Most wanted fugitive in Canada arrested in Charlottetown, P.E.I.
The most wanted fugitive in Canada was arrested in Charlottetown, P.E.I., Tuesday night.
NATO allies reaffirmed their commitment to Ukraine on Tuesday saying that the war-torn nation will one day become a member of the world's largest security alliance, and promising more help -- from winter aid to artillery -- to help Ukraine's beleaguered armed forces to fight off Russia.
The pledges of support in Romania's capital, Bucharest, came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with NATO foreign ministers Tuesday to drum up urgently needed support aimed at ensuring that Moscow fails to defeat Ukraine as it bombards vital energy infrastructure.
"NATO's door is open," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said before chairing the meeting.
"Russia does not have a veto" on countries joining, he said in reference to the recent entry of North Macedonia and Montenegro into the security alliance. He said that Russian President Vladimir Putin "will get Finland and Sweden as NATO members" soon. The Nordic neighbors applied for membership in April, concerned that Russia might target them next.
"We stand by that, too, on membership for Ukraine," the former Norwegian prime minister said.
In essence, Stoltenberg repeated a vow made by NATO leaders in Bucharest in 2008 -- in the same sprawling Palace of the Parliament where the foreign ministers are meeting this week -- that Ukraine, and also Georgia, would join the alliance one day.
Some officials and analysts believe this move -- pressed on the NATO allies by former U.S. President George W. Bush -- was partly responsible for the war that Russia launched on Ukraine in February. Stoltenberg disagreed.
"President Putin cannot deny sovereign nations to make their own sovereign decisions that are not a threat to Russia," he said. "I think what he's afraid of is democracy and freedom, and that's the main challenge for him."
Beyond Ukraine's immediate needs, NATO wants to see how it can help the country longer-term, by upgrading its Soviet-era equipment to the alliance's modern standards and providing more military training. This will help Ukraine to join NATO more quickly, in the years after the war has ended.
Slovak Foreign Minister Rastislav Kacer said the allies must help Ukraine so that "the transition to full membership will be very smooth and easy" once both NATO and Kyiv are ready for accession talks.
Even so, Ukraine will not join NATO anytime soon. With the Crimean Peninsula annexed, and Russian troops and pro-Moscow separatists holding parts of the south and east, it's not clear what Ukraine's borders would even look like.
Many of NATO's 30 allies believe the focus now must solely be on defeating Russia, and Stoltenberg stressed that any attempt to move ahead on membership could divide them.
"We are in the midst of a war and therefore we should do nothing that can undermine the unity of allies to provide military, humanitarian, financial support to Ukraine, because we must prevent President Putin from winning," he said.
Some ministers made pledges of military support for Ukraine, others for financial and nonlethal aid.
Slovakia said that it was providing Ukraine with 30 armored personnel carriers and more artillery.
During the two-day meeting, Blinken will announce substantial U.S. aid for Ukraine's energy grid, U.S. officials said. Ukraine's network has been battered countrywide since early October by targeted Russian strikes, in what U.S. officials call a Russian campaign to weaponize the coming winter cold.
Estonia's foreign minister, Urmas Reinsalu, went a step further than most, calling on his NATO partners to pledge 1% of their GDP to Ukraine in military support, saying it would make "a strategic difference."
Most NATO allies, however, are struggling to spend 2% of GDP on their own defense budgets.
The ministers will hold a working dinner with their Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, on Tuesday evening.
The foreign ministers of NATO candidates Finland and Sweden are joining the talks. NATO is eager to add the two Nordic nations to the defensive forces lined up against Russia. Turkey and Hungary are the holdouts on ratifying their applications. The 28 other member nations have already done so.
Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom believes his country is well on track to satisfy Turkey's demands, along with Finland, in talks on a memorandum of understanding containing conditions that Ankara wants them to fulfil.
"Everything boils down to a dialogue. We believe that we are on a steady path towards reaching all the conditions laid down in the memorandum," he said.
The most wanted fugitive in Canada was arrested in Charlottetown, P.E.I., Tuesday night.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says he does not regret calling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau 'wacko,' and now his MPs are renewing calls for the House of Commons Speaker to resign, this time over ordering the Official Opposition leader to leave the chamber.
The highly contagious norovirus is spreading across Canada, with some symptoms overlapping with other viruses. CTVNews.ca spoke with a health expert to find out how you can tell you have norovirus, the most common form of stomach flu, and what to do if you have it.
Nearly a month after the total solar eclipse, at least 160 cases of eye damage have been reported across the country.
The investigation continues into a collision that killed two grandparents and their infant grandchild during a high-speed police chase on the wrong way of Highway 401 east of Toronto.
A month after eight Norwegian Cruise Line passengers were stranded in Africa when their ship left without them because they were late getting back, a U.S. couple – ages 84 and 81 – were also left behind by the cruise line in Spain.
Defence Minister Bill Blair says he couldn't convince the Liberal cabinet that Canada's government needed to meet NATO's spending target in its recent defence policy update.
Dozens of London Drugs stores in Western Canada remained closed for the fourth straight day following a "cybersecurity incident."
A prosecutor in Massachusetts won't seek criminal charges against anyone, two years after four newborns were found in a freezer in a South Boston apartment.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.