Chrystia Freeland is the most intriguing politician in Canada today. The current finance minister and deputy prime minister is well on her way to becoming prime minister at the next election, if not, then the one thereafter. It’s about time the country had a leader with real brain power and force of personality. Freeland shows what hacks like us can aspire to. Well, not me obviously, but those who are much more talented. Of Ukrainian heritage, she now gets to punish with sanctions Russian leaders and oligarchs she once wrote about in articles and books. Ottawa is part of a concerted financial sanctions campaign by the Western allies to roll back the invasion of Ukraine. How many journalists do you know get to do that? An alumnus of Harvard and Oxford, she was also the country’s previous foreign affairs minister. In her previous life, which was less than 10 years ago, she wrote brilliant columns for Reuters as managing editor that I always looked forward to reading. That was after she jumped ship when reportedly being passed over for editor-in-chief at the Financial Times . What were those Brits thinking? At least Canadians recognise a real leader when they see one. Her 2000 book, Sale of the Century: Russia’s Wild Ride from Communism to Capitalism , blamed corrupt but well-connected former Soviet apparatchiks and borderline (or actual) criminals for the big steal. Well, that’s true, mostly. But they could hardly have done it under Boris Yeltsin without intense pressure and encouragement from the Bill Clinton White House, and such Western-dominated institutions as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to push post-Soviet Russia into shock-therapy privatisation. UK supplies weapons, Canada deploys special forces to Ukraine That effectively meant handing over valuable state assets to a handful of powerful and corrupt people. Vladimir Putin, whom Freeland is now sanctioning, spent years cracking down old oligarchs, only to create new ones and put them in his pocket. The irony is too much. For Russians, the end of the Cold War was a catastrophe with hyperinflation, massive unemployment, poverty, plunging life expectancy and loss of global status. There is no justification for war, but it’s understandable why Russia is an angry “me against the world” country. For leaders like Freeland, though, there is no need to accept Western responsibility for such grievances. Blame it all on Putin; he does shoot himself in the foot.