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Canada was among the 193 General Assembly members with a vote. Traditionally, countries don’t reveal how they cast their ballot, to avoid any awkwardness within the UN’s polite diplomatic salons. In this instance, however, Dion was urged by former Liberal justice minister and human rights advocate Irwin Cotler to defy tradition and make public Canada’s position. It would, agreed Liberal MP Michael Levitt, “(shine) a light on the hypocrisy” of the council.

“We need to have a strong voice in making sure that Russia and Syria are called out on these actions,” Levitt said.

Dion evidently feels it’s better to leave the hypocrisy unlit, however. Though the narrowness of Russia’s margin of defeat — a single switched ballot could have changed the outcome — illustrates the crucial nature of each vote, Global Affairs declined Irwin’s advice. The Russian rebuke doesn’t even rate mention on its web site, though the ministry did find room to extend welcoming greetings to visiting ministers from Hungary and Bangladesh.

It may be that, amid the excitement of Paris and Brussels, the minister simply neglected to mention the vote on Russia. Unhappily, it appears more likely his silence was a deliberate reflection of Dion’s determination to appease Moscow in spite of the murderous pummeling its aircraft deliver to tens of thousands of innocent Syrians in the beleaguered city of Aleppo.

It is no secret that Russian President Vladimir Putin sees military adventurism as a means to resurrect Russia as a global power. A week ago the Kremlin unveiled details of Moscow’s new “Satan 2” intercontinental ballistic missile, which, with a range of 11,000 kilometres, “is capable of wiping out parts of the earth the size of Texas or France,” the state news outlet Sputnik boasted.