Anita Anand’s appointment as Foreign Affairs minister draws praise from Ukrainian officials

About three weeks before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Canada’s then-defence minister, Anita Anand, was in Kyiv, trying to warn her Ukrainian counterparts that war was coming.

At the time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government was still insisting that the possibility of a full-scale Russian invasion was remote.

But Ms. Anand told reporters on Jan. 31, 2022, that “it’s generally well-known to be the case that there is Russian aggression at the Ukrainian border.”

Western intelligence, of course, proved to be correct, and Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his troops across the border on Feb. 24, 2022.

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This spring, the Ukrainian government was careful not to take sides in Canada’s federal election, believing both the Liberals and Conservatives would continue to support Ukraine.

But Kyiv will nonetheless be comforted to see the return of a familiar face to Canada’s cabinet in Ms. Anand, who on Tuesday was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs by Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Ms. Anand replaces Mélanie Joly, who had served as Foreign Minister since October, 2021. Ms. Joly was named Tuesday to Ms. Anand’s previous post of Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry.

Ms. Anand, who has also served as minister of transport, internal trade and head of the Treasury Board since leaving the defence portfolio, made support for Ukraine the centrepiece of her 21-month stint as the civilian head of Canada’s military.

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She returned to wartime Kyiv in January, 2023, to announce that Ottawa would provide Ukraine’s military with 200 additional armoured personnel carriers and to salute the country as the “frontier of freedom.”

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha was the first foreign diplomat to cheer the announcement Tuesday of Ms. Anand’s new post.

“Sincere congratulations to Anita Anand on her appointment as Canada’s new Foreign Minister,” Mr. Sybiha wrote on X. “I look forward to continuing our close cooperation and strengthening the Ukrainian-Canadian special partnership.”

Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braze was also quick to offer her congratulations, hailing Canada for its “outstanding” leadership of a multinational NATO brigade stationed in the Baltic state and posting a picture on X of her embracing Ms. Anand at a 2023 meeting at the NATO headquarters in Brussels.

Steve Hewitt, a senior lecturer in the department of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Birmingham, said Mr. Carney’s appointment of a former defence minister as his foreign minister was “perhaps a sign of a more muscular foreign policy than under Trudeau.”

Ms. Anand is unlikely to get such a warm reception in the Middle East. Like most senior figures in former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s government, she has come under attack from both sides over the course of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Early in the war, she was lambasted by pro-Palestinian groups condemning her for refusing to call for a complete embargo on weapons sales to Israel. Later, Ms. Anand drew the ire of the pro-Israel lobby for a May, 2024, social-media post condemning Israel’s “inhumane and cruel” bombing of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip.

However, Mitchell Barak, a Jerusalem-based pollster and former aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said few in Israel were paying attention to Mr. Carney’s cabinet announcement, as Canada was “not on the radar” when it came to resolving the Middle East conflict.

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India, another thorny file awaiting Ms. Anand in her new post, paid much more attention to her appointment: Both the Hindustan Times and the Times of India ran profiles of her on Tuesday. They highlighted the fact that the 57-year-old Ms. Anand, whose parents were both born in India, placed her hand on the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu scripture, as she took the oath of office.

Canada-India relations have been at rock bottom since 2023, when Mr. Trudeau went public with the RCMP’s suspicions that the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was involved in the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, an activist who called for an independent Sikh state in what is now the Punjab region of India.

Mr. Nijjar, a Canadian citizen, was shot dead outside a gurdwara in Surrey, B.C., in June, 2023. The RCMP later arrested three Indian nationals in connection with the killing, and India’s high commissioner and five diplomats were expelled from Canada over their alleged involvement in the murder.

Mr. Modi’s government, which denies all involvement, responded by expelling six Canadian diplomats and suspending most categories of visas for Canadians seeking to travel to India.

The hottest international file – Canada’s relationship with the United States – will likely be handled by Dominic LeBlanc, who was named Minister Responsible for Canada-U.S. Trade. But Ms. Anand will have plenty on her plate, including an expected attempt to reset Canada’s relationship with China after years of friction.

Ms. Anand has warned in the past about China’s increasingly aggressive behaviour toward Taiwan and other neighbours. In a 2022 address to the Halifax Security Forum, she said Canada “will challenge China when we ought to. We will co-operate with China when we must.”