Widow looking for answers after Quebec man dies in Texas Ironman competition
The widow of a Quebec man who died competing in an Ironman competition is looking for answers.
Many eyes were on Geneva Friday at the talks between U.S. Secretary of State Andrew Blinken and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov as the two nations continue to spar over what U.S. President Joe Biden said could be an imminent invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces amassed along the border.
Back in Canada however, the Russian ambassador had a strong reply to the Western response levelled at his home country, as Canada announced it had sanctioned more than 400 people and entities going back to the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.
“Sanctions never work and sanctions never will be able to work against such countries, such [a] nation as Russia. The attempts to use sanctions as a threat in order to make Russia do certain steps on the international area is just an illusion,” Ambassador Oleg Stepanov said Thursday on CTV’s Power Play. “Actually, in Russia, and the Russian government, and I can tell you frankly, nobody cares about Western sanctions anymore.”
However confident the Russian ambassador appeared, assistant professor in international relations at the University of Waterloo Alexander Lanoszka said Russia does care about western sanctions.
“Well they do care about sanctions because they’ve built up a massive strategic reserve of currency designed to weather a new series of sanctions that western nations could mete out to Russia if it does go about an escalation against Ukraine,” Lanoszka said on CTV’s Your Morning Friday.
However, at this stage in the crisis with 100,000 Russian troops on the border, Lanoszka warned against overconfidence in what sanctions could achieve.
“Of course we should not expect too much from sanctions, sanctions in this case do raise the cost of aggression but they also assert red lines [and] they reinforce norms about territorial integrity,” he said.
While the membership of Ukraine in the NATO alliance is what Russia objects to, Lanoszka says there is much more at play.
“There is a lot more behind it, so yes NATO membership in respect to Ukraine is certainly on the table for Russia and perhaps a core aim of theirs, but really they have emphasized other things including a rollback of all NATO measures put in place virtually since 1997 in eastern and central Europe,” Lanoszka explained. “Basically depriving any country who joined the alliance of any political or military support that they have received, so those are very expansive aims and really non-starters for the organization.”
When asked if sanctions could prevent any further military action on Russia’s part, Lanoszka was non-committal.
“Perhaps not, I would say that sanctions are not very effective at this stage of the crisis because Russia has discounted the cost associated with sanctions, they’ve gone this far into the crisis, they’ve built up military forces, they know that certain actions on their part will trigger a response,” he said. “And they’ve discounted those costs already – that’s not to say we shouldn’t be imposing sanctions… but it goes to show that we are very deep into this crisis.”
Lanoszka theorized that any further incursion or invasion of Ukraine by Russia may not materialize as feared, with a large scale force moving in.
“We really don’t know [what it will look like], but it’s important to emphasize that invasion may not mean permanent occupation,” he said. “It could be the case that Russia launches limited strikes against Ukraine’s military assets, it could hold some territory to force Kyiv to capitulate or submit to certain demands made by Moscow… the range of possibilities is fairly large, I think though the most likely military option Russia would use if it decides to use force would be something in the order of limited military strikes.”
---
With a file from CTVNews.ca’s Ottawa bureau Producer Sarah Turnbull
The widow of a Quebec man who died competing in an Ironman competition is looking for answers.
Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair says that what's happening now in a trash-littered federal park in Quebec is a perfect metaphor for how the Trudeau government runs things.
The world is seeing a near breakdown of international law amid flagrant rule-breaking in Gaza and Ukraine, multiplying armed conflicts, the rise of authoritarianism and huge rights violations in Sudan, Ethiopia and Myanmar, Amnesty International warned Wednesday as it published its annual report.
A photographer who worked for Megan Thee Stallion said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that he was forced to watch her have sex, was unfairly fired soon after and was abused as her employee.
Facing pushback from physicians and businesspeople over the coming increase to the capital gains inclusion rate, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his deputy Chrystia Freeland are standing by their plan to target Canada's highest earners.
The Senate passed legislation Tuesday that would force TikTok's China-based parent company to sell the social media platform under the threat of a ban, a contentious move by U.S. lawmakers that's expected to face legal challenges.
People living near a wildfire burning about 15 kilometres southwest of Peace River are being told to evacuate their homes.
The U.S. Senate has passed US$95 billion in war aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, sending the legislation to President Joe Biden after months of delays and contentious debate over how involved the United States should be in foreign wars.
A Winnipeg man said a single date gone wrong led to years of criminal harassment, false arrests, stress and depression.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a Grade 4 student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.