Canada's Checkmate: Why Putin's Betting on Western Collapse Just Failed
Canada finally has a leader. So does the world.
At first glance, it may not seem like much: just $1.5 billion in commitments. But that was the mistake I once made with the Biden administration — looking only at dollar figures while refusing to consider the deeper what, why, and how.
Ain’t gonna make that mistake. Ever.
On Ukraine's Independence Day, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made a "surprise visit" to Kyiv, according to CBC.
Sorry, CBC.
This wasn't something thrown together in a week. It takes months to plan and execute an announcement of this scale. Unlike Trudeau's government, which often promised the world but delivered little or delayed endlessly, Carney was clear and precise. He told Ukraine exactly what they would get, and when. No need to read between the lines.
Carney and President Zelensky signed a deal on drone co-production worth $680 million, set to begin next month. Canada also joined the PURL scheme — a funding pool where allies contribute money, Ukraine prepares a weapons list, and the U.S. supplies them.
More importantly, Carney declared that Canada will not rule out sending troops to Ukraine after a peace agreement. He didn't hedge. His words carried the weight of intent:
"In Canada's judgement, it is not realistic that the only security guarantee could be the strength of the Ukrainian armed forces in the medium term. So that needs to be buttressed. It needs to be addressed."
This wasn't vague diplomatic language. It was a signal to every NATO strategist in Europe: Canada is ready to move. So move. For the first time, Canada wasn't hiding behind platitudes. It was leading.
The timing wasn't coincidental. Postwar planning will become the most treacherous part of any potential negotiations.
Who guarantees Ukraine's security?
What does "neutrality" actually mean?
How do you prevent Putin from simply reloading for round two? These questions have paralyzed Western strategists for months, complicated further by America's ever-shifting stance on the war.
By declaring Canada's readiness to join a peacekeeping force, Carney cut through the diplomatic fog. He wasn't making a suggestion—he was staking out a position. NATO strategists in Brussels now have a concrete framework to build around. Berlin, which has been cautious about postwar commitments, suddenly has political cover to move forward. Paris, which has talked about troops but wavered on details, now has an ally willing to share the burden. London, wobbling under domestic pressure, has been handed a lifeline.
The signal to Moscow was equally clear: there will be no victory through waiting. Putin's calculation has always been that Western resolve would crack, that domestic politics would eventually force Ukraine's allies to abandon ship. Carney's declaration shattered that hope. A peacekeeping force backed by Canada, Britain, and France—with German support—isn't a negotiating position Putin can simply outlast. It's a permanent commitment he'll have to live with.
This is how leadership works in wartime: not through grand speeches, but through irreversible commitments that force everyone else to choose sides.
Trudeau would never have dared. Carney's statement was both bold and subtle — bold enough to reassure the security establishment in Europe, subtle enough to provide cover for political establishments that need deniability until the framework is ready. It was, in a word, masterful.
So far, Canada has pledged:
$680 million for drone co-production
$500 million for the PURL initiative
$320 million for armored vehicles and other resources
Readiness to join a postwar peacekeeping force
Great Britain and France had long been the only European nations consistently discussing troop deployments to Ukraine after the war. Britain, however, has been wobbly. By stepping forward decisively, Carney strengthened Europe's resolve in shaping the postwar scenario.
His leadership hasn't stopped there. As holder of the G7 presidency, Carney pushed the U.S. to drop the Russian oil price cap to $47.6 per barrel. Trump refused, and the issue remains unresolved. But Carney kept the G7 aligned more closely with Europe than with Washington — a quiet but important shift in balance.
This leadership comes at a difficult moment. Canada's trade, and by extension its GDP, is heavily dependent on the United States. And the U.S. administration is bent on exploiting every relationship for domestic political purposes. Carney knows Canada must reduce that dependency. His strategy is to manage Washington — ensuring nothing explodes — while steadily building trade with Europe. The goal is to cut reliance on U.S. markets without triggering retaliation, a delicate but necessary balance.
If Canada continued on the Trudeau path, four years from now Canadian officials would still be making trips to Washington, offering empty platitudes, and watching their future partner in Europe be crushed by imperial aggression. Carney is changing that course. Canada cannot look the other way when Europe and Ukraine are under threat. It must help Europe, help Ukraine, and prove that it can be counted on.
On August 24th, Carney took one giant step in that direction.
This comes during what may be the most decisive year yet for Ukraine. 2025 became a watershed moment, beginning with the February 28 Oval Office farce in Washington. Trump's theatrics, coupled with the decision to cut intelligence support, finally jolted Norway awake.
On March 6, 2025, Norway's parliament reached broad consensus to significantly boost aid to Ukraine—adding NOK 50 billion in extraordinary funding. This pushed Norway's total 2025 support to NOK 85 billion (about US $7.8 billion)
Data shows that in March and April 2025, European military and humanitarian aid reached record highs. Europe more than made up for the U.S. drop off during that period, delivering €10.4 billion in military and €9.8 billion in financial/humanitarian aid—marking the highest two-month total since the start of the war
By the end of May 2025, Norway had approved $8 billion in aid for Ukraine. Add $9 billion from Germany and UK’s $4 billion, and you had a solid $20 billion commitment from just three nations. That three pronged support, by Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom was the primary reason why Ukraine was able to pull in more than $43 billion in military aid this year.
It is likely, highly likely to settle down in the $50 to $60 billion range for the year.
It is now mighty obvious that Putin is desperately trying to shake the Russian state for pennies and keep the war going. He does not want to stop, if he were, there was no reason to cut state spending this hard. That means, what Europe does in 2026, will be as important as what they did in 2025.
Germany and the United Kingdom have already confirmed that at a minimum they will sustain their support levels in 2026. That places Ukraine at $13 billion for 2026. Norway announced this week that it will deliver $8.5 billion aid for Ukraine in 2026.
If Putin once dreamed that Western support would dry up, those dreams are over. Ukraine now enters 2026 with momentum — and with Canada stepping forward alongside Norway, the odds have shifted. Putin's bet on breaking Western resolve has never looked weaker.
The arithmetic is brutal for Moscow. With over $20 billion already locked in for 2026 from just three nations, and Europe's aid machinery now running independently of Washington's whims, Putin faces a grim calculus. His war chest shrinks while Ukraine's grows. His arsenal grows weaker while Ukraine's multiply. What began as his gamble on Western exhaustion has become his trap. The question is no longer whether the West will sustain Ukraine—it's whether Putin can sustain himself.
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Best read ever with my morning coffee. And thank you for not being one of “those” who brushes by Canada’s commitments. I know, we have a lot to regain after the Justin era. He meant well, but he just didn’t have the mileage.
I was channeling a Vulcan mind meld between Merz and Carney for months. Phew!
An aside: I trust Starmer almost less than I trust the US. And I’m proud that we stepped forward.
“If Putin once dreamed that Western support would dry up, those dreams are over.”
Even before Carney’s move, when we had just seen the strong moves from Europe’s key leaders that made clear that the essential support in relation to Ukraine’s weapons would continue, it was IMO quite clear that it was no longer plausible for Putin’s strategy to work out. I mean the strategy of just keeping things going until Western support for Ukraine and Ukraine’s will to resist crumble. If that continues to be Russia’s strategy, that is likely to lead to Putin’s front lines collapsing and his fiscal options running out.
What we IMO don’t know yet is whether Russia’s current government still has the capability of accordingly adjusting their strategy. This depends not only on Putin personally; I’d say that it depends primarily on whether he still has analysts telling him what he needs to hear even if it’s things that he doesn’t like to hear. It also depends on whether Putin and his advisors see actions by countries like Canada and those in Western Europe as potentially significant and therefore worth talking and thinking about. If on the other hand, they look at the US only, the result of their analysis will be quite wrong and it might support a continuation of the current strategy and the now clearly-foolish dreams that it’s based on.
I agree that Carney’s move is quite significant in regard to finally providing leadership in regard to building the necessary deterrence-based security framework that can be activated after the current round of hostilities ends.
IMO the most likely scenario for how an armistice can come about is still not Putin having a change of mind so that he’d suddenly be willing to negotiate a reasonable and acceptable armistice, but a military putsch that puts a junta in power which wants to focus initially at least on preventing Russia from falling apart and on preserving the Russian state’s ability and willingness to pay its military personnel—in which context continuing to fight a war that they cannot win would be seen as an obstacle to their main goals.
But once there is an armistice, either with the current government of Russia or with the next one or with whoever can be negotiated with if Russia disintegrates, it will be crucial for the free world to be ready with a security framework that can then be moved into place so that the war will not resume after there is again a government in Moscow with economic and military strength.