Natalka Cmoc, Canada's ambassador to Ukraine, shows a tattoo she got in solidarity with the women's resistance Zlaya Mavka, in Kyiv, in June, 2025.Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
The Canadian government says it is taking seriously allegations that programs it funded to promote pro-Ukrainian sentiment in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine put the lives of activists in danger.
The Kyiv Independent reported last month that a pair of Canadian-backed programs known as Yellow Ribbon and Zla Mavka had resulted in the persecution and detention of pro-Ukrainian activists in occupied parts of southern and eastern Ukraine, where Russia’s FSB security service has a heavy presence. The fate of some activists who reportedly disappeared into Russian custody remains unknown.
The Yellow Ribbon effort has seen partisans erect Ukrainian flags and other national symbols in public places as a way of reminding residents they are still living in Ukraine, not Russia. Zla Mavka is an all-female resistance group that carried out similar protest actions.
Asked about the allegation that the Canadian-funded project had led to the detention and possible disappearance of activists, Charlotte MacLeod, a spokeswoman for Global Affairs Canada, said she could not comment on specific programs “for operational and security reasons.”
However, she said, “Global Affairs Canada is aware of the reporting and takes claims of this nature seriously.”
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Canada funded both groups for the first three years of the war in Ukraine, and Natalka Cmoc, Canada’s ambassador to Kyiv, proudly displayed a tattoo of the Zla Mavka symbol – based on the legend of Mavka, a mythological Ukrainian forest spirit – during a 2025 interview with The Globe and Mail.
A senior source in Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence service – which regularly carries out dangerous operations deep inside the occupied territories and Russia itself – told The Globe that his agency had looked into Yellow Ribbon early in the war and decided not to support the project because of the huge risks it posed for civilians carrying out actions that HUR assessed were likely to have little impact.
The number of persecuted activists is difficult to verify.
The Kyiv Independent reported that “at least 30″ had been detained. However, that figure is based on interviews that Yaroslav Bozhko, a former Yellow Ribbon spokesman, gave to various media in 2022 and 2023. Mr. Bozhko told The Globe that figure represented the overall number of activists who had been detained in the occupied territories, not specifically those affiliated with Yellow Ribbon.
There have been at least six reported cases of Yellow Ribbon and Zla Mavka activists being detained since 2023. One of those, Sievel Velieva, told The Globe that she joined Yellow Ribbon in 2023 out of a desire to show “that we still exist and that people have not given up.”
The 52-year-old said she began placing yellow ribbons and other Ukrainian symbols in parks and public squares in her home city of Melitopol, which has been under Russian occupation since early in the war.
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In February, 2024, Ms. Velieva was grabbed and pulled into a car by men wearing balaclavas. “They dragged me into the car, put a bag over my head, handcuffed my hands and taped my eyes shut,” she recounted in an interview. “They were shouting, threatening me, saying I would never see my daughter again and that I would be sentenced to 20 or 25 years.”
She said she was specifically interrogated by men identified as FSB agents about the Yellow Ribbon movement. “They showed me photos of people I didn’t know and asked whether they were activists of the movement. I think they considered every pro-Ukrainian person to be a Yellow Ribbon activist.”
Yellow Ribbon was structured so that activists on the ground wouldn’t know who was part of the movement, so she couldn’t answer the FSB’s questions. She said she only communicated with the movement’s leadership via the Telegram messaging app.
In the end, she was charged only with a curfew violation and sentenced to 20 days in prison. Afterward, she escaped to Ukrainian-held territory.
Ms. Velieva said she wasn’t physically tortured, although she was threatened with electric shocks. She said the Canadian funders of the project were likely unaware of what happened to her because of the nature of the charge against her.
Much of the Canadian funding of Yellow Ribbon and Zla Mavka flowed via Innovation and Insight FZ LLC, or IN2, a British communications firm with a head office in the United Arab Emirates. Public Accounts of Canada records show payments of $4.65-million to IN2 between 2022 and 2025.
The effort was funded via Canada’s Peace and Stabilization Operations Program, which has a mandate to foster “conflict prevention, stabilization and peacebuilding.” The British government has also provided financial support.
In an e-mailed statement to The Globe, IN2 said it “categorically denied” the allegations published by the Kyiv Independent, saying the article had failed “to establish any causal link between project support and the reported harms.”
“The Canadian funding was fully supervised by experienced Canadian officials who actively monitored the risk and changing situation in Ukraine,” the IN2 statement reads in part. “We are concerned that the publication has placed activists and supporters at unnecessary risk and primarily serves the interests of Russian propaganda.”
The Kyiv Independent article has been cited in Kremlin-controlled media as proof that pro-Ukrainian sentiment in the occupied territories is a Western creation rather than a grassroots movement.
Donald Bowser, a Canadian security adviser who bid for some of the work that eventually went to IN2, said he warned Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office during his interview that Yellow Ribbon would draw the attention of the FSB and endanger the Ukrainians the program was seeking to help.
“There is no way to transfer money to people in the occupied territories without the FSB knowing about it. There is no way to communicate on a regular basis with people in the occupied territories without the FSB knowing about it,” Mr. Bowser said.
But Ms. Velieva, despite her own ordeal, believes the project was worthy of Canadian and British support.
“Yes, the risk was high, and everyone understood that. But at the same time, living in occupation and staying silent is also unbearable. I do not regret joining. It is painful for me to remember what happened, but I am glad I did not betray myself or my country.”
With reports by Kateryna Hatsenko in Kyiv