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Trudeau Apologizes To Zelensky & Canadian Public For NaziGate, Quietly Tells MPs Don't Speak About It

Tyler Durden's Photo
by Tyler Durden
Wednesday, Sep 27, 2023 - 11:20 PM

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday issued formal apology to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over what's coming to be known as the 'NaziGate' scandal. He indicated that this apology was sent through diplomatic channels. 

Trudeau confirmed this in a press conference regarding the House of Commons' honoring a veteran of Adolf Hitler's Nazi forces as part of last week's events centered on hosting Zelensky. "This was a mistake that has deeply embarrassed Parliament and Canada. All of us who were in this House on Friday regret deeply having stood and clapped even though we did so unaware of the context," Trudeau told reporters.

"It was a horrendous violation of the memory of the millions of people who died in the Holocaust," he continued, in the statement which also appeared to put sole blame on now resigned Speaker Anthony Rota.

98-year old Waffen-SS Galicia Division veteran Yaroslav Hunka is now possibly being sought by Poland, and extradition proceedings are being mulled in Warsaw.

Trudeau now says "Canada is deeply sorry" for involving Zelensky, who along with all of Canadian parliament was seen enthusiastically applauding Hunka with a standing ovation. Trudeau further called the whole event "deeply, deeply painful" to Jewish people, Poles, Roma, and the so-called "2SLGTBQIA+" "community" (yes, it's an official Canadian govt designation, absurd as it is).

He also sought to assert (or rather deflect) once again that this fiasco is playing into Russia's hands, which is seeking to "politicize" it. Thus the prime minister is continuing to spin it as somehow really a story of 'Russian disinformation'. 

But perhaps more interesting is what Trudeau and his staff are reportedly telling members of parliament in private. They are to stay "tight-lipped" in hopes that the scandal and international media coverage will just 'go away'. According to Canada's national broadcaster CBC: 

Liberal caucus sources have told CBC News that Trudeau told MPs Wednesday they should avoid speaking to the press about Hunka's invitation and the subsequent fallout, and that the media frenzy would die down if they stayed tight-lipped.

Trudeau's remarks come after Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said inviting Hunka to attend Zelenskyy's historic address to Parliament is the "biggest single diplomatic embarrassment" in the country's history.

Poilievre is blaming Trudeau for the mishap, despite outgoing Speaker Anthony Rota's assertion that he alone was responsible for inviting Hunka.

But as GrayZone journalist Max Blumenthal points out, this may actually be the tip of the iceberg for Canada's NaziGate...

Below is Blumenthal's full backgrounder on the disturbing associations and past activism of Trudeau's Deputy Prime Minister & Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland [emphasis by ZH]...

* * *

After serving as one of Hitler's top Ukrainian propagandists in occupied Poland, Michael Chomiak joined thousands of Nazi collaborators on the ratline to Canada during the 1950s. Following Chomiak's death in 1984, his granddaughter, Chrystia Freeland, followed in his footsteps as a reporter for various Ukrainian nationalist publications.

Freeland was an early contributor to the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, which was edited by her grandfather's former boss in Poland, the Nazi collaborator and ethnic cleansing advocate Volodymyr Kubijovyč. Next, she took a staff position at the Edmonton-based Ukrainian News, where Chomiak had served as editor.

A 1988 edition of Ukrainian News featured an article co-authored by Freeland, followed by an ad for a book called “Fighting for Freedom” which glorified the Ukrainian Waffen-SS Galician division. During Freeland’s time as an exchange student in Lviv, Ukraine, she laid the foundations for journalistic success. From behind cover as a Russian literature major at Harvard University, Freeland collaborated with local regime change activists while feeding anti-Soviet narratives to international media bigwigs.

“Countless ‘tendentious’ news stories about life in the Soviet Union, especially for its non-Russian citizens, had her fingerprints as Ms. Freeland set about making a name for herself in journalistic circles with an eye to her future career prospects,” the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported.

Citing KGB files, the CBC described Freeland as a de facto intelligence agent: “The student causing so many headaches clearly loathed the Soviet Union, but she knew its laws inside and out – and how to use them to her advantage. She skillfully hid her actions, avoided surveillance (and shared that knowledge with her Ukrainian contacts) and expertly trafficked in ‘misinformation.'”

In 1989, Soviet security agents rescinded Freeland’s visa when they caught her smuggling “a veritable how-to guide for running an election” into the country for Ukrainain nationalist candidates. She quickly transitioned back to journalism, landing gigs in post-Soviet Moscow for the Financial Times and Economist, and eventually rising to global editor-at-large of Reuters – the UK-based media giant which today functions as a cutout for British intelligence operations against Russia.

When Freeland won a seat as a Liberal member of Canada’s parliament in 2013, she established her most powerful platform yet to agitate for regime change in Russia. Milking her journalistic connections, she published op-eds in top legacy papers like the New York Times urging militant support from Western capitals for Ukraine’s so-called “Revolution of Dignity,” which saw the violent removal of a democratically elected president and his replacement with a nationalist, pro-NATO government in 2014.

Weeks after she was appointed in January 2017 as Foreign Minister – a post she predictably exploited to thunder for sanctions on Russia and arms shipments to Ukraine – her grandfather’s role as a Nazi propagandist in occupied Poland became the subject of a raft of reports in the alternative press.

The Trudeau government responded to the factual reports by accusing Russia of waging a campaign of cyber-warfare. “The situation is obviously one where we need to be alert. And that is why the Prime Minister has, among other things, encouraged a complete re-examination of our cyber security systems,” Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale declared.

Yet few, if any, of the outlets responsible for excavating Chomiak’s history had any connection to Russia’s government. Among the first to expose his collaborationism was Consortium News, an independent, US-based media organization. For her part, Freeland deployed a spokesperson to lie to the public, flatly denying that “the minister’s grandfather was a Nazi collaborator.”

When Canadian media quoted several Russian diplomats about the allegations, Freeland promptly ordered their deportation, accusing them of exploiting their diplomatic status “to interfere in our democracy.” By this time, however, her family secrets had tumbled out of the attic and onto the pages of mainstream Canadian media.

On March 7, 2017, the Globe and Mail reported on a 1996 article in the Journal of Ukrainian Studies confirming that Freeland’s grandfather had indeed been a Nazi propagandist, and that his writing helped fuel the Jewish genocide. The article was authored by Freeland’s uncle, John-Paul Himka, who thanked his niece in its preface for helping him with “problems and clarifications.”

“Freeland knew for more than two decades that her maternal Ukrainian grandfather was the chief editor of a Nazi newspaper in occupied Poland that vilified Jews during the Second World War,” the Globe and Mail noted. After being caught on camera this September clapping with unrestrained zeal alongside hundreds of peers for a Ukrainian veteran of Hitler’s SS death squads, Freeland once again invoked her authority to scrub the incident from the record.

Three days after the embarrassing scene, Freeland was back on the floor of parliament, nodding in approval as Liberal House leader Karina Gould introduced a resolution to strike “from the appendix of the House of Commons debates” and from “any House multimedia recording” the recognition made by Speaker Anthony Rota of Yaroslav Hunka.

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