Waterloo and Laurier students stop protester from interrupting Ukrainian president’s address

WATERLOO - A room full of University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University students worked together to stop a protester who interrupted a viewing of an address from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday.

The Ukrainian president spoke with university students from across Canada on Wednesday, addressing them on Zoom from Ukraine while the war with Russia wages on.

Local students tuned in at a lecture hall on the UW campus, along with students at other sites, including the University of Toronto, University of Montreal, University of Alberta.

The Zoom call was organized by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, in partnership with the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Freeland attended the Toronto campus meeting.

When Freeland was giving her opening remarks, a viewing in Waterloo was temporarily interrupted when a protester carried a poster to the front of the room with a message for Peace in Ukraine, peace with Russia." The poster called for Canadian politicians to stop lying, stop sending weapons, stop NATO and stop the war."

A security guard tried to pull the poster away from the protester, but ultimately let her stand in the front for about five minutes before she sat down to hear Zelenskyy's address. The school's video feed - which could be seen by Zelenskyy - was pulled during the incident.

When the protester took to the front of the room for a second time before the audience was gearing up to give Zelenskyy a standing ovation, students worked together to remove her posters and put them outside the lecture hall.

When it was Waterloo's time to send its support, the room erupted in applause for the president.

The University of Waterloo respects an individual's right to free expression and recognize that this right must be exercised in an environment of mutual respect," said Waterloo spokesperson Sam Toman.

We are grateful for the respectful conduct of all attendees at today's event, but we are concerned at the potential effects of the actions of the individual on the Ukrainian refugees in attendance who we welcomed to Waterloo as part of our Students-at-Risk program."

Halyna Padalko, one of 34 Ukrainian students selected to study at Waterloo for the summer, was brought to tears after the address when she talked about the students standing up to the protester and allowing the video feed to come back on.

Padalko has a background in communications and is collaborating with Waterloo artificial intelligence researchers to help their study on the online spread of misinformation and propaganda.

The protester's appearance on Wednesday just underscored the importance of the research, she said.

These people who are saying to stop the war and stop sending weapons don't understand what is happening in Ukraine," she said. If the world stops giving weapons and assistance to Ukraine, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin will take the country, and he will keep going."

Padalko was in the eastern city of Kharkiv when Russia invaded Ukraine in February. She huddled in corridors as bombs dropped all around her apartment complex, quickly learning the different sounds that each type of bomb, missile and shelling makes.

She stood for hours in lines that stretched kilometres as the city's residents desperately tried to flee before the fighting escalated further.

She arrived in Canada on Saturday, and said she intends on taking advantage of the opportunity to learn as much as she can before she returns to her husband and family.

Zelenskyy, dressed in military camouflage and flanked by two Ukrainian flags, addressed the students for about 10 minutes, outlining the destruction brought on by the Russian invasion, and the heavy burden the country's students now carry. He then took multiple questions from students from the different schools.

Questions ranged from his experience as a comedic actor to the country's recent bid to enter the European Union.

When a student asked what the country needed, Zelenskyy's response mirrored his request to governments around the world.

We need weapons, we need financial support, we need humanitarian support," said Zelenskyy, asking for students to get involved by putting pressure on their elected officials, joining marches, and continuing to share their thoughts on social media.

The war is not just televised, it's on smartphones and tablets, on Twitter and TikTok. Through the powers of social media and the internet, said Zelenskyy, information can inflict more of a blow than a gun.

In the contemporary world, war has no distance," he said. If it can happen in Ukraine, it can happen in Canada.

For Padalko, the speech is not anything she hasn't heard before - she tunes in for updates from the Ukrainian president daily. But she does see the importance of bringing the issues of Ukraine to the doorsteps of Canadian institutions so that students can fully grasp what is happening.

I really appreciate the huge support from the people who were there, and not just the Ukrainian students, but all the Canadian students who were there and helped stop the (protester)," she said.

People like that call for peace, but they don't know what peace looks like. I have friends who are seeing terrible things, and my country needs the world's help."

Robert Williams is a Waterloo Region-based reporter for The Record. Reach him via email: robertwilliams@torstar.ca