Canada's Ambassador to Russia and the Next Russian Revolution

This article recently appeared in the Globe and Mail, Canada's once great newspaper of record:

 

Sarah Taylor is Canada's current ambassador to Russia and a Trudeau government appointment effective November 15th, 2023 as shown here:

 

Let's go back to Sarah Taylor and the Globe and Mail.  Here is a quote from the article:

 

"To be Canada’s ambassador to Russia these days is to be both officially ignored and constantly watched.

 

The Russian Foreign Ministry holds regular briefings for foreign diplomats but doesn’t invite those from the countries it considers “unfriendly” – a list of more than two dozen, mostly Western, nations that Canada has been on since soon after the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Diplomats from countries on the “unfriendly” list are also skipped for Christmas and New Year’s party invitations.

 

Meanwhile, Sarah Taylor – Canada’s 17th ambassador to Moscow – and her staff experience regular surveillance, as well as staged demonstrations berating Canada for its assistance to Ukraine since Russia invaded its smaller neighbour in February, 2022.

 

“I would say there is a somewhat hostile atmosphere. That’s not new, although it has intensified since the invasion of Ukraine,” Ms. Taylor said in a video interview from Moscow. “The feel, for a Canadian or Western diplomat, is quite Cold War-like, with one exception – that there are a lot of Eastern European countries that are now part of NATO and not part of the Warsaw Pact....

 

The Kremlin, meanwhile, almost completely ignores the Canadian embassy, other than on low-level issues such as consular cases.”

I hate to tell Ambassador Taylor but she's not in Moscow to attend Christmas and New Year's parties put on by Russians.  If she is that unhappy with her new posting, perhaps she should retire from her cozy and comfortable life in one of the most dynamic cities in the world.

 

I'm not exactly certain why Ms. Taylor expects a warm welcome from Russia given that Canada has, for all intents and purposes, declared war on Russia and "donated" $5.55 billion in financial allocations, $520 million in humanitarian aid and $2.41 billion in military assistance (current to October 31, 2024 - U.S. dollars) for a total of $8.48 billion, putting the nation in sixth place overall after the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan.  Here is a sampling of the military assistance that Canada has provided to Ukraine:

Here is a complete list of military equipment that Canada has supplied to Ukraine since February 2022 should you care to understand what type of obsolete equipment the Trudeau government has offloaded.   As well, the Trudeau government is looking at the possibility of donating formerly legal guns that have been forcibly confiscated from law-abiding Canadians to Ukraine as shown here:

Let's go back to Ambassador Taylor's whining.  One of the issues that she brings up is the supposed anti-Putin movement in Russia (with my bold):

 

"Being in Moscow allowed Ms. Taylor and other Western diplomats to join the thousands of Russians who came into the streets on March 1 to mourn opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison camp in what Mr. Navalny’s allies see as the Kremlin-ordered murder of Mr. Putin’s most prominent critic.

 

Standing outside the church, Ms. Taylor noticed that the crowd became braver as it grew in numbers. Soon, anti-war and anti-Putin chants were echoing through the streets of Moscow.

 

That convinced Ms. Taylor that there was very little genuine affection for Mr. Putin or enthusiasm for his war in Ukraine. While Russia has seen little in the way of public dissent since Mr. Navalny’s funeral, Ms. Taylor believes things could change in a hurry."

  

Here's the key quote:

 

“Everything seems quiet now, but in the right circumstances and with the right leader you could see Russians coalesce quite suddenly,” she said. “Like with Syria, like with all these authoritarian regimes, everything is fine until it isn’t.”

 

That comment would appear to me to be completely undiplomatic at best.  She obviously has very little understanding of the culture of the nation in which she is currently living and what a significant impact the Second World War had on their national identity.  Having spent time in Russia, you cannot understand their culture through the lens of Western eyes.

 

While she may be swallowing the line that Putin is only clinging to power, recent polling from Russia's  Levada Center would show otherwise:

 

 

In December 2024, Putin's approval rating among his fellow Russians was 87 percent.

 

So, while Canada's Ambassador to Russia claims that Russians are being mean to her and that the citizens of her host nation are just a very short step away from a potential overthrow of their allegedly unpopular President, it would appear that this is nothing more and nothing less than Western mainstream media anti-Russia propaganda.  Quite frankly, I'm surprised that Sarah Taylor's comment on the next "Russian Revolution" hasn't found her ejected unceremoniously from her cushy job in Moscow and deported back to Canada.