Jun 30 2022 — Murray Brewster — CBC — Ukraine’s long-standing pleas — and prayers — for advanced Western weapons are about to be answered as NATO has formally said it will help the eastern European country convert to modern military kit. It was part of a series of historic decisions made over a two-day summit of leaders of the Western military alliance in […]
Jun 29 2022 — Murray Brewster — CBC — The United States opened the NATO leaders summit in Madrid on Wednesday by putting some serious firepower on the table to bolster the alliance’s defences throughout Europe. It will be adding a rotational brigade of troops to Romania where a battle group led by France was recently established, and plans to further bolster contingents in […]
Jun 28 2022 — Murray Brewster — CBC — Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of NATO, likely didn’t set out to steal anyone’s thunder — but it was hard for anyone at the G7 Summit in Germany to ignore the man on Monday. Affable, seemingly awkward sometimes, the former prime minister of Norway has been a steady, usually unflappable presence on the international stage, […]
Jun 26 2022 — Murray Brewster — CBC — The leaders of the world’s top democratic economies arrived in Germany on Sunday, beginning an extraordinary week of meetings where they will be under intense pressure to do more for Ukraine in its war with Russia. The meeting of G7 leaders in Schloss Elmau, nestled in the Bavarian Alps, will be followed immediately on Wednesday […]
Jun 22 2022 — Murray Brewster — CBC — The war in Ukraine will cast its shadow over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other Commonwealth national leaders as they arrive in Kigali, Rwanda on Wednesday for their first meeting since the onset of the pandemic. Food security — particularly in Africa — is expected to be a major topic of the leaders’ conference. So […]
Jun 15 2022 — Murray Brewster — CBC — Canada will announce later today that it is spending $9 million on replacement barrels for the howitzers it shipped to Ukraine earlier this year, CBC News has learned. Modern artillery guns, such as the M-777 howitzer, require the barrel to be swapped out after firing as many as 2,500 rounds. Defence Minister Anita Anand will […]
Jun 14 2022 — Murray Brewster — CBC — Some moments call for plain language. Evaluating the chaotic end to western involvement in Afghanistan is one of those moments. The Canadian and U.K. parliaments recently delivered committee reports on the war in Afghanistan and the tumultuous withdrawal of Western forces. Only one of them offers a searing example of the kind of brutal self-reflection […]
May 27 2022 — Murray Brewster — CBC — The war in Ukraine is about Russian mythology — the notion of reuniting two peoples with a long, viscerally complicated relationship going back centuries — and outdated ideas about spheres of influence. It could be about empire building, or rebuilding, depending on how you want to interpret your history and what text you use as […]
May 24 2022 — Murray Brewster — CBC — It made for an extraordinary sight recently on the broken, battered streets of Kharkiv on a warm Saturday afternoon. A Russian T-80 main battle tank, draped in camouflage netting and Ukrainian flags and pennants, was broken down in front of a neighborhood grocery store, where weary shoppers shuffled past with barely a glance. “Russian junk,” […]
May 5 2022 — Murray Brewster — CBC — The former president of Ukraine is urging Canada to get behind a U.S. representative’s initiative to authorize American military force to defend the embattled eastern European country if Russian forces escalate to chemical, biological or nuclear attacks. Petro Poroshenko, who was president from 2014 to 2019, made the remarks in an interview with CBC News. […]
Apr 26 2022 — Murray Brewster — CBC — Standing in the grey light of a cold spring day outside Warsaw’s central train station recently, Lt-Col. Terry Cherwick — with his black and white clerical collar jutting out of his combat uniform — seemed like a beacon for the bereft. One of three Canadian military chaplains dispatched earlier this month as part of Canada’s […]
Apr 22 2022 — Murray Brewster — CBC — Canada recently sent four of its relatively new M-777 howitzers to Ukraine’s military to help it face down a renewed Russian offensive from the east, CBC News has learned. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau revealed the plan to ship what he called “heavy artillery” earlier this week, but offered no details on what the Canadian military […]
Apr 8 2022 — Murray Brewster — CBC — Veterans Affairs Canada mistakenly issued T4A tax slips late last winter in the names of hundreds of deceased veterans across the country, CBC News has learned. The income benefits notices landed in the hands of nearly 700 appalled survivors and relatives. Some of them lost loved ones in Afghanistan more than a decade ago. “My […]
Apr 6 2022 — Murray Brewster — CBC — The federal budget is expected to pour up to $8 billion in new money into the Department of National Defence (DND), CBC News has learned — an investment that will lean heavily on improving the military’s ability to defend North America. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland will deliver the new fiscal plan on Thursday. A senior […]
Mar 23 2022 — Murray Brewster — CBC — NATO will deploy four more battle groups in Eastern Europe as it grows increasingly concerned about the threat of Russia using chemical weapons in Ukraine, the secretary general of the western military alliance said Wednesday. The additional troops will be sent to Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, Jens Stoltenberg told a media availability in Brussels […]