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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday he had appointed former Liberal cabinet minister Chrystia Freeland as an economic development adviser, citing her experience in attracting investment.
“Right now, Ukraine needs to strengthen its internal resilience — both for the sake of Ukraine’s recovery if diplomacy delivers results as swiftly as possible, and to reinforce our defense if, because of delays by our partners, it takes longer to bring this war to an end,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.
Freeland, who has Ukrainian ancestry, was deputy prime minister between 2019 and 2024. She has long been one of Canada’s most vocal opponents of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met on Saturday in Halifax to discuss economic aid amid the Russia-Ukraine war. This comes ahead of Zelenskyy’s plans to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump to discuss a peace deal.
In September 2025, she announced she was stepping down from cabinet and would not run as an MP in the next federal election, whenever that may occur.
Prime Minister Mark Carney asked her to serve as Canada’s new special representative for the reconstruction of Ukraine.
Carney in late December announced a $2.5 billion package of loans and debt suspension for Ukraine. It brought Canada’s total commitment to Ukraine in military, humanitarian and economic assistance since Russia’s 2022 invasion to $22 billion.
Zelenskyy said last week that after weeks of U.S.-led diplomacy, including talks with U.S. President Donald Trump in Florida, a peace agreement was “90 per cent ready.” Zelenskyy has said over the past month that Ukrainian and U.S. officials have worked on several documents related to postwar reconstruction and investment.
Taras Kachka, Ukraine deputy prime minister, said on Saturday that international partners have reached consensus on an economic support package of about $800 billion US for Ukraine over the next decade. The package is based on calculations by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union, and would cover damage compensation, reconstruction and economic stability and a $200-billion growth.
Freeland has roiled both the U.S. and Russia in the past.
She was one of a number of Canadian officials subjected to retaliatory sanctions imposed by Vladimir Putin’s government in 2014, the year Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine.
After Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, she was a leading proponent among Ukraine’s allies for freezing some Russian assets.
Trump, meanwhile, has hurled a sling of insults over the years toward Freeland, ostensibly about her performance leading Canada’s negotiating team as part of trade talks to replace the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement. The 2020 Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement resulted, but Trump now disdains the deal reached in his first term as president.