Trudeau Says Ottawa 'Very Limited' In Ability To Help Canadians Fighting In Ukraine

Ottawa is constrained in its ability to help Canadians participating in the armed conflict in Ukraine, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Wednesday

TORONTO (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 20th April, 2022) Ottawa is constrained in its ability to help Canadians participating in the armed conflict in Ukraine, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Wednesday.

Some 7,000 foreign mercenaries from 63 countries, including Canada, have flocked to Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian special military operation that seeks to de-militarize an increasingly aggressive and NATO-integrated Ukraine and root out neo-Nazi and other extremist elements incorporated into the country's system of governance.

"We will always be there to try and help Canadians but, what we said from the very beginning was: Canadians should be leaving Ukraine because we're going to be very limited in our capacity to help them," Trudeau told reporters in Waterloo, Ontario.

Trudeau did not directly address reports that there are Canadian fighters blockaded inside the Azovstal metallurgical plant in Mariupol, where the last of the neo-Nazi Azov battalion, foreign mercenaries and civilians allegedly being used as a human shields are holed up.

Ottawa has acknowledged that an unspecified number of Canadians have left for Ukraine to join the armed conflict, with the country's defense chief previously urging citizens to enlist instead in Canada's military.

On February 24, Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine in response to requests from the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics to help defend them from intensifying attacks by Ukrainian troops. The Russian Defense Ministry said the special operation aims to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine and solely targets the country's military infrastructure.

In response, Canada, the United States and their allies have imposed comprehensive sanctions on Russia and have supplied the Ukrainian military with offensive and defensive weapons in the amount of multiple billions of Dollars.