A Ukrainian law enforcement officer stands next to a destroyed perfume and cosmetics manufacturing building following a missile attack, in Kharkiv on April 18.SERGEY BOBOK/AFP/Getty Images
Garry Kasparov is chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative and vice-president of the World Liberty Congress. Marcus Kolga is the founder of DisinfoWatch and a senior fellow at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
As churchgoers gathered for Palm Sunday services earlier this month in the Ukrainian city of Sumy, a Russian intercontinental ballistic missile detonated over a city square. It unleashed a storm of cluster munitions, bomblets designed with one purpose: to shred human flesh. Thirty-four civilians, including children and the elderly, were massacred in what can only be described as a deliberate act of terror.
This is not just war. It is state-sanctioned mass murder.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen rightly called the strike “barbaric,” reaffirming that “Russia was and remains the aggressor, in blatant violation of international law.”
But where moral clarity was needed from the United States, Donald Trump offered grovelling appeasement, dismissing the attack as a “mistake.” Worse yet, he parroted Russian disinformation, falsely blaming Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky for starting the war. This isn’t just moral cowardice – it’s complicity. It reveals Mr. Trump’s grotesque admiration for Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambitions and a dereliction of what was once American leadership on human rights.
In this rapidly shifting geopolitical environment, Canada must now decide where it stands.
The European Parliament declared Russia a state sponsor of terrorism in 2022. A bipartisan U.S. Senate bill to do the same was introduced in 2024 by senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal. Meanwhile, Canada – having already listed Iran and Syria as state supporters of terrorism – has yet to summon the will to apply the same designation to Mr. Putin’s terror regime.
What more evidence do we need?
Mr. Putin’s war crimes in Ukraine are beyond dispute. The Sumy massacre is only the latest entry in a catalogue of Russian atrocities: missiles launched into hospitals, schools and apartment buildings; rape, torture and mass graves in Bucha. More than 20,000 Ukrainian children have been kidnapped and deported to so-called “re-education” camps where they are subjected to psychological abuse and isolation in Russia’s barbaric project of cultural erasure, stripped of their identities, and forcibly molded into loyal acolytes of Mr. Putin’s fascist ideology – with testimonies confirmed in a new film by Australian director Sarah McCarthy. This is mass child trafficking by a G20 nation.
And while Mr. Putin bombs civilians and traffics abducted children, his ideological guru – Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin – openly calls for the extermination of Ukrainian identity. In a recent RT article, Mr. Dugin described Ukrainians as “dogs” and “freaks,” asserting they are subhuman compared to Russians. This is not the language of nationalism – it is the language of genocide, and the philosophical foundation of Mr. Putin’s war. It’s a campaign of dehumanization that seeks not just to conquer Ukraine, but to erase it.
So what must Canada do?
First, it can lead. By designating Russia a state sponsor of terror, Canada would do more than make a moral statement – it would enable practical mechanisms for justice. Such a designation would place strict controls on exports, open legal avenues for victims to seek compensation, and establish Canada as a global voice for accountability.
The significance would also be personal for many Canadians. The families of millions of Polish, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Finnish, Ukrainian, Jewish, Czech and Hungarian Canadians carry the scars of Soviet-era repression – deportations, slave labour and genocide. Recognizing the continuity of Russian state terror is not only just – it is long overdue.
Second, Canada must act on its promise to seize and repurpose Russian assets. More than $22-billion denominated in Canadian dollars currently frozen in European Central Bank reserves must be transferred into a fund to rebuild Ukraine. Canadian-held assets – especially those belonging to Mr. Putin’s oligarch allies like Roman Abramovich – should be seized without delay.
Let Mr. Putin’s stolen wealth fund the rebuilding of Ukraine. Let the oligarch-owned steel factories in Canada buy prosthetics for children mutilated by cluster bombs. Let the blood money of this war pay for trauma therapy, not more real estate in Canada.
Canadians support this. A Nanos poll found that 90 per cent of Canadians back the seizure of Russian assets. There is no political downside, nor any other reason to hesitate.
Russia has committed acts that defy the boundaries of conventional warfare and normal human decency. Its leaders have weaponized starvation, child abduction, sexual violence and genocide. If these are not acts of terrorism, then the word has no meaning.
History is watching.
During this election, all federal parties should unite to designate Russia as the terrorist state it is, seize its corrupt, blood-soaked assets, and ensure that its victims – not its perpetrators – inherit the future.