Chrystia Freeland speaks to reporters prior to a cabinet meeting in Ottawa, Canada, 14 May 2025. Photo: EPA / Spencer Colby
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Monday that he had appointed Canada’s former deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland to advise him on Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction.
Praising Freeland for her “significant experience in attracting investments and conducting economic transformations”, Zelensky said that Ukraine needed “to increase its internal resilience” for the sake of its economic recovery.
Describing Ukraine as being “at the forefront of today’s global fight for democracy”, Freeland wrote on X that she welcomed the “chance to contribute on an unpaid basis as an economic advisor to President Zelensky”.
“The next battlefield is economic,” Freeland told the New York Times in an interview on Monday. “Ukraine has the opportunity to turn the courage, patriotism and entrepreneurial spirit it has demonstrated over four years of war to the equally essential mission of economic renewal.”
Freeland, who has Ukrainian ancestry, served as Canada’s deputy prime minister between 2019 and 2024, during which time she was a leading international advocate for sending aid to Kyiv. She plans to resign from her parliamentary seat in Canada in order to assume her new role, Reuters reported.
Some economic analysts have expressed doubts about the prospects of Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction, arguing that a diminished workforce due to occupation, migration and low wartime birth rates would likely hinder the country’s economic recovery in the immediate aftermath of the war.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova reacted to the news of Freeland’s appointment by noting that she was “the granddaughter of the Nazi collaborationist Mikhaylo Khomyak”, who she said had published a newspaper in Krakow during the German occupation of Poland.
