Yulia Kovalev told lawmakers in a House of Commons committee that Russia uses sexual violence as a weapon of war and said rape and sexual assault should be investigated as war crimes.
He said Ukraine was gathering “terribly well-documented evidence” of war crimes, including sex crimes committed by Russian soldiers.
“The horror is that children are victims of these sexual crimes that take place (in front of) their parents’ eyes,” he said.  “Sex crimes are part of the Russian weapon (against) Ukraine.”
He said Russia had also abducted children from Ukraine and transferred them to Russian-occupied territories and now Russia itself.  But Ukraine is working with partners to find the children and bring them back.
“The Russians, a few days ago, killed a young mother and taped her living child to her body and stuck a mine between them,” the ambassador said, stifling emotion.  He said the mine had exploded.
Robert Olifand, the parliamentary secretary of state for foreign affairs, said Canada was “very concerned” about Russia’s “horrific activities” against women and children, including rape.
The Ukrainian diplomat said that the whole of Russian society, and not just President Vladimir Putin “and his proxies”, should be held responsible for the war in Ukraine, as more than 70 percent of Russians support the invasion.
Speaking to the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Kovaliv expressed Ukraine’s “sincere thanks” to Canada for its continued support, including with heavy weapons, vehicles, financial aid and sanctions against Russia.
However, he said the coming weeks were crucial for Ukraine’s defense and needed more military and financial assistance, including a drop in trade tariffs.
To help rebuild Ukraine would require a recovery strategy similar to the Marshall Plan, a US program to rebuild Europe’s economies after World War II, using frozen Russian assets.
Kovaliv paid tribute to the Canadian parliament, where lawmakers voted symbolically to label Russia’s targeting of Ukrainian civilians as genocide.  He invited the Communities Foreign Affairs Committee to visit Ukraine.
“History books will praise Canada for its strong stance against Ukraine against Russia’s barbaric war,” he said.  “Ukrainians will never forget that Canada was shoulder to shoulder with us in these dramatic moments of our modern history.”
Putin tried to justify his invasion by claiming that his troops were liberating Ukrainians from a “Nazi” government, despite President Volodymyr Zelenskyy being a Jew and signing an anti-Semitism law last year.
In an apparent attempt by Russia to portray Ukraine as Nazi-led, despite Zelensky’s legacy, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently claimed that Adolf Hitler was partly Jewish.
Prime Minister Justin Trinto said on Monday that the comments were “ridiculous and unacceptable”.
“The fact that Russia, as we have seen, is circulating misinformation and misinformation has reached a point where it should no longer surprise us,” Trinto told a news conference in Windsor, Ont.
“But what the Russian Foreign Minister just said is unbelievable.  “We must continue to condemn more and more the ridiculous and unacceptable positions of Russia, even as we are with Ukraine.”
In the Foreign Affairs Committee, Kovaliv said that Ukraine’s goal was the liberation of all its sovereign territories, implying that it aimed to take back Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014.
In a statement on the military situation in Ukraine, including the “temporarily occupied cities and towns”, he said that many of the rocket attacks came from Belarus, a close Russian ally.
He said that although the evacuation of civilians from a steel plant in the besieged city of Mariupol had begun, Russia had fired on many humanitarian corridors.
Russia has repeatedly violated international law by abducting mayors, members of local parliaments and civil society activists, and torturing and killing some, he added.
An estimated half a million Ukrainians had been “forcibly deported to Russia,” he said.
The Russian troops were “shameless looters”, the diplomat added, stealing Ukrainian grain stocks and trying to send them to Russian-controlled Crimea.  That reminded Ukrainians of the practices of Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, he said.
He said Ukraine was resisting the Russian attack, citing Zelenskyy, who said: “Courage is our Ukrainian signal.”
This Canadian Press Report was first published on May 2, 2022.