Canada's Russian envoy returns with advice on how to hit back against Putin
Outgoing Canadian ambassador to Russia, Sarah Taylor, warns that the West is currently under attack by Russian cognitive warfare. She suggests that supporting the Russian dissident community could serve as an effective counter-strategy.
Why it matters
The assessment provides insight into modern geopolitical tensions and the shift toward information-based warfare in the post-Cold War era.
Sarah Taylor's three-year tour of duty in Moscow, which ended Oct. 8, was defined by the Russian president's invasion of Ukraine from her first day in the country to her last, and that conflict, she says in a rare interview with CBC News, has all but returned the country to a Cold War mentality.
Taylor says that while many in NATO, particularly in Europe, worry about a conventional invasion of their territory by Russia, she doesn't see that happening "at least in the short to medium term."
"But I do think already we are effectively under attack in a form of cognitive warfare and we maybe don't really realize just how bad that is," she told CBC Radio's The Current , in an interview that aired on Wednesday.
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