Canada's deputy prime minister — whose Ukrainian grandfather collaborated with the Nazi occupiers — has been tipped as the next head of NATO.
Chrystia Freeland, a member of PM Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party who also holds the finance portfolio, declined to rule out taking over from NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg when his extended term expires in 2023.
"I have a really big job already. In fact, I have two big jobs as finance minister and deputy prime minister of Canada," Freeland told reporters at a Cabinet "retreat" meeting in Vancouver on Wednesday.
"I am really, really focused on those and on working hard with the prime minister, with my Cabinet colleagues, with Canadians to get through a challenging economic time in the world and to really capitalize on what I believe are tremendous opportunities ahead of our country," she added.
Freeland's possible career move to head of the US-led alliance, a hangover from the Cold War whose eastward expansion has threatened Russia's borders, was floated by columnist Paul Wells on Tuesday.
"There are several very qualified women out there who would be very good candidates," an unnamed "top NATO official" told Canadian state broadcaster CBC in August, adding: "It seems there is some momentum for a woman to be the next [secretary general]."
"Having a Canadian [secretary general] might be welcome in terms of supercharging Canada's involvement in the alliance," Chris Skaluba from the Atlantic Council think-tank told CBC. "She's broadly well thought-of in European and trans-Atlantic security circles. I think that gives her a legitimate shot."
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has also been mooted as Stoltenberg's successor.
Freeland has been a leading voice in favor of NATO's support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia — but her motives may call into question her fitness to lead the organization.
Dark Past
Freeland's maternal grandfather Michael Chomiak was an ethnic Ukrainian who lived in the Polish city of Krakow. During the Nazi occupation in the Second World War, he was editor of the Krakivs'ki Visti newspaper. Published from 1940 to 1945, the title was virulently anti-Semitic and printed Nazi propaganda.
Following the Nazi defeat and liberation of Poland by the Soviet Union, Chomiak fled to the West and settled in Canada.
Freeland, who was around 16 at the time of Chomiak's death, claimed in 2017 that the history of his collaboration with the Nazis was a Russian disinformation campaign against her.
But newspaper The Globe and Mail revealed that she had known about her grandfather's activities from at least 1996, when she helped edit an article on Krakivs'ki Visti by historian John-Paul Himka — Chomiak's son-in-law and Freeland's uncle — for the Journal of Ukrainian Studies.
Canada became one of the biggest havens for Ukrainian Nazi collaborators and war criminals after WWII, and their descendants are active in the country's political life.
On February 28, days after Russia launched its military operation to de-Nazify Ukraine, Freeland attended a demonstration in support of the Kiev regime in Toronto. She tweeted a photograph of herself holding up a scarf in the red-and-black colors of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), but later replaced it with a different image.
Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland holds a scarf in the colours of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army at a February 28 demonstration in Toronto
Journalist Ian Miles Cheong criticises Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland for holding a scarf in the colours of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army
Like Freeland's grandfather, the UPA collaborated with the Nazi invaders, participating in the genocide of Jews and others. It also took advantage of the occupation to perpetrate their own massacres of the Polish-speaking population in western Ukraine — murdering up to 100,000 men, women, and children.
Canada has supplied Ukraine with heavy weapons since the start of the conflict, including 100 Carl Gustaf 84mm anti-tank rocket launchers, 4,500 one-shot M72 Light Antitank Weapons (LAW), four M777 155mm towed howitzers, and 39 LAV VI armored personnel carriers.