[Op-ed by Maria Popova and Anastasia Leshchyshyn, both researchers at McGill University.]
When Canadians think about our neighbours, we generally think only of one: the United States. But we also have a neighbour to the North: Russia, whose proximity has only been enhanced by the effects of climate change on the Arctic.
And we need to shift our assumptions quickly. With the terms of Ukraine’s future now being determined, the kind of Russia that emerges from the Russo-Ukrainian war is the one Canada will meet in the Arctic.
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However, despite our mental maps fooling us otherwise, the North does not end with us; the Russian neighbour just across the Arctic Circle is much closer than we tend to realize.
Last week’s speech by CSIS Director Daniel Rogers should jolt Canadians from their North American preoccupations and reorient our attention to Canada’s Arctic with warnings that Russia and China have “significant intelligence interests” in the region.
Word of Russian prowling in the Arctic is far from revelatory, and it has been suggested that Rogers’ address was a timely effort to shore up public support for the Carney government’s recent increases in defence spending. Yet “significant” was also the adjective selected by Rogers to describe Russia’s military presence in the Arctic, and the state itself was notably characterized as remaining “unpredictable and aggressive.”
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In a speech delivered in Kyiv on Ukraine’s Independence Day in August 2025, Prime Minister Mark Carney offered an assessment of Russia’s imperial ambitions in Ukraine: “We see this war clearly, as a horrific act of aggression, a maniacal quest to recreate a history that itself was filled with injustice, and we know that peace will only come through strength.”
Canadians are perhaps not as clearsighted in comprehending their own country’s proximity to this same aggressor, and even less so in their ability to predict or imagine how exactly Russian aggression might manifest to undermine Canadian interests.
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To call Russia our neighbour would be to recognize that the outcome of the Russo-Ukrainian war has direct implications for Canadian security, and that support for Ukraine is a direct investment in our own defence, rather than a donation to a distant cause.
To call Russia our neighbour would be to induce a shift in Canada’s broader political calculus, by illuminating the scope of our susceptibilities and expanding our understanding of what the defence of our interests entails.
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If Ukraine is defeated, Canada risks dealing with an emboldened, expansionist neighbour — and not just the one to our south.
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