Russian ambassador summoned to Canadian Foreign Office

Russian Ambassador to Canada Oleg Stepanov was summoned to the Canadian Foreign Ministry. This was announced during a press conference with British Foreign Minister James Cleverley by Foreign Minister Melanie Joly.

“Today, my representatives are summoning the Russian ambassador to Canada for a talk in order to <...> personally condemn the anti-Semitic comments of Russian Minister Sergey Lavrov,” she said (cit. according to TASS).

Later, Stepanov himself said that his call to the Canadian Foreign Ministry was related to the tragedy in Dnepropetrovsk, which killed more than 40 people, and not to the statements of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. “I also saw this statement by Joly, in fact, after the fact – after the meeting. I was a little surprised, because this invitation to the Foreign Ministry was for the Canadian side to make a demarche to me about the tragedy in Dnepropetrovsk. It was all about that,” he said.cit. according to RIA Novosti).

Stepanov also stressed that Canada tried to lay all responsibility for what happened on Russia, but the ambassador denied all accusations, stressing that the cause of the tragedy was the deployment of air defense systems by Ukraine in residential areas, contrary to all laws on warfare.

On the evening of January 14, after the explosion, the entrance of a multi-storey building in the Dnieper (formerly Dnepropetrovsk) collapsed. More than 40 people died as a result of the incident, the city authorities said. Later, Aleksey Arestovich, an adviser to the office of the President of Ukraine, said that the entrance to the high-rise building collapsed due to the fall of a rocket shot down by Ukrainian troops on it. The military command of Ukraine denied this information. On January 17, Arestovich admitted his mistake and filed resign.

After this incident in the Kremlin remindedthat the Russian Armed Forces do not strike at residential buildings and social infrastructure facilities in Ukraine – only at military targets. The press secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov, referring to the statements of the Ukrainian authorities, noted that the tragedy was the result of the air defense.

The day before, on January 18, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, during a press conference on the results of the activities of Russian diplomacy in 2022, compared the US actions to create a coalition against Russia with the actions of Adolf Hitler. He also noted that the US steps are aimed at the final solution of the “Russian question”.

“Just as Hitler captured and put under arms most of the European countries and threw them against the USSR, now the United States has also formed a coalition of almost all Europeans that are members of NATO, and not only members of NATO – from EU members too, and through Ukraine by proxy they are war against our country with the same task – the task of finally solving the “Russian question” – just as Hitler wanted to finally solve the “Jewish question”. Now if you read the statements of Western politicians, <...> they unequivocally say that Russia must suffer a strategic defeat,” he said.

After that, the coordinator of strategic communications at the US National Security Council, John Kirby named insulting and “absurd” is the statement.