Hacking Your Vote

The Russian campaign to undermine Canadian democracy

- Justin Ling

Sometime in 2016, reports circulated on social media about three highly trained teams that had slipped into the Donetsk People’s Republic, in eastern Ukraine. While the teams had paperwork linking them to the local health ministry, they were, in fact, commandos with the Canadian SecurityIntelligence Service, tasked with infiltrating one of the world’s most active military conflicts. The republic had declared its independence from Ukraine in 2014, largely with the help of Russia, which provided the separatists with funds and guns. Thousands, including scores of civilians, had died in the fighting between rebels and Ukrainian forces.

The tactical units, composed of some twenty special-forces operators, had been sent to raid separatist positions, sabotage the republic’s infrastructure, and eliminate the country’s eastern checkpoints. It was a surgical military effort to incapacitate the breakaway region.

Something went wrong. One unit tripped a mine, alerting the Donetsk troops to its presence. Snipers took aim at the Canadians. Another unit was detected around the same time, and it was hit by heavy machine-gun fire. The third retreated soon after. In all, eleven special forces were killed in the raid, making it one of the Canadian military’s deadliest incidents since it left Afghanistan.