baltic States. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books, 2010.
Yermolenko, Volodymyr (ed.) Ukraine in Histories and Stories: Essays by Ukrainian intellectuals. Internews Ukraine and UkraineWorld, 2022. Free download is available on the UkraineWorld website.
Resources
Websites
Amnesty International Ukraine Page
Canada’s Engagement in Ukraine
Canada’s Response to the Crisis in Ukraine
CERES YouTube Channel (Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy)
Russia, Ukraine & International Law: On Occupation, Armed Conflict and Human Rights. (Human Rights Watch)
The Joint Baltic American National Committee (JBANC)
Kiel Institute for the World Economy Subject Dossier War Against Ukraine
Kiel Institute for the World Economy Ukraine Support Tracker
MacDonald-Laurier Institute Foreign Policy Program
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence
Russia Invaded Ukraine (official website of Ukraine)
*** Russia-Ukraine War: Info and Ways to Help
UpNorth News from the Coolest Places on Earth Since 2003
World Federation of Free Latvians (PBLA–Latvian only)
Media
Žurnāls IR (in Latvian)
UATV English (Ukrainian state foreign language broadcaster)
UkraineWorld An English-language multimedia project about Ukraine run by Internews Ukraine.
Washington Post Telegram channel
Podcasts
Ārskats (In Latvian from IR Magazine focussing on world events with Pauls Raudseps, Aivars Ozoliņš, and Tomass Pildegovičs)
BBC News Ukrainecast
Canadaland #760 Russia’s Weapons of Mass Deception
The Eastern Border with Kristaps Andrejsons (in English)
- March 8, 2022, Fiona Hill on the War Putin is Really Fighting
- March 11, 2022, Masha Gessen: Putin is “Profoundly Anti-Modern”
- March 15, 2022, Timothy Snyder on the Myths that Blinded the West to Putin’s Plans
- June 2, 2023, Fareed Zakaria on Where Russia’s War in Ukraine Stands
- June 30, 2023, Stephen Kotkin on What’s Really Going On in Russia
BBC HARDtalk
- August 23, 2022, Krišjānis Kariņš, Latvian PM: Ukraine in a sense is fighting our war
Krustpunktā (in Latvian)
New Books in Eastern European Studies
- May 12, 2023, Serhii Plokhy, The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History
Šķiltava (in Latvian with Pauls Raudseps, Aivars Ozoliņš, and guests)
Sway March 10, 2022, Anne Neuberger: Are We Ready for Putin’s Cyber War?
UkraineWorld Explaining Ukraine
Yale University History Course The Making of Modern Ukraine (Timothy Snyder)
YouTube
War Diaries with Olexiy Arestovich (former Ukrainian presidential advisor) and Mark Feygin (Russian opposition journalist) with English translation #PrivateerStation (three episodes/week)
Serhii Plokhii and Timothy Snyder, The War in Ukraine and Universal Values, IWM Vienna, March 11, 2022. (Two historians of Ukraine in conversation)
Join an ad hoc group of Canadian Latvians on Whatsapp “Atbalsts Ukrainai”
Contact politika@lnak.org to join or Kaspars Reinis at 647-202-4819.
People to Follow
Edgars Rinkēvičs (@edgarsrinkevics), Krišjānis Kariņš (@krisjaniskarins), @Pabriks, @janis_sarts, Volodymyr Zelensky (@ZelenskyyUa) Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum), Timothy Snyder (@TimothyDSnyder), Toomas Hendrik Ilves (@IlvesToomas), Marcus Kolga (@kolga), Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63), David Frum (@davidfrum), Matt Gurney (@mattgurney), Andrew Coyne (@acoyne), Masha Gessen (@mashagessen), Bill Browder (@Billbrowder), Bob Rae (@BobRae48), Pauls Raudseps (@raudseps), Ieva Vārna (@Ieva_Varna), Nellija Ločmele (@NellijaL), Inga Spriņģe (@IngaSpringe), Kristīne Garklāva (@kristine.garklava), Heather Cox Richardson (@HC_Richardson), Vladislav Davidzon (@VladDavidzon), Jane Lytvynenko (@JaneLytv), Ilia Ponomarenko (@IAPonomarenko), José Andrés (@chefjoseandres), @Jessikka Aro, NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (@STRATCOMCOE), @VeikoSpolitis, @ukraine_world, @privateerstation
Substack
Timothy Snyder: Thinking about … Opening the future by understanding the past
