But she accused the Russian President of exploiting the error by the former Speaker, who had apologized and resigned after the incident, for propaganda purposes.

“We can’t change the fact that he made that mistake. We can, though, all of us decide how effective Vladimir Putin is at weaponizing that mistake,” she said. “And I would really urge all of us to understand that Russian propaganda is real.”

![brainworms](https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/99832a04-92c8-4765-9a52-aecd28086cef.png "emoji brainworms") Yes, the thing we did BY MISTAKE supports the claims made by our adversary, BUT its up to all of us to be dismissive of these claims, because they make my Uncles very upset

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[–] SacredExcrement@hexbear.net 52 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just in case anybody didn't know or forgot

Freeland's maternal grandfather, Michael Chomiak, had been a journalist before World War II. During the war in Nazi-occupied Poland and later in Nazi-occupied Austria he was chief editor of the Ukrainian daily newspaper Krakivs'ki Visti (Kraków News) for the Nazi regime. After Chomiak's death in 1984, John-Paul Himka, a professor of history at the University of Alberta, who was Chomiak's son-in-law (and also Freeland's uncle by marriage), used Chomiak's records, including old issues of the newspaper, as the basis of several scholarly papers focused on the coverage of Soviet mass murders of Ukrainian civilians. These papers also examined the use of these massacres as Nazi propaganda against Jews. In 2017, when Russian-affiliated websites, e.g. Russia Insider and New Cold War, further publicized Chomiak's connection to Nazism, Freeland and her spokespeople responded by claiming that this was a Russian disinformation campaign during her appointment to the position of minister of foreign affairs. Her office later denied Chomiak ever collaborated with Nazi Germany. However, reporting by The Globe and Mail showed that Freeland had known of her grandfather's Nazi ties since at least 1996, when she helped edit a scholarly article by Himka for the Journal of Ukrainian Studies

![bean-think](https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/a4f93ba9-3623-489c-bbf6-3cecdd09270e.png "emoji bean-think")

[–] uSSRI@hexbear.net 11 points 1 year ago

Freeland even sounds like some lebensraum shit. It's just poland...it's free real estate. Good way to remember her connection when she defends her family/nazis