Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper today accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of damaging global security by sending troops into Crimea and eventually annexing the Black Sea peninsula.
Harper, the first leader from the G7 group of top industrialised powers to visit Kiev since last month's fall of Ukraine's pro-Kremlin regime, said the consequences of Putin's actions "will be felt far beyond beyond the borders of Ukraine or even the European continent itself."
He cited a 1994 agreement under which Ukraine gave up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons in return for sovereignty guarantees from Russia and several Western powers as the reason why some nations may now decide "to arm themselves to the teeth".
"Ukraine relinquished the nuclear weapons it inherited from the former Soviet Union on the basis of an explicit Russian guarantee of its territorial integrity," said Harper.
"By breaching that guarantee, President Putin has provided a rationale for those elsewhere, who needed little more encouragement than that already furnished by pride or grievance, to arm themselves to the teeth."
Canada, with the world's third-largest population of ethnic Ukrainians, was the first Western power to recognise the ex-Soviet country's independence in 1991.
