Canadian-Ukrainian lawyer, former Ukrainian government official and investment specialist Daniel Bilak sat down with CBC Newsroom to discuss the situation in Ukraine from up close and personal. Among the topics was Mr Bilak co-filing with the Ukrainian World Congress a suit against the Canadian government to prevent a sanctions waiver for a gas turbine.
The Kyiv-based Canada-born lawyer has served in the Ukrainian government and was the founder of UkraineInvest, the national foreign direct investment promotion agency. Mr Bilak joined the Territorial Defense Forces before the war and is currently serving in Ukraine.
When the Canadian government waived sanctions on the return of a Siemens gas pipeline turbine to Gazprom via Germany earlier this month, Mr Bilak was a party to a suit with Ukrainian World Congress against the Canadian government to try to enforce the sanction.
When asked for his thoughts on the release of the turbine, Mr Bilak commented, “I’m an applicant in this action against the Canadian government because I want to understand what the Canadian government’s rationale for doing this was. And exactly what are the terms. President Zelensky has said over and over again that we need three things. We need weapons, we need financing to keep our economy afloat and we need ironclad sanctions.”
Mr Bilak commended Canada’s overall support for Ukraine. “Canada has been leading on sanctions. Canada has been one of the key countries in providing us with weapons and it has actually put together a pretty robust sanctions regime. And I was really surprised the first time that this is challenged by an ally and asked for a waiver. They got it right away. That’s just simply something that is enabling Russia and is going to continue to enable this terrorist state to continue to move and develop its war machine.”
The Siemens turbine has been returned to Germany for installation on the Nord Stream-1 pipeline. After a two week maintenance shutdown of the pipeline, Russia’s state-owned gas monopoly Gazprom resumed gas transit to Germany last week.
