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Scott Taylor: Military shoot themselves in the foot again

A recent Ottawa Citizen headline read, “Officer with Ukrainian unit linked to neo-Nazis received military training in Canada; Sources say Defence Minister David McGuinty was unaware the Azov Brigade soldier had been invited to RMC Saint-Jean.”

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While admittedly a tad on the wordy side, this revelation was somehow not as surprising as it should be.

According to the story, a non-commissioned officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s notorious Azov Brigade recently completed a leadership course at the College Militaire Royale in Quebec.

Those familiar with the operational taskings of the Canadian Armed Forces will be aware that Canada has been training the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) since 2016 as part of NATO’s Operation Reassurance. That training took place in Ukraine until the Russian invasion in February 2022, at which point the Canadian trainers were withdrawn.

After a brief suspension, the Canadian training of the AFU resumed albeit in the United Kingdom and Poland. That mission continues to this day and, thus far, Canada has trained some 30,000 AFU soldiers. So it is no shock that Canadians are training Ukrainians.

What makes this story newsworthy is that the Ukrainian on the three-week leadership course in Quebec is a member of the Azov Brigade.

This unit was founded as a militia in 2014 following the Maidan uprising in Kiev and the subsequent separatist clashes in the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine. The core element were soccer fans in the city of Mariupol, which sits astride........

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