OTTAWA - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has arrived on Parliament Hill where he will address a joint session of the House of Commons and Senate today.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper was on hand to greet the former candy billionaire, who was elected this past spring after months of turmoil between Ukraine and Russia.
Harper gave Poroshenko a red carpet welcome to the Centre Block, before the two leaders moved on to the Prime Minister's Office for a private meeting.
Poroshenko arrived in Ottawa on Tuesday night, hours after Ukraine agreed to grant greater autonomy to rebel-held parts of the country's east.
The nearly two-week-old cease fire is still in effect, but tension continues between government forces and Russian-backed rebels in the east. A building in Donetsk was hit by rocket fire today, killing at least one person.
Earlier this week, Poroshenko signed a co-operation agreement with the European Union that will deepen economic and political ties and help cement Ukraine's westward focus towards Europe and away from Russia.
It was the decision by former president Viktor Yanukovych last fall to abandon such a EU co-operation pact in favour of closer ties with Russia that sparked the popular uprising that has plunged Ukraine into months of turmoil.
Some 3,000 people have been killed in unrest since then, leaving the West and Russia — with Ukraine caught in the middle — mired in their worst crisis since the end of the Cold War a generation ago.
Harper has been a staunch ally of Ukraine, and was the first world leader to visit Poroshenko this past June in Kyiv shortly after he was elected.
The Harper government has also been a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, joining an international effort to impose sanctions. Harper and his minister have also personally blamed the former head of the KGB for threatening world peace by provoking the unrest in eastern Ukraine and breaching the sovereignty of a European country.
Russia unilaterally annexed the Crimean Peninsula in March, a move Canada and its allies have denounced as illegal.
On Tuesday, Canada announced more sanctions and travel bans aimed at ratcheting up the pressure on Putin.
Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird also announced that Canada will send 200 election observers and a dozen members of Parliament to Ukraine next month to help monitor the country's parliamentary elections.
Canada has been sending large teams of election observers to Ukraine since 2004, a practice started by the then governing Liberals, including its recent mission in May that saw 500 Canadians witness the presidential ballot that brought Poroshenko to power.
There are about 1.2 million Ukrainian Canadians, making it a powerful voting bloc in some key Toronto ridings as well as in communities across the prairies.
Canada was the first country to recognize an independent Ukraine after the breakup of the former Soviet Union.
Earlier this week, the Canadian Group for Democracy in Ukraine sent an open letter to Harper asking him to send military assistance to the country.
So far, neither Canada nor other NATO members have supplied any military aid to Ukraine following the Russian actions.
