December 19, 2025 1:53 PMAnonymous

Master Warrant Officer Matthew Robar arrives to court in Gatineau, Dec. 15

Globe and Mail
Dec 19, 2025
Mark MacKinnon
Robert Fife
Steven Chase

The arrest of a Canadian Armed Forces intelligence operator on espionage charges appears to have its origins in another murky episode that has vexed the country’s military establishment for more than a year.

The operator, Master Warrant Officer Matthew Shawn Robar, was arrested and charged Dec. 10 with multiple offences related to passing highly sensitive government secrets to what court documents released this week refer to as a “foreign entity.” He was released from custody Monday under strict conditions.

The court documents show that the allegations relate to events that began in late 2023 and 2024. At the time, the documents say, MWO Robar was assigned to interview “several individuals who wanted to report concerns related to the CAF,” meaning the Canadian Armed Forces. During one of those meetings, the documents say, “one of these individuals told Robar that he should speak with the Foreign Entity.”

The Globe and Mail reported this week, citing a source, that the country MWO Robar is accused of leaking information to is Ukraine. The court documents do not identify the foreign entity or the foreign intelligence service that had allegedly been engaged in conversations with MWO Robar.

Three separate sources with direct knowledge of the initial events have told The Globe that in 2023 MWO Robar was assigned to interview and assess the concerns of a group of Canadian military officers who said they were targeted for threats after making internal allegations that Postmedia reporter David Pugliese was serving the interests of the Russian state via his coverage of the war in Ukraine – an assertion he denies.

The CAF members were specifically concerned about Mr. Pugliese’s reporting on alleged mismanagement inside a pair of charities, Mriya Aid and Mriya Report. The charities were set up by a group of pro-Ukrainian volunteers that included several serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Mriya Aid raises money online that it uses to purchase and deliver non-lethal military aid, as well as humanitarian assistance, to Ukraine. It was chaired by Lieutenant-Colonel Melanie Lake, a former commander of Operation Unifier, the Canadian military mission to train the Ukrainian armed forces, an effort that ended at the start of the Russian war.

The affiliated Mriya Report, which raised money to provide medical assistance to Ukraine and also operated a pro-Ukrainian YouTube channel, was founded by Captain Joe Friedberg.

Both Lt.-Col. Lake and Capt. Friedberg declined to comment when contacted for this article.

Sources say the soldiers involved with Mriya Aid asserted that the reporting on their charity was just the latest example of what they alleged was a years-long trend in which Mr. Pugliese’s articles suited the Kremlin’s aims – in this case, by undermining Canadian support for Ukraine.

That assertion is based largely on a controversial seven-page file – which appears to have been handpicked from a larger dossier – purportedly showing that the Soviet-era KGB had considered recruiting Mr. Pugliese in the late 1980s. The purported KGB documents are the focus of a fierce but whispered debate in Ottawa over the authenticity and provenance of the files.

The sources who talked to The Globe say that as early as 2023, at least two CAF members had endured death threats, suspected home break-ins, or other forms of harassment after receiving copies of the alleged KGB dossier. MWO Robar was assigned to interview the officers and assess the level of risk they were facing, the sources said.

The Globe is not naming its sources out of concern they could face repercussions for speaking about the case.

Mr. Pugliese is a veteran defence writer, whose in-depth reporting and relentless coverage of mismanagement and spending controversies involving military commanders and bureaucrats has made him an unpopular figure within Ottawa’s defence and security establishment.

Nothing in seven pages that have been made public proves that Mr. Pugliese accepted any tasks from the Soviet embassy or was even aware of the KGB’s apparent interest in him.

Mr. Pugliese has said the claims that he is “some kind of Russian agent” are fabricated and that the dossier is full of “factual errors and falsehoods” that were used to smear him.

“I understand my articles anger the Canadian Forces and DND leadership, but it is the role of journalists to hold those in power to account,” he said in a statement to The Globe Thursday.

“If what you have determined is true, then yes, I believe there needs to be a full public accounting, not one hidden behind the secrecy that can shield the actions of the federal government, the Canadian Forces and the foreign intelligence service.”

Among those interviewed by MWO Robar in connection with the case was former Conservative cabinet minister Chris Alexander, who used parliamentary privilege to make the alleged KGB dossier public during an Oct. 24, 2024, appearance before the Commons committee on public safety and national security.

Mr. Alexander told The Globe this week that he was contacted by MWO Robar on Oct. 8, 2024, shortly after he first received the dossier naming Mr. Pugliese.

“My only contact with MWO Robar was a single conversation in which he made it clear he was looking into threats and other hostile activities that had been undertaken against those who had received the documents … and those people included members of the Canadian Armed Forces,” Mr. Alexander said.

“Everyone involved in the case assessed these threats and this harassment to have been orchestrated by Russia,” Mr. Alexander said. He added that MWO Robar “100 per cent” shared the assessment that Moscow was behind the threats allegedly directed at the Canadian officers making assertions against Mr. Pugliese.

In his statement, Mr. Pugliese said MWO Robar never contacted him. Neither CAF or the Department of National Defence reached out to “inform me” that the intelligence officer had been asking questions about him, he said.

“I believe that the allegations that are being made against me are designed to specifically discredit me and prevent my further investigation into the alleged misuse and misappropriation of Canadian Forces/DND funds and resources,” he said.

On Oct. 21, 2024, MWO Robar was temporarily relieved of his duties at the Canadian Forces National Counter-Intelligence Unit pending an internal investigation.

The court documents made public this week say MWO Robar repeatedly sought permission to co-operate with the unnamed foreign entity on an unspecified “Project.” His requests were refused, but MWO Robar allegedly proceeded to co-operate with the foreign entity anyway.

It is unclear whether controversy surrounding Mriya Aid, Mriya Report and Mr. Pugliese is related to the “Project” that is the source of the main charges against MWO Robar, but they do seem to be what brought him into contact with Ukrainian officials. A series of messages seen by The Globe show that senior staff at the Ukrainian embassy in Ottawa were aware of the alleged KGB dossier and were aiding efforts to prove its veracity.

Neither the military prosecutor, Major Max Reede, or Major Carlos Da Cruz, the defence counsel for MWO Robar, responded to requests for comment on whether the case against the accused is related in any way to Mr. Pugliese.

On Monday, the military prosecutor and defence counsel told the court that the actions of the accused do not amount to the serious national-security threat posed by former Canadian Armed Forces intelligence staffer Jeffrey Delisle. Mr. Delisle was charged in 2012 with passing secrets to Russia and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Maj. Reede told the court that Mr. Robar is not a flight risk and was “not motivated by personal or financial gain or to cause harm.” Maj. Da Cruz said Monday that the Delisle case was “serious,” and “We are not dealing with something like this here.”

The Globe asked Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada, Andrii Plakhotniuk, for comment on whether embassy staff had ever talked to MWO Robar, whether it shared the alleged KGB dossier with any Canadians, what role it played in trying to verify the dossier and how the Ukrainian government viewed the charges against the intelligence operator. The Globe also asked him about media reporting that Ukraine was the recipient country of the allegedly leaked information.

In response to queries from The Globe, embassy press officer Marianna Kulava did not address the specific questions.

“With respect for the important work of the mass media, we would like to note that the Embassy of Ukraine in Canada does not comment on allegations or information attributed to anonymous or unidentified sources,” Ms. Kulava wrote in an e-mailed statement Thursday.

“As the Embassy has not received any official information or requests from the relevant Canadian authorities on the issues raised in your articles and e-mails to us, we will not make any statements or comments.”

The seven pages of alleged KGB files, dated between 1984 and 1990, purport to show the Soviet KGB taking an interest in a young Mr. Pugliese, who was then just beginning his journalism career.

In the first document – a handwritten note on yellowed paper dated Aug. 7, 1984, and signed by A.V. Merezhko – Mr. Pugliese is assigned the code name “Stuart.” The paper says “Stuart” is to be “studied with the perspective of possible operative use.”

One of the most recent documents, dated April 6, 1990, notes that Mr. Pugliese had by then started working at the Ottawa Citizen. The author, V. I. Semeniuk, was seeking permission from Moscow for Stuart “to be made the subject of a series of operative agent measures towards additional study and verification of the possibility of use in interests of Directorate ‘S’.” Directorate S was a KGB program that managed long-term, deep-cover sleeper agents in the West.

The file also includes a $600 expense claim “for work on the Stuart case.”

There are no documents dated later than 1990. The Soviet Union collapsed in December, 1991.

Andriy Kogut, the director of archives for Ukraine’s SBU security service, the successor agency to the KGB in independent Ukraine, told The Globe this week that the names and dates on the documents corresponded with serving KGB officers at the time.

He said that while it would be “wrong to assert anything” regarding the authenticity of the file, the documents would have been difficult to forge without “real documents or perfect and deep knowledge from within the KGB.”

Handwritten numbers atop each of the seven documents suggest that the complete file was at least 33 pages long, leaving open the question of what happened to the other 26 pages.

In his statement Thursday, Mr. Pugliese said there needs to be an accounting of what transpired.

“If what your sources are saying about MWO Robar is accurate, then this is outrageous and undemocratic and further proof that the Canadian Forces needs more, not less, journalistic scrutiny.”

Or, A Canadian glimpse Wesley Wark Dec 18 Thanks for reading Wesley Wark’s National Security and Intelligence Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. (Photo of MWO Robar from the Globe and Mail) The world of counter-intelligence operations, with the catching of spies and ferreting out of insider threats at its core, has been described as a “wilderness of mirrors.” [1] Fun-house (remember those?) distortions, imaginary monstrosities, lurk at every turn. Cultivated paranoia is part of the workplace culture. Exhibit A from this world is the CIA’s legendary spy catcher, James Jesus Angleton. [2]Angleton served as head of the CIA’s counter-intelligence branch from 1954 to 1975. He had a storied back story: Yale undergraduate poet and editor, friend of Ezra Pound, wartime service with the Office of Strategic Services in London and Italy, exotic orchid grower. Friendless, except for one friend who betrayed him—his Washington drinking buddy, MI6 station chief, and KGB double-agent, Kim Philby. Angleton never got over the betrayal, took it for a sign of a massive ongoing conspiracy by the Soviets to penetrate every corner of the CIA, turned the agency inside out in his hunt for Soviet moles, jailed Soviet defectors whose stories he did not believe. He could tell convoluted tales of adversary intrigue. One CIA Director, James Schlesinger, said that listening to him was like “looking at an Impressionist painting.” [3] Ultimately, Angleton did so much damage through his zealotry that he was fired by the CIA Director, William Colby. He died in 1987. T.S. Eliot’s poem, Gerontion, was read at his funeral. Now we are confronted by a Canadian version of the ‘wilderness of mirrors,” courtesy of charges laid against a Canadian armed forces counter-intelligence operative, Master Warrant Officer (MWO), Matthew Robar. Robar was the subject of a long-running investigation, but was ultimately arrested on December 10, 2025, and faces eight charges, the most serious of which concerns the allegation that he passed “special operational information” to a foreign entity, which carries a possible sentence of life imprisonment if Robar is convicted. He appeared before a military court on December 15 for a custody hearing. A court martial is pending in the New Year. The Robar case has been the subject of some intense media coverage, including information from anonymous sources. [4] There is some light amidst the heat, notably thanks to court documents from the December 15 hearing, but much remains unknown. [5] Here is what we do know. Master Warrant Officer Matthew Robar is 43 years old. He joined the CAF in 2001, has worked in intelligence since 2007, and became a member of the CAF National Counter Intelligence Unit (NCIU) in 2019. While working in counter-intelligence, he was led to engage with a person, denoted in the court records as a “foreign entity,” in 2023. The “foreign entity” was “affiliated” with a foreign intelligence service (unnamed). Working with this foreign entity, Robar developed a “project,” described as a “unconventional activity that involved sensitive techniques.” Robar attempted on several occasions in 2024 to get approval to work on the project with the foreign entity but was denied. Despite this, he persisted and attempted to get funding for the project. Investigators were told by witnesses that Robar became “obsessed” with the project. He managed to arrange a meeting with the foreign entity abroad in September 2024 and took along to that meeting a CAF member (identified in the court records only as CAF Member 1). CAF member 1 believed the trip had been authorized, but it was not. Later in September 2024, CAF Member 1 tried to warn Robar about dealing with the “foreign entity.” In the course of that warning, CAF Member 1 shared an intelligence assessment about the foreign entity with Robar as well as “the planned movements of a foreign military partner.” In the same month, September 2024, CAF members aware of Robar’s activities alerted “CAF leadership” about their concerns. At this point serious trouble began to descend on Robar’s head. He was confronted about his relationship with the foreign entity and forced to write reports on his interactions. It was determined that he lied in these reports, and he was temporarily relieved from duty in October 2024. Robar’s situation only worsened when his putative project partner sent around a series of emails in mid-October 2024 about their work, which included some threats about exposure. If there was an element of blackmail to these messages, it was ignored. Instead, Robar was removed from the National Counter-Intelligence Unit and an internal investigation begun. Search warrants were ultimately executed against Robar a year later, and in October 2025, his personal cell phone seized, which yielded evidence that he had shared “safeguarded” and “special operational information” with the foreign entity over the Signal app. This became the substance of the most serious charges laid against Robar in December. Full details of what Robar shared is not known at this stage, but it is alleged to have included the intelligence assessment about the foreign entity, the planned movements of a foreign military partner, and the identity of CAF Member 1, who was engaged in covert collection. Here is what we don’t know. · Why Robar determined to engage, as a counter-intelligence specialist, with the foreign entity in the first place? · What counter-intelligence information Robar was seeking by working with the foreign entity as a source? · Who the foreign entity is (all we know is that they are not a Canadian citizen and do not hold any Canadian security clearances)? · What was the nature of the foreign entity’s activities (how much free-lancing)? · What the nature of the affiliation between the foreign entity and the foreign intelligence service might be? (the foreign entity was not an official member of the foreign intelligence service) · What partner foreign intelligence service was implicated in the case · Why government of Canada agencies constructed a negative intelligence assessment on the foreign entity? · What the “project” was? Why did it become an “obsession” for Robar? · Why MWO Robar was disaffected with his superior officers? · Why MWO Robar felt that the CAF was not doing enough in the counter-intelligence realm? · What MWO Robar’s state of mental health might have been? Court records indicated investigators believed he suffered from PTSD · How damaging Robar’s leaks might have been (no damage assessment has yet been filed in court)? · How significant the case might be? (but note that charges laid under the Foreign Interference and Security of Information Act require Attorney General consent). · How damaging, if at all, the case might be to relations between Canada and the foreign intelligence partner to whom the foreign entity was “affiliated” · How damaging, if at all, the case might be for Canada’s relations with close intelligence partners, including in the Five Eyes. That’s a lot of unknowns. What more we might learn through a court martial process and the disclosure it brings remains to be seen. Two points are worth keeping in mind. One is that the prosecution in cases involving the FISOIA is not required to prove a motive for the offence. This was also a feature of the Cameron Ortis case. The other is that the government has the power to insist on the withholding of evidence deemed harmful to national security through the provisions of the Canada Evidence Act. That could include details on the interactions between the Canadian intelligence community and a foreign intelligence partner. The judge, in this case a Colonel who is a member of the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) office of the CAF, assigned to the case, can also seal classified records. So, we might ultimately never know what drove Matthew Robar, what his “obsession” might have been, or what exactly the counter-intelligence “project” was all about. But it does all carry with it the peculiar psychology of counter-intelligence work. For now, and perhaps forever, we are firmly in the wilderness of mirrors. But I hope we can find an evidentiary path out, and I plan to write more about this case in future. [1] A now classic account is David C. Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors (2003) [2] CIA historian David Robarge published an even-handed account of Angleton and the literature about him in the CIA journal, Studies in History, “The James Angleton Phenomenon,” vol. 53, no. 4 (2009), https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/Cunning-Passages-Contrived-Corridors.pdf [3] ibid [4] See, for example, Murray Brewster, CBC News, “Canadian Military intelligence operative accused of leaking secrets was trying to help Ukraine,” December 16, 2025, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-military-intelligence-ukraine-charges-9.7018645; Robert Fife, Steven Case, Mark MacKinnon, The Globe and Mail, “Canadian military intelligence officer allegedly shared classified information with Ukraine,” December 16, 2025, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canadian-forces-intelligence-officer-classified-information-ukraine/ [5] Two court exhibits made available are particularly illuminating: Exhibit 5, “Annex to Account in Writing (DND 2879) in relation to MWO Robar,” and Exhibit 8, “Custody Review Hearing (CRH) between The Canadian Forces and Masgter Warrant Officer Matthew Robar, Agreed Statement of the Facts.” Thanks for reading Wesley Wark’s National Security and Intelligence Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribed   Like Comment Restack   © 2025 Wesley Wark 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 Unsubscribe

CBC News · Dec 15, 2025

Master Warrant Officer Matthew Robar was released on Monday on the condition that he not communicate with certain individuals and entities, among others.

A Canadian military counter-intelligence operative accused of passing sensitive information to a foreign entity has been released from custody with conditions by a military judge. Master Warrant Officer Matthew Robar faces eight charges under the National Defence Act, including communicating "special operational information" to a foreign entity.

He appeared Monday before a military court in Gatineau, Que, five days after he was arrested and charged by military police in a case steeped in secrecy and national security implications. Robar, a member of the counter-intelligence branch and a 24-year veteran of the military, had been held at Garrison Petawawa since his arrest.

The Department of National Defence has declined to answer several specific questions regarding the case, including the identity of the foreign entity or organization allegedly involved. Under the separate military justice system, Robar should have appeared before a military judge late last week.

Detained twice this year

The arrest on Dec. 10 was actually the second time he was taken into custody. Military police detained Robar without charge for 24 hours on Oct. 24 but released him on conditions. His re-arrest was made public in a statement last week by the military's provost marshal. Military Judge Col. Nancy Isenor's release order has both a classified and an unclassified version. She ordered Robar, among other things, to surrender his passport and not to have contact — physically or electronically — with "the entity otherwise referred to as the Foreign Entity," potential witnesses and a list of Canadian military members. He was also ordered to stay away from anyone working for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the country's cyber spy service.

Robar was also told to stay away from people associated with a foreign intelligence service, not discuss his case with members of Canadian Forces Intelligence Command (CFINTCOM) and refrain from posting details of the allegations against him on social media.

Prior to his arrest, Robar was involved in a long-running internal battle where he was investigated by his unit and kept in the dark about the allegations against him. CBC News was the first to report that he was the subject of a disciplinary investigation by his unit within CFINTCOM, starting in October 2024. That probe resulted in a reprimand, which was delivered last spring, according to a copy of the grievance Robar subsequently filed. When reprimanded, Robar was told very little about the specific allegations against him, other than it involved "disobedience of a lawful command" and that he had "engaged in unauthorized work-related activities" that he knew or ought to have known were not approved by his chain of command.

"Since the investigation began in 2024, MWO Robar has been assigned to administrative duties at Canadian Forces Intelligence Command," Andrée-Anne Poulin said. "No further information regarding MWO Robar will be released at this time in order to respect the integrity of the judicial process that is currently underway and to protect safeguarded information and programs that may relate to the particulars of these charges."