Earlier on Thursday, Foreign Affairs Canada’s Twitter account published a "fact-check" saying that the mobilization effort "disproportionately" targeted men "from poor and remote areas of Russia with large ethnic minority populations," sparked protests in ethnic republics, and prompted at least 200,000 Russians to flee the country since the military call-up.
According to Stepanov, the "fact-checking" indicates that the Trudeau government is stepping up its social media activity on Russia. Russia will respond in kind, he said.
Canada’s Twitter posts on Russia are also a message to Russian expats, the ambassador said.
"It's no secret that Canada is at the frontline of those in the West pursuing a kind of project on Russia to unite dissenters," Stepanov added. "All those nourished by Soros, Khodorkovsky, intelligence agencies of Western countries, all these fugitives who are trying to create a united opposition outside of Russia - I don’t even want to list all these names - they are known to everyone."
On September 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree calling up 300,000 reservists to support the military operation in Ukraine. In late October, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the country had completed the mobilization.