Exposed: Walter Lekh collaborated with suspected Russian agent David Pugliese in the latter's life-long bid to undermine NATO and the Canadian Army.
History proves Pugliese has never missed a chance to smear the Canadian army and his decades-long support for Russian interests and ties to the Kremlin.
David Pugliese is a Canadian journalist who covers defense and military issues for the Ottawa Citizen. His views on Ukraine seem to be consistently critical of Canada's involvement and its support for the Ukrainian government.
He has had a decade-long obsession with Ukrainian units linked to Neo-Nazis, which he first discovered in 2014.
In 2017, the Canadian foreign minister announced extending a training mission involving the Canadian army in Ukraine. Immediately, a story came out with Pugliese's participation that claimed the minister was a Nazi and her grandfather was a Nazi and they were going into a Nazi training mission to train Ukrainian Nazis.
In the article, he first made fun of anyone linking the discovery to be a Russian misinformation campaign followed by this statement from him personally verbatim: “Well it actually isn’t so outlandish. Michael Chomiak was a Nazi collaborator.”
He then provided evidence to support his claim, and ended the article with this statement also verbatim:
“So much for Russian disinformation.”
Throughout the Canadian Minister’s history, there was not a single anti-Semitic, homophobic, or racist comment or policy that the Canadian minister was ever involved in; in fact, her party affiliation is extremely strict against any of that—she is a member of the Liberal Party.
The attempt on her character was to somehow tie a possibly true ancestor who may have had ties to Nazi collaborators 80 years ago to assassinate her character and this info happened to become only relevant when the training mission to Ukraine was extended.
What Russia didn’t like, though, is that although the minister had never shown the slightest sign of anti-Semitism, she and Russia were never great fans; in fact, she is on the Russian travel ban list.
Canada being the closest neighbor and strategic ally to the United States with strong friendship and historic ties and a member of NATO, naturally US and Canadian foreign policies are often very close.
David Pugliese, however, didn’t like that. In fact, he didn’t like the strong American-Canadian alliance for a long time; he had an article suggesting Canada go find another Ally because, through an elaborate mental gymnastics trick, he ended up with a scenario where Toronto suffers a nuclear strike (by North Korea—he never mentions Russia in a bad light) and the US not responding to such attack in his mental exercise.
He later elaborated and quoted another out of context quote from a US military source stating the US does not have an air defense system that could intercept ICBMS (I will leave it to your imagination of which country in his not at all biased mind would have the capability to do what the US can’t to do to protect Canada). https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/u-s-would-let-a-north-korean-nuke-missile-
Back to Chrystia Freeland, the Canadian minister, it might just be that Mr. Pugliese's problem with her is that she had close ties to NATO. In fact, the minister might be on her way to a position within its ranks over the next two months.
What never crossed David's mind is that the minister's support for Ukraine might be, for example, stemming from the fact that she is UKRAINIAN and has nothing to do with his obsession that he suddenly got infected with in 2014 about Ukrainian Nazis in WW2; it might be a hard concept to grasp that Ukrainians would love an alliance defending them against a genocide that he never bothered to cover other than his obsession with Nazism.
There was, however, a very curious omission in this article concerning the source of the info he received and who brought it to his attention. Astonishingly, he himself later published an article stating that the person who fed him the info was indeed a Russian diplomat who was soon after expelled from Canada for allegations of espionage and spreading misinformation. https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/russian-diplomat-calls-expulsions-over-remarks-un-canadian
The article was titled:
"Exclusive: Russian diplomat booted from Canada has some advice for Trudeau—it won't work. Goodbye Kirill Kalinin** (referencing his Russian agent friend), the Russian press secretary who outed the Foreign Affairs minister's grandfather as a Nazi collaborator."
It is perhaps ironic that those who were spreading those articles and amplifying them, claiming the Canadian Foreign Minister—who had never shown one sign of anti-Semitism in her life—is a Nazi, were actually far-right groups within Canada who themselves have ties to Neo-Nazis and are highly critical of Justin Trudeau's government with which the minister belonged to.
Previously, David openly blamed NATO for the 2014 Russian invasion, calling it a result of NATO expansion and not even blaming it partially on Russia, with an article titled:
“Pushing Russia into a Corner Increases Danger to World, Says NATO Specialist.”
He later became the top journalist covering Ukrainian Nazis in the entire continent of North America, while his friend Glen Greenwald had the top spot for South America on the same topic, which is very widely known to be the pretext and justification for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
His bias was so extreme to the point that some Ukrainians noticed his widely obscure publications; I will point out one example that shows the extent and length that Mr. Pugliese goes into to undermine Ukrainian national security and promote Russian narratives.
This is the title for Mr. Pugliese's article they will comment on: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-officials-honor-nazi-collaborators-in-ukraine-angering-jewish-groups
“Canadian officials honor Nazi collaborators in Ukraine, angering Jewish groups,” 'It’s like putting a monument to killers on the top of the graves of their victims,said an official from the Ukrainian Jewish Committee based in Kiev.”
Below is the comment from a Ukrainian news agency about his publication: Comment from the Ukrainian newspaper
“The Ukrainian Weekly” about his publication:
https://www.ukrweekly.com/uwwp/the-ugly-face-of-russian-propaganda/
““Using very selective snippets of information, Mr. Pugliese quoted Eduard Dolinsky, director-general of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, to back up his contention that Jewish groups are supposedly angered by the ceremony. The Ukrainian Jewish Committee is a marginal group and not representative of Ukraine’s Jewish community at large. Its president, Oleksandr Feldman, is a member of Parliament for the pro-Russian Our Land party that was created as a refuge for former members of the Party of Regions headed by Viktor Yanukovych. Mr. Dolinsky himself is a contributor to the separatist website, Nova Rossiya Today. What Mr. Pugliese conveniently ignored was the fact that the ceremony of sanctification in Sambirof the future “Remember” Memorial Complex to victims of World War II in Ukraine (which was held a month before his report) was organized by the Kyiv City Jewish Committee
And the Toronto-based Ukrainian Jewish Encounter. It was attended by the Primate of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, Patriarch Sviatoslav; the Primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Metropolitan Epiphaniy; and the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, Yaakov Dov Bleich.””
As you can see above, not only did he misrepresent the facts to an appalling extent, the ceremony that he portrays as a Nazi ritual was organized by the Kyiv City Jewish Committee attended by the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, Yaakov Dov Bleich, and who did Mr. Pugliese use to show an opposing view? A fringe group that is tied to a separatist movement that contributes to a separatist website called Nova Rossiya Today.
This is but two examples of many; the examples above show that not only did Mr. David collaborate with a Russian diplomat agent expelled for espionage and Separatists from a Pro-Russia Party, he deliberatelyobscured obvious material facts needed for very basic journalistic honor in order to fit his narrative, which in 100% of the time magically fits the Russian one.
Mr. Pugliese has not talked once about Wagner Nazi associations, although they are directly involved in the fighting in Ukraine. If he is to be worried about Ukrainian Jews, wouldn’t it at least make sense to wonder how the Ukrainian Jewish people’s lives in Odessa and elsewhere would be like if they fell under Wagner’s control?
Not one concern was voiced in that regard by him.
Mr. David later criticized air defense deliveries to Ukraine, not even offensive weapons, AIR DEFENSE
“ Canada buys Ukraine $400M air-defense system; Canadian Army still waits for such equipment”
Mr. Pugliese recently tweeted a tweet implying Ukraine aid is an Expo for “American weapon makers” rather than aid for a nation under threat of extinction if Putin is successful.
The way Mr. Pugliese spreads his misinformation is skillful in masquerading under the disguise of a “concerned journalist looking for accountability in a free society” yet the pattern is impossible to hide of how selective he is on every piece he writes.
If for example he wants to state a statement that fits his narrative, he would selectively choose certain fringe views and suppress others, even when those views appear to be in conflict in every aspect except that they always, always undermine NATO and fit Russian narratives.
Mr. David later published articles ranging from a story about a service member who was accused of sexual misconduct and was providing assistance in Ukraine, to another who allegedly had a transphobic comment and is also connected to the Ukrainian war effort.
In short, Mr. Pugliese is going around with a microscopic lens trying to tie any negative personal faults for anyone in the Canadian army and connecting it to the war effort in Ukraine.
Mr. David has not written any articles about every single service member with sexual misconduct, unless they are somehow headed towards Ukraine, only then does it become an issue for him.
In his latest find was a petty, poorly written hit piece against a Canadian charity that happened to have members associated with his 30-year obsession, the Canadian army.
The article goes into such minute, petty details of interpersonal drama that goes as mundane as if someone called someone else a disrespectful comment ON TWITTER.
For those who are not familiar with Twitter, if you are not deliberately or accidentally disrespected on Twitter, you might be doing something terribly wrong.
It also goes in length into trying to link the Canadian army directly with the alleged misconduct that Walter Lekh (a Ukrainian citizen living in NY and a Twitter space host covering Ukraine spaces) accused the Charity of.
It is very curious why Walter Lekh, a Ukrainian with clear pro-Ukraine views, would align himself with one of the most virulent Russian mouthpieces in Canada. If anything, the part where Mr. Pugliese tries to focus into dragging the Canadian military into the drama seems to be encouraged by Mr. Walter Lekh and his associate Alona Shevchenko.
This is incredibly strange behavior since both of Mr. Lekh and Mrs. Shevchenko listed Elliot Higgins from Belling Cat on a “Russian foreign asset” list since they did have some investigations covering Ukrainian Nazi fringe groups.
The difference is Belling Cat 95% of his work is obviously either objective or clearly Pro-Ukraine and he is on the Russian travel ban while Mr. Pugliese is…
that takes us to the final part. Mr. Pugliese not only criticized Canadian and NATO forces everywhere they go, he is a regular guest at the Russian embassy.
He is tagged and Quoted and even acknowledged by the Russian embassy itself numerous times, he frequents the embassy often enough for it to be widely circulated on Twitter that he even used to play Hockey inside the Russian embassy for years.
To complete the pattern seen on all Russian agents, he tweeted an advertisement to an event similar to David Gallaway No2NatoNo2 war conference but in Toronto instead of London,
. Walter Lekh and Alona Shevchenko chose to partner with this person against a common enemy that all three of them have; I’ll let you judge which is this enemy…
He does however have an embassy that he considers an enemy, the Ukrainian one, in this tweet where he alleges the Ukrainian Embassy is targeting him
The Ukrainian Canadian Congress sent a letter to complain against his behavior https://www.ucc.ca/2020/07/18/july-18-2020-letter-to-ottawa-citizen
To top it off here is him claiming the Maidan was a coup assisted by the Canadian embassy in Ukraine
Additional Sources:
Sources
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/luciuk-ottawas-national-holocaust-monument-must-include-ukrainians