Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appointed ethnically Ukrainian former deputy Prime Minister of Canada Chrystia Freeland as his new economic advisor on Sunday.
Chrystia Freeland – a sitting Liberal Member of Parliament in Canada and the country’s Special Representative for the Reconstruction of Ukraine, who has previously faced controversy over her own family’s difficult ancestral ties to Ukraine – has been appointed as an economics advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Announcing the position, Zelensky hailed Freeland’s “extensive experience in attracting investment and implementing economic transformations.”
The Ukrainian president said in his statement:
Right now, Ukraine needs to strengthen its internal resilience – both for the sake of Ukraine’s recovery if diplomacy delivers results as swiftly as possible, and to reinforce our defense if, because of delays by our partners, it takes longer to bring this war to an end.
Politico noted the appointment is part of Zelensky’s “reboot” of his office, although it did so without mentioning this refresh is happening because several prominent government members have resigned or been removed amid corruption investigations.
Another noteworthy development in this bid to fix his government is Zelensky having a sit-down with formerly ousted Foreign Affairs chief Dmytro Kuleba. Forced out in 2024, just last month Kuleba made headlines by stating his belief that his ouster was prompted by an opinion poll showing him one percentage point more popular in Ukraine than President Zelensky.
Prominent globalist Freeland has spent the past decade shuffling between practically every job in the Canadian government except one, and her bid last year to become prime minister was seen as having contributed to the downfall of her long-time boss, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Freeland’s pitch for leadership included ranting against Trump’s tariffs – even while threatening to retaliate with her own – and calling the United States a “threat” against which Canada needed nuclear protection.
Canada has a long relationship with Ukraine but it is an occasionally difficult one, given the relocation of many Ukrainian refugees opposed to the Soviet Union to Canada during and after the Second World War. Inevitably, many of these were Ukrainian Nazi collaborators.
This is not ancient history and has made headlines several times in recent years. Freeland, for instance, was one of those who stood and applauded an elderly former member of a Ukrainian Nazi division, Yaroslav Hunka, in the Canadian Parliament in 2023. She later called this an honest mistake and said the incident had been weaponised by Vladimir Putin in a bid to create fake news.
This defence was also deployed by Freeland in a bid to cover up her own family’s Ukrainian-Nazi past, with Russian disinformation initially cited when her grandfather’s role as a Ukrainian Nazi-collaborating newspaper propagandist. Freeland later admitted that she had, in fact, known about this family link since the 1990s.