Ukraine on the Brink: A Canadian Journalist's Blunt Warning
Analysis: Odesa-based Canadian journalist Michael Bociurkiw says Ukraine is drained after four years of war, and refugees face a grim choice.
The hall at St. Vladimir's Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Calgary is packed. Three gigantic, artistically painted wooden Easter eggs dominate the stage. Heavily accented voices rise and fall amid the chatter as attendees nibble on poppyseed cake and other Ukrainian delicacies. No one wears the bright blue-and-yellow of the war's early days, but embroidered vyshyvanky peek from under sweaters and jackets.
These are the faithful still committed to Ukraine's cause. They came to hear Michael Bociurkiw — a Canadian journalist of Ukrainian heritage now based in Odesa — deliver a sobering assessment of a war grinding into its fifth year. A familiar face on CNN and the BBC, Bociurkiw has become one of the most credible English-language voices on the ground. On this night, he mixes high-level strategy with raw human cost, offering unvarnished predictions about Putin, Xi and Trump — and a blunt warning to his Canadian compatriots.
China, he reports, has gone beyond secretly shipping drone components labelled "refrigerator parts" to Russia. Beijing is now training Russian forces in drone warfare, electronic warfare and explosives. Beijing denies it, of course.
Yet Bociurkiw's most urgent message isn't geopolitical intrigue. It is a warning about the quiet hollowing out of Ukraine itself.
"Millions have left — many of them young and able-bodied," he tells the room. Heads nod. "You see them here in Calgary." His stark assessment: many will never return permanently. That poses a devastating problem for postwar reconstruction: You can pledge billions to rebuild Ukraine, but without human capital, the effort collapses.
Nearly 300,000 Ukrainians arrived in Canada under the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET) program between 2022 and 2024. As emergency visas expire and extensions run until 2027, only about 2,500 have secured permanent residency. In Germany, Bociurkiw reports, "asylum seekers at the start of the war are now beginning to qualify for citizenship there." Here, the pathway remains murky.
A 2025 survey found just three per cent had returned to Ukraine. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada still officially expects most to go home once fighting stops. Bociurkiw questions that assumption.
"They're here on temporary status. They can work, but it's very, very difficult," he says. Canada must decide soon what to do with them. Yet returnees face grim realities: "People are not going to come back if no inch of Ukraine is safe — and I don't use those words lightly. That's what Ukrainians tell me they feel."
"No one voluntarily leaves their home," he continues. "So the question is, if we give them citizenship, does that make it easier — or harder — for them to return? I'll be honest, that needs to be decided."
