Former Ukrainian president says war can still be avoided but urges accelerated Canadian aid

Former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko says Canada should accelerate any plans to send military aid to his country, expressing hope for a peaceful solution even as Russian troops remain amassed at the border.

"We have a full, open and huge Russian aggression," Poroshenko said in an interview airing Sunday on Rosemary Barton Live.

"The expanding of the scale of this war, we can avoid that. We can use [diplomacy]," he told CBC chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton.

Tensions in Ukraine have been running high for months, with an estimated 100,000 Russian troops near the shared border. Russia recently presented a list of demands to the United States and allied powers that include a permanent ban on Ukrainian membership in the NATO military alliance.

Poroshenko suggested that the way to dissuade any aggression by Russian President Vladimir Putin is to do the opposite: present a plan for Ukrainian and Georgian membership in NATO this summer.

Russia denies that it is threatening Ukraine with invasion, saying it is looking to negotiate with the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization around a stable international security framework. Putin has said Russia feels threatened by NATO expansion in eastern Europe.

"I can officially assure you that Russia is not going to invade Ukraine. Russia doesn't want to invade Ukraine," Russia's ambassador to Canada, Oleg Stepanov, told CBC's Power & Politics on Friday.

Top diplomats from the U.S. and Russia met in Geneva on Friday, and while they did not reach an agreement to defuse the crisis, they did indicate that talks would continue.

"I think overall, Russia is turning this negotiation process into a blackmail and waste of time," former Ukrainian ambassador to Canada Andriy Shevchenko said on Power & Politics.

Poroshenko, a billionaire businessman, became president of Ukraine in 2014 after the country's pro-Russia government led by Viktor Yanukovych was removed from office following popular protests.

During his presidency, Ukraine fought a drawn-out conflict with pro-Russian separatist forces in the Donbas region of the country's east.

Poroshenko lost the 2019 election to Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's current president. The former president now faces charges of high treason — accused of involvement in coals sales that allegedly helped finance those separatist forces.

He denies the charges and calls them politically motivated. Poroshenko still leads his party, European Solidarity, as a representative in the Ukrainian parliament.

Despite the ongoing political conflict between Poroshenko and Zelensky, the former told Barton that internal unity was needed in the face of a Russian threat.