Roundup: The benefit of the doubt for Gladu

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The Liberal convention is happening this weekend in Montreal, and it’s in part a way that prime minister Mark Carney is putting his stamp on the party now that he’s been leader for a year. It’s a different kind of convention—claimed to be the largest policy convention in the party’s history, and there are no American Democrats giving keynote speeches for the party faithful to fangirl over for a change—the keynote was Canadian Rick Hansen, which again, is a marked shift from years past.

Of course, so much of the oxygen is being taken up by the recent floor-crossers, Marilyn Gladu most especially, and while you have news stories talking about a “mixed reaction,” there is nevertheless a sense that pervades the quotes across news stories that delegates are Carney fans, and that they’re giving him the benefit of the doubt for welcoming them into the party, particularly if it gets them to a majority parliament that will being some stability. Chris d’Entremont and Matt Jeneroux have made comments of their own about feeling secure in their decisions, while progressive Liberals like Karina Gould and Stephen Guilbeault are couching their reservations about Gladu into an optimism that she knew what she was signing up for when she crossed over. For her part, Gladu is also talking about how she hopes this move will benefit her riding, though governments aren’t really supposed to favour only ridings they hold (even though it happens, especially provincially).

As for policy, it has been noticed that there isn’t much talk about Trump, even though he continues to dominate the political airwaves and is giving Carney much of his raison d’être for what he’s doing. There are policy resolutions on banning social media for minors, or limiting use of chatbots (but nobody seems to understand the massive problems associated with age verification).

Ukraine Dispatch

President Zelenskyy says that they are facing pressure both military as spring arrives, but also diplomatically as allies want them to stop hitting Russian oil and gas facilities as prices are so high. Farmers in Ukraine are now being hit by high fertilizer prices thanks to the Iran conflict.

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Roundup: No introspection for Poilievre

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Pierre Poilievre tried to change the channel yesterday in order to sound the alarm about property rights in BC, ginning up outrage about the Cowichan land title decision by the BC Supreme Court (which is a superior court), and the false claim this puts all property rights at risk in the province. It’s not true, of course, and the federal government is appealing that decision (which the Cowichan leadership have stated point-blank has nothing to do with private property), but well, the media had no interest in asking him about that. Instead, it was all about his own leadership in the wake of yet another defection by an MP.

Some of the own-goals are just amazing.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-09T15:24:00.893Z

Rest assured, Poilievre is not reflecting on his leadership, because he assures us he got such a high mark from his leadership review and such a great result in the last election. Surely that means that he’s blameless. Instead, he’s going to start insisting that floor-crossers run in byelections, which is a position he never used to hold, and to insist on recall petitions, both of which are antithetical to how a Westminster parliamentary system operates. People vote for the candidate, not the party, which means the MP gets to make their own decision. If you think that means that their votes somehow don’t count, then the technical term for that is “sore-loser.” (Also, people do not choose “majority” or “minority” parliament on their ballots).

Pierre Poilievre’s Personal Assistant Explains Why Everyone Is Leaving Himyoutu.be/PhpH36ZZX1I

— Clare Blackwood (@clareblackwood.bsky.social) 2026-04-09T20:42:58.342Z

Meanwhile, Mark Carney had to answer his own questions about Gladu’s views, and he insists that they talked about it and that she’ll vote with the party, which would have been nice to hear from the horse’s mouth yesterday. Carney also continues to insist that the Liberals are still the party of the Charter, which is getting harder to believe all the time. Gladu herself had to answer questions about her views at a media availability at the party’s convention, and she did nuance some of her positions, and fair enough, but this should have been part of the discussion yesterday and not a day-and-a-half later.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-09T19:08:02.208Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Putin has declared a 32-hour ceasefire for Orthodox Easter (but we’ll see if he actually honours it). Russia turned over1000 bodies it claims are from the Ukrainian military, while Ukraine turned over 41 dead Russians.

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Roundup: The most unexpected floor crossing

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To say that the announcement that Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu had crossed the floor to the Liberals was a surprise is an understatement. It was a genuinely gobsmacking moment because Gladu is, to be blunt, an absolute loon. She’s Maple MAGA—a Trump lover, who pushed Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as COVID cures. She was a hard-core “convoy” supporter whose seal for their cause had Poilievre create a portfolio of “civil liberties critic” for her to continue to espouse nonsense on their behalf. She opposed the banning of so-called “conversion therapy” and was open to members of her caucus legislating to restrict abortion. She would even talk about how, in her experience as a chemical engineer, she had to deal with Chinese corruption on projects, which is why she would not trust the regime. None of this would seem to endear her to the Liberals in any sense.

I guess Carney has zero standards.A list of Gladu's greatest hits:1) opposing cannabis legalization, she read a poem in the House urging MPs to "keep our great country safe from all the weed."2) in 2020, she suggested using the military to end pipeline protests…bsky.app/profile/thes…

— Emmett Macfarlane 🇨🇦 (@emmettmacfarlane.com) 2026-04-08T15:08:52.008Z

I’m going to write more about what his means for the Liberals in a longer piece later, but it cannot be understated what this means for Poilievre, because she was very much his people. She represented the base he was trying to court, and in the end, she walked away from him, and her statements once she crossed over were about needing a leader for this critical moment, which one could very much take to mean that Poilievre is not such a leader. The Star spoke to some Conservatives who claim that as many as 40 members of caucus are worried about their seats under Poilievre’s continued leadership, while Chris d’Entremont told CTV that he gets questions from Conservatives about what life is like with the Liberals, and they don’t sound like they’re turned off. If you’re Poileivre, that has to be a loud and clear message that in spite of the vote of confidence he received in his leadership review, his caucus is worried and history shows they won’t be mollified by a grassroots approval—nor should they be. Of course, they’re all busy pledging their loyalty to the party over social media, but things cannot be that comfortable in the caucus room, and it’s a real question as to whether Poileivre has self-awareness or EQ in order to read that room.

With that, I’m going to give the last word to Andrew Coyne. And the Beaverton.

Five reasons MPs keep leaving my party that have absolutely nothing to do with me – Editorial by Pierre Poilievre

— The Beaverton (@thebeaverton.com) 2026-04-08T19:19:23.311Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drones damaged a power substation in Odesa, as well as port infrastructure and a civilian vessel in Izmail. Ukrainian drones struck a Russian oil terminal in occupied Crimea.

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Roundup: A mere reminder to respect international law

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Well, that kind of felt like a close one, as Trump made genocidal threats against Iran, and then backed down at the very last minute for a two-week ceasefire (negotiated by Pakistan?!) that would seem to effectively hand over control of the Strait of Hormuz to Iran’s control in exchange for extortion payments? Maybe? There are a lot of competing narratives, nut none of them are any good, and the most that Mark Carney could muster himself to do was to say that “all parties” must respect International Law. Well then.

Meanwhile, you had Americans on social media imploring the rest of the world to Do Something about Trump, when he’s their president and they have all of the tools to remove him at their disposal if they were to so choose, and they could have spent the day protesting in the streets nation-wide, and made it really uncomfortable for their government, but nope. It’s not even learned helplessness—it’s an absolute refusal to both understand their own civics, and take responsibility for their actions.

Trump expects the rest of the world to clean up his mess in Iran, while American voters expect the rest of the world to clean up the mess they made in electing Trump.Just perfect. Chef's kiss.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-07T16:03:58.527Z

Back home, Mark Carney says he’s looking at ways to “cushion the blow” of high gas prices as a result of this conflict, while he keeps having to answer questions about why gasoline prices are so high when we produce our own at home. He never seems to want to explain why we are bound to the world price (i.e. so that we can export into the global market), and also never gets around to saying that the last time the federal government proposed price controls on oil and gas, well, Alberta has an absolute meltdown that they still harbour zombie resentment toward today (even though they blamed the NEP for the collapse in prices when it was, in fact, a global oil price shock, but it was more convenient to blame Pierre Trudeau and it stuck).

In case you missed it:

  • For National Magazine, I delve into whether there is any basis for the Chief Justice to recuse himself if the Supreme Court hears the Emergencies Act appeal.
  • My weekend column looks at a recent push by some senators to start using the tools at their disposal to break up omnibus budget bills.
  • My column notes that Poilievre treats “cutting wasteful spending” as the very same kind of magical money tree that the NDP does when it comes to wealth taxes.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take finds it a problem that Poilievre is evaluating the effectiveness of his shadow cabinet based on their social media presence.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians attacked two busses in Dnipropetrovsk, killing eight people and injuring more than two dozen others. Ukraine has regained more territory along the frontlines in the east and southeast parts of the country. There is a looming shortage of the miniature jet engines that Ukraine’s deep-strike drones require.

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Roundup: The Senate rumour mill churns

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There has been a raft of rumours out about the Senate the past couple of days, the latest being that there could be yet another caucus forming, possibly out yet another split within the Independent Senators Group, because there is some friction over the current leadership—erm, “facilitatorship”—and that is not entirely unsurprising. The ISG is large and unwieldy, and when you have that many type-A people in a room who all have their own ideas on how to do things, and their own agendas, it’s little wonder that they can barely organise themselves to do anything. So we’ll see if this happens, but nevertheless, I can confirm that I’ve heard grumblings about the current state of the ISG.

Meanwhile, there is another rumour circulating, both from the Globe and Mail and iPolitics that prime minister Mark Carney is looking to appoint Tom Pitfield to the Senate—the same Tom Pitfield who won a turf war within the PMO that saw David Lametti take a job as UN ambassador instead of the post he was supposed to take up within PMO. The rumours also state that he would take over as Government Leader in the Senate and take up a seat in Cabinet like the post is supposed to be, but this too is being denied. The source of this rumour also hints that Carney is going to start appointing partisan Liberals to the Senate again, which I’m not necessarily opposed to, provided that there is no expectation of a whip, which never really existed in the Senate before, but with almost no former Liberal senators left, the new batch may be under some false pretences.

Meanwhile, I find myself baffled by the notion that Carney is looking to appoint Pitfield and partisans in order to move bills through the Senate, as though there is obstruction happening there. There is not. Government bills are passing through at a pace that is actually too fast for proper scrutiny in many cases because of an exaggerated sense of faux urgency, while the real problem remains in the House of Commons, which has barely passed any legislation, leaving senators bored and preoccupied with their own hobby-horse bills, and frankly, some of this talk about splitting caucuses is likely a result of that boredom.

Programming Note: I will be taking the full long weekend off. See you next Wednesday.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched a daytime drone attack and killed four people in the central Cherkasy region, damaging more energy infrastructure. Russia also claims to have fully taken control of the Luhansk region, which Ukraine denies. Ukraine struck a missile component factory in Russia’s Bryansk region.

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Roundup: Danielle Smith’s Soviet-style political neutrality

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Yesterday was Trans Day of Visibility, and because of the times we live in, it was treated as an excuse to attack trans rights. In the US, the US Supreme Court struck down Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy in an 8-1 ruling, under the ludicrous rubric that banning “talk therapy” was impacting free speech (even though talk therapy should be classed as medical services, as the dissenting judge pointed out). And in Idaho, the governor signed a bill to make it a felony for a trans person to use a public washroom that is not their assigned sex at birth.

Back in Canada, Alberta premier Danielle Smith tabled a bill that purports to “remove politics and ideology” from schools, which among other things, means ensuring there are no Pride flags ever raised at Alberta schools. (Noted is that the current ban on informing parents if a student joins a GSA is not being changed). There are a lot of questions around what this is supposed to mean, and whether it’s only in classrooms, or if teachers are allowed to post opinions online, or anything like that, but it’s a weird and troubling decision by Smith to pursue this particular line of attack, and especially because it’s going to create a system of surveillance and denunciations, which is starting to sound pretty Soviet for a self-professed “libertarian” like Smith.

This can be taken is so many dangerous directions. And once something like this is enshrined in legislation, it creates a culture of surveillance where educators are going to live in fear of being secretly recorded and reported (look at what's happening in the U.S.!!)

— Mel Woods (@melwoods.me) 2026-03-31T21:14:57.962Z

The bill seeks to "bar school divisions or employees from making statements on “political, social or ideological matters” outside the school division’s purview."Curious if the government will think a teacher talking about being LGBTQ2S+ issues at all is "outside the school division's purview."

— Mel Woods (@melwoods.me) 2026-03-31T21:07:49.094Z

"Nicolaides also wouldn’t say whether the flag limitation would apply to stickers or magnets or other imagery teachers might have in their classrooms, except to say they can’t have ideological symbols."In a similar vein, could teachers get in trouble having, say, a Pride flag sticker on desk?

— Mel Woods (@melwoods.me) 2026-03-31T21:09:05.569Z

For a government who loves free speech, this seems a massive affront to freedom of expression for teachers and school staff on like, a very basic level.Very curious what the unions will say about all of this …

— Mel Woods (@melwoods.me) 2026-03-31T21:10:49.732Z

This in and of itself is a problem—it treats straight, white men as the default norm, and everyone else as “political,” and when you are effacing queer and trans people in the dame of “neutrality,” that is very, very political and is not neutral in the slightest. And Smith is going to keep getting away with this kind of thing because nobody is protesting around the clock or organizing a general strike to stop her.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian drones struck the Russian oil terminal at Ust-Luga for the fifth time in ten days. European diplomats were in Bucha to commemorate the 2022 massacre by Russian forces there. President Zelenskyy is hoping the Americans can convince Russia to enter into an “Easter truce” (and good luck with that).

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Roundup: Pushing ahead for a constitutional amendment

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Alberta premier Danielle Smith has decided that she’s not taking no for an answer when it comes to her demand for more say in the appointment of superior court judges in the provinces, and is putting forward a motion for a constitutional amendment to demand such a power, and is patterning it off of a similar motion from Quebec.

Feb 19 Ms Smith announces a referendum to initiate a process to amend s 96 of the Constitution (appointment of judges).And then today she announces, w/out waiting for that vote, that the Leg will be asked to adopt a motion on the same issue.Doesn't she trust voters?www.alberta.ca/release.cfm?…

— NigelBankes (@nigelb.bsky.social) 2026-03-31T00:31:00.468Z

Here's the text:

— NigelBankes (@nigelb.bsky.social) 2026-03-31T02:02:39.364Z

Smith will try and spin this (since it only refers to AB) as an amendment that only applies to AB and thus does not engage the 7/50 formula. Good luck with that.Also makes me wonder whether she spoke to Ontario and SK before hanging them out to dry (given the joint letter the other week).

— NigelBankes (@nigelb.bsky.social) 2026-03-31T02:06:19.965Z

Of course, along the way, she is making arguments for this that have no basis in reality. Alberta already appoints provincial court judges and justices of the peace, and she has invented whole cloth this notion that somehow federally-appointed judges are being parachuted into the province from outside. No—the people named to the bench are already lawyers within the province. The provincial judicial advisory committee selects from local candidates who apply, and has members of the local legal community vet them for suitability. There is no federal imposition happening here, other than the fact that it’s not Smith who gets to choose for her own ideological reasons.

This is ridiculous.1) Good luck opening that Pandora's Box.2) Alberta already appoints provincial court judges, which handle the bulk of criminal cases.3) The premise here is utterly false. Federally-appointed judges aren't parachuted in. They come from the province and communities they serve.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-03-31T02:08:27.386Z

OF course, this all in service of inventing a new grievance that has never existed before, because she needs to find new things to get the population riled up about. And you can bet that this is going to include more dramatics and histrionics about the fact that she is not being allowed to influence the next Supreme Court of Canada appointment, which is for a western seat on the Court (but is unlikely to be from Alberta given that Justice Moreau is already from Alberta, and there hasn’t been a Saskatchewan judge on the Court in quite a while now). But needing to invent new things to be mad about is her hobby, because if she didn’t, then people might turn their attention to her government’s incompetence and corruption.

It's just lies all the way down with Danielle Smith.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-03-31T02:08:27.387Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-03-30T22:08:01.849Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian attacks near Poltava killed one and injured three, while artillery strikes killed another person in Nikopol. Air defence units being formed by private companies are now in operation, which is meant to help take the burden off of the front-line units. President Zelenskyy says that security accords with Gulf countries are either signed or nearly so.

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Roundup: Lewis on the first ballot

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Avi Lewis won the NDP leadership race on the first ballot on Sunday, with Heather McPherson a distant second, and surprisingly, Tanille Johnson came in third and Rob Ashton fourth.  Of course, there was chatter over social media that there were Palestinian flags on the stage when this happened by no Canadian flags, so make of that what you will. While there is a lot of talk about how “radical” Lewis’ ideas are, most of them are within the mainstream of the party, though they still suffer from some of the same problems of feasibility and inability to distinguish between federal and provincial roles, so we’ll see how that starts to play itself out.

Congratulations to Avi Lewis on your election as NDP leader.As Prime Minister I will always take a collaborative approach to how we build a stronger Canada, and I look forward to speaking about how we can work together to keep delivering for Canadians.

— Mark Carney (@mark-carney.bsky.social) 2026-03-29T16:29:29.516Z

Thank you to Don Davies for your service as Interim Leader of the NDP over this past year, and for your work to create new opportunities together for Canadian workers.

— Mark Carney (@mark-carney.bsky.social) 2026-03-29T16:29:29.517Z

Poilievre's congratulations to Avi Lewis.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-03-29T20:51:23.374Z

https://twitter.com/yfblanchet/status/2038279508462010734

Almost immediately, there was reaction from the two prairie provincial wings of the party, as Naheed Nenshi and Carla Beck immediately sought to distance themselves from Lewis, just as Danielle Smith and Scott Moe immediately pounced to insist that you’re the same party, and that we’re going to tar you with the same brush. Because that’s helpful. Even Wab Kinew, who spoke at the convention, is putting some distance between himself and Lewis, so this could be very interesting moving forward.

Alberta NDP Leader @naheednenshi.bsky.social immediately distances his party from the federal party. This statement just out, minutes after @avilewis.ca becomes federal NDP leader. #cdnpoli

— davidakin (@davidakin.bsky.social) 2026-03-29T15:30:29.000Z

https://twitter.com/punditsguide/status/2038286835101876641

And on top of that, the calls from within the party to start the purge of the disloyal, citing that Jeremy Corbyn didn’t do it effectively enough with Labour in the UK. Because that’s totally how you build a movement that can attract votes.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-03-29T20:02:15.977Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian attacks early Saturday his port infrastructure in Odesa, as well as a maternity hospital. Early Sunday, a strike on Kramatorsk killed three and injured at least thirteen. Ukraine is closing in on several agreements with Gulf states about protection from Iranian drones, with Zelenskyy currently in Jordan.

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Roundup: Poilievre’s anti-trans colours

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Yesterday, Pierre Poilievre tweeted an endorsement of JK Rowling praising the International Olympic Committee’s decision to ban trans women from sport, using a photo of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif as illustration. In spite of conspiracy theories and slander, Khelif is not trans (and is from a country where being queer is a crime). Poilievre should know this, but he is choosing to double down on anti-trans rhetoric (with a dose of misogyny and slander along the way). This is not the first time he has shown himself to be anti-trans, but this is the first major opportunity since he’s been trying to cast himself in a new light.

In case you needed any clarification where Poilievre stands on trans rights.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-03-27T17:16:48.712Z

The discussion of this online turned to Mark Carney’s stance on trans rights (he has been blandly supportive, and one of his children identifies as non-binary), and whether he is going to do anything about provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan, who have invoked the Notwithstanding Clause to protect their anti-trans legislation from court challenges. The answer is that he doesn’t have the constitutional tools to do anything about it other than moral suasion. And then someone will pipe up and say that he can use disallowance.

No, he can’t. Disallowance is a constitutional dead letter because it was largely meant to prevent provinces from intruding into areas of federal jurisdiction, and that power was essentially adopted by the Supreme Court of Canada’s reference function. This means that any residual disallowance power would be a declaration of war on a province, at a time when you have two provinces that are flirting with separatist agitation. It’s not going to happen. Stop pretending that it’s a possibility because it’s not.

For the last time:The federal government is NOT going to use disallowance.Stop pretending it is a magic wand to deal with asshole premiers. You want to stop them? Get off your ass and organize, organize, organize. That's how politics works.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-03-28T04:36:47.504Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-03-27T13:24:01.622Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine’s economy minister said that the rise in fuel and fertilizer prices thanks to the Iran conflict are not expected to impact Ukraine’s spring planting season.

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Roundup: Trying to deflect on forced labour

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There was a lot of talk about newly-minted Liberal MP Michael Ma’s performance at the industry committee, where he questioned a witness about whether she had personally witnessed forced labour in China, in a tactic to try and dismiss her in favour of a witness who was pro-trade in Chinese EVs. Ma later apologised, and there was apparently some confusion over just which region in China he was referring to, but still, it made for a poor clip from committee (and of the CBC reporter chasing him on the Hill), and bad clips would seem to be a cardinal sin in Parliament these days.

This being said, there would seem to me to be a tension in all of this that very few people want to actually discuss, which is the fact that Carney’s “strategic partnerships” that he’s been patting himself on the back for post-Davos speech involve countries that involve forced labour—China and Qatar—while at the same time praising all of the “good, union jobs” that those partnerships will create back home in Canada. This while the Liberals still insist that they opposed forced labour in all of its forms, and that they have strong rules about eliminated forced labour from supply chains. There is a fundamental disconnect that they seem incapable of bridging coherently, because they simply ignore the dissonance, or in Ma’s case, his attempt to throw confusion around it just wound up making him look like an ass.

This is why I wrote my column earlier in the week about the Canadian Ombud for Responsible Enterprise, whose office was designed to look for forced labour in supply chains and call it out, and the fact that Carney has left the office vacant for the past year and will almost certainly smother it in its sleep and scrap the office in the name of budget cuts—so that there is no embarrassment caused over these “strategic partnerships” with forced-labour countries in the name of being “pragmatic” in the post-rupture world of global trade. Ma just gave the government a black eye over this, so we’ll see if they can handle themselves any better in the face of these embarrassing contradictions.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia claims to have taken a village in eastern Ukraine, while Ukraine reclaimed a village in the Dnipropetrovsk region. President Zelenskyy arrived for an unannounced visit to Saudi Arabia, one of the countries Ukraine is supplying drone expertise.

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