[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
EXPOSING AND DEMANDING ACCOUNTABILITY FOR KREMLIN CRIMES ABROAD
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE, EURASIA, ENERGY, AND THE ENVIRONMENT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 7, 2020
__________
Serial No. 116-125
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/, http://
docs.house.gov,
or http://www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
41-239 PDF WASHINGTON : 2021
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York, Chairman
BRAD SHERMAN, California MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas, Ranking
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York Member
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida JOE WILSON, South Carolina
KAREN BASS, California SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania
WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts TED S. YOHO, Florida
DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois
AMI BERA, California LEE ZELDIN, New York
JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas JIM SENSENBRENNER, Wisconsin
DINA TITUS, Nevada ANN WAGNER, Missouri
ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York BRIAN MAST, Florida
TED LIEU, California FRANCIS ROONEY, Florida
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania BRIAN FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania
DEAN PHILLPS, Minnesota JOHN CURTIS, Utah
ILHAN OMAR, Minnesota KEN BUCK, Colorado
COLIN ALLRED, Texas RON WRIGHT, Texas
ANDY LEVIN, Michigan GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, Virginia TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee
CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania GREG PENCE, Indiana
TOM MALINOWSKI, New Jersey STEVE WATKINS, Kansas
DAVID TRONE, Maryland MIKE GUEST, Mississippi
JIM COSTA, California
JUAN VARGAS, California
VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas
Jason Steinbaum, Democrat Staff Director
Brendan Shields, Republican Staff Director
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Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, Energy, and The Environment
WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts, Chairman
ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, Virginia ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois, Ranking
GREGORY MEEKS, New York Member
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey JOE WILSON, South Carolina
THEODORE DEUTCH, Florida ANN WAGNER, Missouri
DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island JIM SENSENBRENNER, Wisconsin
JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas FRANCIS ROONEY, Florida
DINA TITUS, Nevada BRIAN FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania GREG PENCE, Indiana
DAVID TRONE, Maryland RON WRIGHT, Texas
JIM COSTA, California MIKE GUEST, Mississippi
VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee
Gabrielle Gould, Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Fried, the Honorable Daniel, Weiser Family Distinguished Fellow,
Atlantic Council (Former State Department Coordinator for
Santions Policy, Former Assistant Secretary of State for
European and Eurasian Affairs, and Former United States
Ambassador to Poland).......................................... 8
McFaul, the Honorable Michael, Director, Freeman Spogli Institute
for International Studies, Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini
Professor of International Studies, Department of Political
Science, Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow, Hoover
Institution, Stanford University (Former United States
Ambassador to Russia and Former Senior Director for Russian and
Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council)............. 22
Marten, Dr. Kimberly, Professor and Chair, Department of
Political Science, Barnard College, Columbia University........ 60
Kara-Murza, Vladimir Chairman, Boris Nemtsov Foundation for
Freedom, Vice President, Free Russia Foundation................ 76
APPENDIX
Hearing Notice................................................... 103
Hearing Minutes.................................................. 104
Hearing Attendance............................................... 105
RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
Responses to questions submitted for the record from
Representative Trone........................................... 106
EXPOSING AND DEMANDING ACCOUNTABILITY FOR KREMLIN CRIMES ABROAD
Tuesday, July 7, 2020
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia,
Energy, and the Environment,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC,
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:06 p.m., via
Webex, Hon. William R. Keating (chairman of the subcommittee)
presiding.
Mr. Keating. The House Foreign Affairs Committee will come
to order.
Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a
recess of the committee at any point, and all members will have
5 days to submit statements, extraneous materials and questions
for the record, subject to the length limitation in the rules.
To insert something into the record, please have your staff
email the previously mentioned address or contact the full
committee staff.
Please keep your video function on at all times, even when
you are not recognized by the chair.
Members are responsible for muting and unmuting themselves,
and please remember to mute yourself after you have finished
speaking. Consistent with House Resolution 965 and the
accompanying regulation, staff will only mute members and
witnesses as appropriate, when they are not under recognition,
to eliminate background noise.
I see that we have a quorum present. I want to thank the
members and the witnesses for being here. These are important
times, even though we are doing this virtually, as you all are
aware. This is an important subject matter, and I really
appreciate the attendance of everyone.
I will now recognize myself for opening remarks.
Pursuant to notice, we are holding a hearing to discuss
exposing and demanding accountability for Kremlin crimes
abroad.
Just over 1 week ago, news broke alleging that Russia had
placed bounties on American troops in Afghanistan, that money
changed hands between the GRU, Russia's military intelligence,
and the Taliban, that Americans were killed in connection with
this scheme, and that our agencies have had this intelligence
since last year.
These allegations have shocked our conscience. But threats
from Russia are far more pervasive than even these reports
indicate. Russia's activity targeting Americans has been
occurring before and is occurring now and, if left unchecked by
the U.S., will continue occurring in the future.
However, just as egregious as the Kremlin's actions is the
utter inaction and lack of an appropriate response from the
Trump administration.
I joined Chairman Engel and other members of this committee
at the White House last week to be briefed on this
intelligence, and our examination of this issue continues on
this week, starting with this hearing today, followed by a full
committee hearing on Thursday and a second hearing in the
subcommittee on Friday. In the absence of action by the Trump
administration, it is incumbent on Congress to act.
Targeting Americans abroad is a brazen attack on the United
States. However, we should not be surprised, as the GRU was
also implicated in the 2016 attack on our election and is
believed to be responsible for a range of malign activities,
including those occurring abroad in 2018, with the attempted
assassination of Sergei Skripal in the U.K. and the coup
attempt in Montenegro as the country approached NATO
membership.
And the threat from Russia is not only specifically from
Unit 29155 of the GRU. We will fail to keep Americans safe if
we fail to understand the threat coming from the Kremlin
itself.
The Kremlin has invested in a network of actors operating
around the world with little transparency around their funding,
their authority, and often their relationship to the Kremlin.
These actors include traditional elements of the GRU but also
nontraditional actors, like the Wagner Group, a private
military company with extensive links back to the Kremlin, a
group that conducts military activities that directly support
Kremlin foreign policy objectives.
In fact, Wagner sources engaged directly in hostilities
against U.S. forces in Syria in 2018. The Kremlin denied any
connection, yet wounded survivors were reportedly thrown out of
the conflict zone on Russian military aircraft. And Wagner's
documented ties to the GRU and the Russian military abound.
Further, when we look behind these actors to their sources
of funding, we find deep corruption and crime. One key player
is the oligarch and criminal Yevgeny Prigozhin.
I was proud that Chairman Engel, along with our ranking
member, Mr. Kinzinger, and a member of our subcommittee,
Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, joined in introducing a
resolution last month stressing that threat, the threat
Prigozhin presents to the interest and security of the United
States, our allies, and its partners.
Prigozhin is not only linked to the Wagner Group, he also
backed the Internet Research Agency, which you will recall from
our own past history was responsible for operations against
Americans in the 2016 election. And reporting has further
documented that Prigozhin and associates are already working to
target American audiences leading up to election this November.
Bounties on American troops is a despicable escalation by
Russia that demands a response. And we cannot afford to view
these new revelations in a vacuum. We arrive at this moment
following 3-1/2 years of what to any observer seems like a
pattern of capitulation and accommodation by President Trump
toward Putin.
From siding with Putin over our intelligence community
about the Kremlin's attack on the 2016 elections in Helsinki,
to slow-walking sanctions that passed Congress with broad,
bipartisan support, to suggesting Russia should be invited back
to a newly constituted G8, even though Ukraine is still
occupied by Russia and Kremlin-backed forces, the Trump
administration has given Russia a wide berth to maneuver within
and to antagonize the U.S. and our allies.
We need a Russian policy, one that keeps Americans safe,
not one that puts President Trump on good terms with the
corrupt and criminal government of Vladimir Putin.
Last week, voting concluded on a constitutional referendum
on Russia which would make it possible for Putin to stay in
power until 2036. While no one is surprised to learn that
independent election observers and experts report widely fraud,
manipulation, and voter intimidation, the results of this
referendum in practice means that Putin's Russia is
unfortunately the Russia the U.S. must face for the foreseeable
future.
I appreciate our uniquely qualified witnesses joining us
today to discuss this critical juncture in our policy toward
Russia. Our goal for today to examine the threat landscape and
unique challenges presented in addressing instances of Russian
aggression toward the United States and our allies and the
malign actors the Kremlin has empowered to carry out these
crimes.
I hope this hearing and the ones that follow are used to
build a coherent and effective policy to address these threats
from the Kremlin. American lives and our national security
depends on it. For too long now the Trump administration, as we
have seen, has been woefully unprepared and lacking in its
commitment to meaningfully counter these threats.
I now yield to Representative Wilson for his opening
statement.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you to Bill Keating for holding this
important hearing on exposing and demanding accountability for
Russia's crimes abroad.
I am grateful to recognize the great Russian patriot and
democracy activist Vladimir Kara-Murza for being with us today.
Your bravery and determination in pushing for a democratic
future for the courageous Russian people continues to inspire
us all and gives us hope for a better future.
Mr. Chairman, in an ideal world, the U.S. and Russia should
cooperate and work together to tackle important joint
challenges, but such a partnership is impossible so long as the
tyrant Vladimir Putin rules Russia.
The last thing that Putin cares about is the will of the
Russian people. This was evident last week when Putin
orchestrated, as you correctly pointed out, a fraudulent vote
to change the Russian Constitution so he can stay in power
basically for his life.
But Putin is not satisfied with repressing his own people
at home. He seeks to export his tyranny and oppression abroad
as an alternative authoritarian form of governance to
democracy. This authoritarian world view best explains his
aggressive foreign policy, based upon subverting democracy
throughout the world through malign influence campaigns and
redrawing borders with his aggressive assaults on democracy,
such as Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine, with 12,000 Ukrainians
who have been killed due to Russian aggression.
Furthermore, there is further troubling information that
Russia is increasing support of the Taliban in Afghanistan,
supporting an enemy which directly threatens American families.
We must find more ways to hold Russia accountable and
increase the costs of their mischief. As the chairman of the
Republican Study Committee's National Security and Foreign
Affairs Task Force, I released a report at the beginning of
last month recommending the toughest package of sanctions on
Russia ever proposed by Congress. The report also calls for
important measures to support the democratic movements in
Russia, including through reconstituting the U.S. Information
Agency. The RSC's report was officially condemned by the
Kremlin, which I took as a good sign that we did a good job.
I also am grateful for President Trump's leadership, with
additional sanctions that he has put in place. Additionally,
his placing of troops in Poland was very, very significant, and
his backing of the NATO troops, which now are in all the
countries of the Baltics. And, finally, the President's courage
to provide Javelin missiles to Ukraine to stop Russian
aggression.
I look forward to hearing more input from our expert
witnesses here today on how we can hold Putin's feet to the
fire and advocate on behalf of the Russian people.
With that, I yield back.
Ms. Hallman. Mr. Chairman, you are still muted, sir.
Mr. Keating. I should be okay now. Sorry about that.
Ms. Hallman. Perfect. Yes, sir.
Mr. Keating. I have now done what everyone else or so many
other people will do in the course of today, so I hope you
learn from my mistake.
I will introduce our panel of witnesses, and I am pleased
to have them here today.
Ambassador Daniel Fried is the Weiser Family Distinguished
Fellow at the Atlantic Council. During his long and dedicated
public service career, he served as the State Department's
coordinator of sanctions policy, Assistant Secretary of State
for European and Eurasian Affairs, and the United States
Ambassador to Poland.
Ambassador Michael McFaul is the Director of the Freeman
Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Ken Olivier and
Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in the
Department of Political Science, and the Peter and Helen Bing
senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, all at Stanford
University. He served in the Obama Administration as the United
States Ambassador to Russia and as Senior Director for Russian
and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council.
Dr. Kimberly Marten is a professor and chair of the
Political Science Department at Barnard College at Columbia
University. She concurrently serves as a faculty member of
Columbia's Harriman Institute for Russian and East-Central
European Studies and the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace
Studies.
Mr. Vladimir Kara-Murza serves as chairman of the Boris
Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom and vice president of the Free
Russia Foundation. He is a Russian democracy activist who
played a key role in the passage of the Magnitsky legislation
and is a recipient of the Magnitsky Human Rights Award for his
work as an outstanding Russian opposition activist.
Thank you for your courage and your dedication.
I will now recognize each witness for 5 minutes. Without
objection, your prepared written statements will be made part
of the record. I will go first to Ambassador Fried for his
opening statement.
Ambassador Fried.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE DANIEL FRIED, WEISER FAMILY
DISTINGUISHED FELLOW, ATLANTIC COUNCIL (FORMER STATE DEPARTMENT
COORDINATOR FOR SANCTIONS POLICY, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF
STATE FOR EUROPEAN AND EURASIAN AFFAIRS, AND FORMER UNITED
STATES AMBASSADOR TO POLAND)
Mr. Fried. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Wilson.
It is an honor to be here and with a panel of people whose work
I have admired for years.
Putinism means authoritarianism and kleptocracy. It
enriches Putin and his team but keeps Russia poor and backward.
It is getting worse. The coronavirus has hit Russia harder than
official statistics indicate. Russia's economy has been hit by
the global drop in energy prices. Putin has changed the
Constitution so he can stay President until 2036.
Political stagnation, economic decline, and the coronavirus
make the Putin regime insecure because it cannot deliver. So
the regime will likely step up repression at home and continue
to attack made-up outside enemies, especially the United States
and other democracies.
Putinism is not Russia's fate, but for now we need to deal
with Putin's regime as it is. We have options.
First, do not extend to Putin invitations to the G8 or make
other gestures that suggest the U.S. is eager to overlook his
malign policies.
Beyond this, policy actions could include the following:
Strengthen NATO. After Putin's attack on Ukraine, President
Obama led NATO to move battalion-strength forces to Poland and
the Baltic States and deployed a rotational U.S. armored
brigade to Poland. In 2019, the Trump administration announced
plans to move more U.S. support forces to Poland. That was
solid work. But President Trump's decision to pull forces out
of Germany is wrong. The President complained about German
defense spending in support for the Nord Stream II gas
pipeline. He had a point. But U.S. forces in Germany do not
serve German interests; they serve U.S. and NATO interests.
Support Ukraine. Ukraine's democratic, free-market
transformation would be a success for Ukraine and the free
world and a defeat for Putinism. It would demonstrate that a
Russian-speaking country, which Ukraine partly is, can move
toward European standards of governance, that Putinism is not
Russia's only choice. We should support Ukraine's independence
and push it to transform itself along free-market, democratic
lines.
Counter disinformation. The U.S. and Europe are better
placed to deal with disinformation than in 2016, though the EU
is ahead of us. We should work with social media companies to
expose and limit Russian disinformation, support civil society
groups, and prepare thoughtful regulation to support online
transparency and integrity.
European energy security. Putin has abused Russia's status
as a major supplier of European natural gas for political
leverage. Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltics fear that Nord
Stream II will make them even more vulnerable. Many other
Europeans agree. Congress has passed sanctions on Nord Stream
II and is considering more. I oppose Nord Stream II. But there
may be ways to mitigate its risks at less cost to U.S.-German
relations.
Developments over 10 years have reduced Russian energy
leverage over Central Europe: smaller gas pipelines to move gas
east to Central Europe and Ukraine; more LNG from the U.S. and
other sources; and the anti-monopoly provisions of the EU's
Third Energy Package. The U.S., EU, Poland, and Germany should
intensify efforts along these lines and support the Three Seas
Initiative, notwithstanding differences over Nord Stream.
Financial transparency. Putinism relies on the Western
financial system to raise capital while attacking the West.
Putin and his cronies use it to safeguard and conceal their
enormous personal wealth, often acquired through corruption. We
should not allow Putin's team to use and abuse our own system.
The U.S. needs to work with the EU and U.K. to strengthen rules
for financial and investment transparency, including beneficial
ownership disclosure. We should also expose and publicize the
personal wealth of Putin and his chief cronies.
Sanctions. The U.S. designed its sanctions program on
Russia with escalatory options. We should not use all of these
in response to the alleged GRU bounty on U.S. forces, but we
can use some: intensified restrictions for military and dual-
use energy technology; reestablishment of an allied
coordination mechanism for such restrictions; additional
sanctions against Russian individuals, those in the GRU or
oligarchs or cronies either close to Putin or the Russian
military, and possibly a Russian State-owned bank or financial
institution with connections to the GRU.
Finally, the United States needs to bring the free world
together. We need a Russia policy that defends U.S. interests
and values, brings together our allies, and reaches out to
Russian society.
It is hard for this administration to articulate such a
policy because the President's own view of Putin seems so
charitable. Indeed, the President seems to prefer tyrants
generally, not just Putin, seems to disdain the free world the
U.S. has led since 1945, and regards the U.S. as an isolated,
self-serving power operating along the principle of ``might
makes right.''
That is not an approach that challenges Putin or Chinese
President Xi. It is an approach that accepts their world view.
It is an approach that would diminish the United States from
being the leader of the free world to just another grasping
great power. It would undo the basis of American leadership
since 1945, a period which, despite our mistakes,
inconsistencies, failures, and downright blunders, also
generated the world's longest period of general peace and
unprecedented global prosperity.
The United States needs to lead again. We need to make the
rules-based international system work better, including better
for more Americans. We need to grapple with new challenges--
climate change, pandemics, new technologies, and more--and old
problems of race, equity, and justice. We need to take our old
best principles and apply them in new ways. That is how we will
prevail over Putin and other authoritarians who think,
mistakenly, that their time has come.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I look forward to this
hearing.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Fried follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Ambassador Fried.
I now recognize Ambassador McFaul for his opening
statement.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE MICHAEL MCFAUL, DIRECTOR, FREEMAN
SPOGLI INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, KEN OLIVIER AND
ANGELA NOMELLINI PROFESSOR OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, DEPARTMENT
OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, PETER AND HELEN BING SENIOR FELLOW,
HOOVER INSTITUTION, STANFORD UNIVERSITY (FORMER UNITED STATES
AMBASSADOR TO RUSSIA AND FORMER SENIOR DIRECTOR FOR RUSSIAN AND
EURASIAN AFFAIRS AT THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL)
Mr. McFaul. Thank you, Chairman Keating, Ranking Member
Wilson, and other members of this committee, for having me
today.
I have testified many times, but this is the first time I
have done it in my socks.
I have submitted a longer written testimony which covers
all the questions I was asked to address today. Many of them,
by the way, echo what Ambassador Fried just said right now. In
my 5 minutes, I just want to highlight a few points.
First, as a caveat, I want to underscore that we still need
greater clarity about what Putin did in Afghanistan and how
Trump responded. My testimony today is just informed by what
has been in the press.
The facts so far on the intelligence that we have learned
are deeply troubling, and the facts on Trump's decisionmaking
regarding this intelligence are equally disturbing. Both,
however, Putin's behavior and Trump's behavior follow a
consistent pattern. We should be disturbed but not surprised by
this latest episode.
First, Putin. I think it is really important to understand
these patterns. We sometimes forget about them and just respond
to the latest news. I want to remind you of the pattern. For
several years now, Putin has behaved like a rogue actor in the
international system, brazenly defying norms, rules, and laws
and daring us to stop him.
In 2008, Putin invaded Georgia and recognized the Georgian
regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent States, in
violent violation of international law.
In 2014, Putin annexed Crimea, violating one of the most
sacred norms of the international system since the end of World
War II. No Soviet leader since Stalin had ever annexed
territory during the cold war.
In 2015, Putin deployed his air force to Syria to prop up a
ruthless dictator, Mr. Assad, who has used illegal chemical
weapons to kill innocent civilians. A U.N. panel has accused
the Russian military of committing war crimes for bombing the
Syrian civilians indiscriminately.
In 2016, Putin, of course, violated our sovereignty,
American sovereignty, deploying multiple methods to try to
influence the outcome of our Presidential election and amplify
polarization in American society.
In 2018, as already mentioned by the chairman, Putin tried
to assassinate Sergei Skripal in the United Kingdom.
In 2019, Putin's agents allegedly murdered Zelimkhan
Khangoshvili, a Chechen Georgian citizen, in Berlin.
And just last week, another Chechen dissident was
assassinated in Austria.
So this latest action follows a pattern of lawless, rogue
behavior.
Second, Trump. President Trump's nonresponse so far also
follows a consistent pattern. As a candidate and ever since,
Trump has repeatedly said admiring things about Putin and never
a critical word.
In 2016, when asked about Putin's oppressive ways, Trump
responded, ``Well, I think our country does plenty of killing
also.''
In 2017, when asked about these methods again, having a
chance to correct the record, Trump defended the Russian leader
by criticizing the United States of America, arguing, ``We've
got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country is so
innocent?''
In 2018, perhaps most shockingly, Trump stood next to Putin
at their summit in Helsinki and sided with Putin over our own
intelligence community in stating that he did not believe that
Russia interfered in our 2016 Presidential election.
In 2019, in Osaka, Trump and Putin laughed together about
the evils of the independent media. Trump said, ``Get rid of
them. 'Fake news' is great term, isn't it? You do not have this
problem in Russia, but we do.'' Putin replied, ``We also have
the same.''
So, in 2020, Trump's refusal to criticize Putin for his
latest act, if true, is shocking and depressing but it is not
surprising. It follows a pattern.
Asking, therefore, what the Trump administration should do
in response I think is a futile exercise. I agree with all of
the points Ambassador Fried just raised. I outline them in my
written testimony. But if Trump himself will not acknowledge
Putin's belligerent behavior, what good does it do to encourage
him to respond to Putin?
Instead, however, I want to recommend that the Congress,
independent of the White House, take three or four steps right
now.
First, proceed with more hearings. I congratulate what you
are doing. The American people, especially those who send their
daughters and sons overseas to defend our country, have the
right to know the facts.
Second, Congress should pass the DETER Act. We need to do
all we can to stop Russian interference in our presidential
election right now, especially on Election Day. I am really
afraid of what they might do on Election Day. The DETER Act
helps.
Third, Congress should enact new legislation to make Radio
Free Europe/Radio Liberty an independent, nongovernmental
organization with an independent board and a direct
appropriation from the U.S. Congress. Doing so would be one
more step of many others needed to counter Russian propaganda
and disinformation.
In the long run, not unlike the cold war, we need a
bipartisan strategy to contain, deter, isolate, and sometimes
engage Putin's Russia for the long haul. He is going to be
around for a long time. I have outlined some of the broad
contours of what that strategy might be in my written remarks,
and I hope we might have some time in questions and answers to
talk about them.
Thank you for having me.
[The prepared statement of Mr. McFaul follows:]
MCFAUL
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Ambassador.
Now we will recognize Dr. Marten for your opening
statement.
STATEMENT OF DR. KIMBERLY MARTEN, PROFESSOR AND CHAIR,
DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, BARNARD COLLEGE, COLUMBIA
UNIVERSITY
Dr. Marten. Thank you, Chairman Keating and Ranking Member
Wilson and members of the subcommittee, for giving me the
opportunity to testify today.
My written testimony contains a lot more detailed
information, but in the 5 minutes that I have here I am going
to use my introductory remarks to highlight two things. The
first is how the Russian political system operates today, and
the second is to talk about the Wagner Group and how it fits
within it. I have been doing deep research on the Wagner Group
and Yevgeny Prigozhin for the past 2-1/2 years, and that is the
basis for my testimony today.
As Chairman Keating pointed out, the Wagner Group is often
called a private military company, but it really is not. It is
very closely connected to the GRU, to the Russian military
intelligence agency. And, in fact, the Wagner Group has changed
so much over the years that, rather than thinking of it as a
company or a firm with an organizational structure, we might
think of it as just a name for an activity that the Russian
State carries out.
So what about how the Russian system operates? The Russian
system is based on interlocking patronage networks among the
elite. What do I mean when I say ``patronage''? It means people
at the top are expected to take care of the people underneath
them in the hierarchy, and people who are lower down in the
hierarchy are expected to be loyal to those at the top.
And, in Russia, laws are actually made to be broken, and
when you are in the patronage network, you understand who is
allowed to break the laws and how. And so those who are within
that network are given a roof, they are given protection to
break the laws. And the people who go to prison in Russia are
either outsiders who are not in that network or people who have
showed disloyalty to the network. So you are in prison not for
the crimes you have committed but for the disloyalty that you
have shown to those above you in the hierarchy.
Now, everyone at the top or almost everyone at the top has
broken a lot of laws, and that makes everybody vulnerable, and
that is what keeps the Russian system operating. That is why we
can have Putin potentially stay in power until 2036 and,
despite the problems in Russia, there is unlikely to be a lot
of effort to try to change the system drastically. Because the
people who benefit, who have power from the current system, are
all vulnerable if they are trying to get out, and everybody is
protecting each other.
Into this mix we find the Wagner Group, which first
appeared in 2014 in eastern Ukraine. Now, private military
companies are technically illegal, even unconstitutional, in
Russia today. Yet Putin has mentioned Wagner publicly and has
said, ``Let them do whatever they want to, all over the world.
Let them make money doing it, as long as they do not break any
laws at home.'' But since they are illegal at home, that gives
you a sense of just how corrupt and two-faced the Russian
system is when it comes to illegality.
A lot of people have referred to the Wagner Group as
mercenaries, but they are really not. They do work for pay when
they are going out on contract, but they are fiercely
patriotic, and they only act when they believe they are doing
so on behalf of the Russian State. And, in fact, all the
evidence we have about where they have operated indicates that
a Russian State ministry of one kind or another has always
helped negotiate the contracts for where they are employed
abroad. So they are really a member of the Russian state, as
has been talked about previously.
The owner, or contractor, was revealed to be Yevgeny
Prigozhin in 2016. And, as Chairman Keating noted, he should be
familiar to everybody for being under indictment and sanctions
in the United States. Everywhere that Wagner goes, Prigozhin
has some sort of a mining contract or energy contract, where
Wagner troops are also being employed to guard those mining and
energy fields for his private benefit.
To the Wagner Group is used so often because it gives Putin
plausible deniability for the many military adventures that he
is conducting abroad. And the plausible deniability does not
matter so much for people in the international community,
because the Wagner Group is now followed by high-quality
investigative journalists everywhere they go, so we know what
they are doing and where they are. Where it matters is to
Putin's domestic audience, his political base, the people who
are ordinary workers and ordinary retired folks who get their
news from Russian State media.
And what it allows Putin to do is engage in lots of foreign
adventures without having to bear the costs at home, without
having especially to bear the casualties that would be accruing
to uniformed Russian troops if they were instead sent on those
missions. We know that the Wagner Group has suffered casualties
in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Mozambique--all part of Putin's
adventures.
In my written testimony, I talk about two cases in depth,
the Central African Republic and Libya, where the Wagner Group
is deployed currently. But in the closing moment that I have,
let me just talk about what the U.S. might do in response to
the Wagner Group's and Prigozhin's activities.
Unfortunately, sanctions do not seem to have stopped very
much what it is that they are doing, because they can just find
places to go in the world where there is not reciprocity with
the United States, where the sanctions and the indictments do
not have a lot of bite.
But as we are thinking about responding to them, I would
ask us to keep two things in mind.
First, we can engage in messaging, especially toward
ordinary people in the Middle East and Africa. Let them know
just what it is that Putin is up to, that Russian troops kill
innocent civilians, that the Wagner Group carries out a lot of
human-rights violations everywhere it goes, that they are often
not even very effective--they do not tend to be gaining a lot
of success for, Russia militarily--and that Prigozhin is a
lifelong organized criminal who is taking the natural resources
of these communities and using them for his own profit without
sharing the benefits back to these communities.
And the second thing that our troops in the field should be
aware of is that the Wagner Group may be there and may be
targeting them. And we have so much evidence of Russia, in
underhanded ways, trying to threaten U.S. forces in the field
that it is just very important that we keep our defenses up and
that we expect Russian malfeasance and Russian bad behavior and
are prepared to deal with it.
So thank you very much. I will leave it there.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Marten follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Doctor.
And I will call on Mr. Kara-Murza for your 5 minutes of
opening remarks.
STATEMENT OF VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA, CHAIRMAN, BORIS NEMTSOV
FOUNDATION FOR FREEDOM, VICE PRESIDENT, FREE RUSSIA FOUNDATION
Mr. Kara-Murza. Chairman Keating, Congressman Wilson,
members of the subcommittee, thank you so much for holding this
important hearing and for the opportunity to testify before
you.
Two decades ago, when Vladimir Putin first came to power,
many in the West were asking who this man was and where he
would take Russia. I remember the day when I and many of my
colleagues in the Russian democratic movement knew the answer.
On December 20, 1999, Mr. Putin, still as Prime Minister,
went to the former KGB headquarters in Lubyanka Square in
Moscow to officially unveil a memorial plaque to Yuri Andropov.
Now, Andropov was someone who epitomized both the domestic
repression and the external aggressiveness of the Soviet
system. As Ambassador in Hungary, he was among those who
oversaw the 1956 invasion. As chairman of the KGB, he directed
the suppression of domestic opposition, imprisoning and
targeting dissidents.
Russia is a country of symbols. A symbol like a memorial
plaque to Yuri Andropov is unmistakable.
Domestic repression and external aggression often go hand-
in-hand for authoritarian regimes, and Mr. Putin has
demonstrated this linkage most clearly.
His early years were dedicated to consolidating his rule at
home, turning Russia from an imperfect democracy into a perfect
dictatorship. Independent television networks were taken down.
Political opponents were exiled and imprisoned. Elections were
turned into meaningless rituals and parliament into a rubber
stamp.
In what became the most high-profile political
assassination in the modern history of Russia, in February
2015, opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was gunned down in front
of the Kremlin. To this day, the organizers and masterminds of
his assassination remain unidentified and unindicted.
But autocrats rarely stop at their own borders. The
invasion of Georgia, the military incursions into eastern
Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea--this is only what was done
by official means. In many other cases, the Kremlin hid behind
plausible, or sometimes less than plausible, deniability. A
slate of murders and attacks against opponents or perceived
traitors abroad, from the United Kingdom to Germany to Austria,
serves as a case in point.
The Kremlin has set up a shadow security force, a private
military organization known as the Wagner Group, and overseen
by close Putin confidant Yevgeny Prigozhin, to carry out
military actions, suppressive operations, and disinformation
campaigns abroad. And Professor Kimberly Marten just spoke in
detail about this organization.
Wagner mercenaries have been fighting in eastern Ukraine;
supporting the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, where they
led a direct assault on U.S. troops, as you mentioned, Mr.
Chairman; operating in Libya against the internationally
recognized government; propping up Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela
in the face of popular protests; and effectively running
several countries in Africa, most prominently the Central
African Republic, where three Russian journalists--Orkhan
Dzhemal, Kirill Radchenko, and Alexander Rastorguyev--were
murdered in July 2018 while investigating Wagner's activities.
In the absence of an independent judicial system, a
democratically elected parliament, and a viable free press in
Russia, it is important to hold the Kremlin to account for its
abuses using international mechanisms. And I would like to
emphasize three areas in particular.
Now, first, the U.S. legislative framework provides for
targeted sanctions on individuals responsible for human-rights
abuses. And I am referring, of course, to the Magnitsky Act and
the Global Magnitsky Act that have been used by the U.S.
Government to sanction, for example, an organizer in the
assassination of Boris Nemtsov and the perpetrators of the
murder of Alexander Litvinenko. These laws are effective and
should be used more actively.
Second, individual congressional measures are important in
focusing the attention on those abusers and in countering the
impunity they have gotten so used to at home. And, in this
regard, I would like to highlight House Resolution 996 that
would designate the activities of Yevgeny Prigozhin and the
Wagner Group as a threat to U.S. national security and would
urge further sanctions on them in cooperation with the European
Union.
And I want to take this opportunity to thank the chairman
and ranking member of the subcommittee, Representative Keating
and Representative Kinzinger, for cosponsoring this resolution
and to express my hope that it will be passed in the current
Congress.
Third and very important, as you all know, last week
Vladimir Putin signed constitutional amendments that waive
Presidential term limits, allowing him to remain in power until
2036. This procedure was rubber-stamped in a plebiscite that
violated the most basic democratic standards and that was
widely assessed as fraudulent.
As the bipartisan leaders of the United States Helsinki
Commission, Congressman Alcee Hastings of Florida and Senator
Roger Wicker of Mississippi have said, and I quote, ``State-
sponsored fraud, coercion, and obfuscation make it impossible
to know the true will of the Russian people,'' end of quote.
By flagrantly subverting term limits, Vladimir Putin is
becoming illegitimate not only de facto but de jure, now in the
same rogue league of dictators who had used this trick before
him. This change--and that is very important.
This change should be reflected in policy. In particular,
Western leaders--the leaders of Western democracies should not
afford Mr. Putin the legitimacy and prestige he no longer has
any claim to, either in the form of invitation to international
summits or in the form of high-level bilateral meetings and
visits.
I look forward to the day Russia can return to the G8 as a
full member, but this should only happen once my country has a
democratically elected government that will both respect the
rights and freedoms of its own people and behave as a
responsible citizen on the global stage.
I thank you very much for this opportunity to testify, and
I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kara-Murza follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Kara-Murza.
And thank all of you for your testimony.
I will now recognize members for 5 minutes each pursuant to
House rules. All time yielded is for the purposes of
questioning our witnesses. Because of the virtual format of
this hearing, I will recognize members by committee seniority,
alternating between Democrats and Republicans. If you miss your
turn, please let our staff know, and we will circle back to
you. If you seek recognition, you must unmute your microphone
and address the chair verbally.
And I will start by recognizing myself.
The most sensitive conversations I have had in my life I
think surrounded conversations I had with my father and my
grandmother that surrounded the circumstances and the actions
surrounding my uncle being killed in action. And I think, as we
have this hearing and seek answers to questions, first and
foremost, we owe the family members of those who lost their
lives defending our country, who might be questioning right now
who is behind making any payments or having paramilitary or
private military organizations responsible for that,
particularly from Russia.
So the common thread I heard with all our witnesses, dating
back to Putin's KGB days to the present, built in to all of his
actions, very carefully and seemingly very importantly, is
making sure there is deniability.
So I have this question for our witnesses. You can jump in
as you see fit. You have all recognized how important it is to
have accountability, but how important is it for the President
of the United States to penetrate all those veils of
deniability and to seek, unambiguously, accountability for the
Russians and Vladimir Putin for their actions?
Mr. Fried. Mr. Chairman, since you invited us to jump in, I
will jump.
I think it is important for the President, but not just the
President, to speak honestly and openly about the nature of
Putinism and Russian malign behavior.
As I said in my testimony, this administration, the Trump
administration, has done some things with which I agree. They
have taken good steps. But President Trump's own silence and
his obfuscation and his public defense of Putin undercuts this.
So we need a policy to which all levels of the U.S. Government
adhere.
And we also need to express that to the Russian people.
Let's remember that Putinism is not necessarily the final word
in Russia's political development. He likes to be. He sort of
claims he is. But he is not. Not necessarily. And we need to
get that word out to the Russian people, as we did using Radio
Liberty in the cold war but now using new means.
So, from top to bottom, speak the truth and get the word
out.
Mr. Keating. Thank you. That is the purpose of this
hearing, Ambassador.
I recall Putin's--I recall comments in Hungary, where he
said that, oh, the U.S. is finally admitting that Ukraine was
responsible for the attack on their elections, and how he uses
that.
Can we speak, too, of the importance in his own country of
being unambiguous and being accountable for his actions? Does
anyone want to jump in there?
Mr. McFaul. Well, Mr. Chairman, if I could jump in, I will
let Vladimir talk about inside, but I want to underscore a
point that Ambassador Fried made.
No. 1, you know, in the early days of the administration,
my colleagues in the Trump administration always said, ``Don't
listen to what the President says. Look at what we do.'' And I
agree with Ambassador Fried; I think the new funding and troops
for NATO has been a good thing. Lethal assistance to Ukraine
has been a good thing. Speaking out about democracy and human
rights, fantastic. Ambassador Sullivan, I think, is doing a
fabulous job in Moscow right now.
But on all three of those and many more, the President
undermines the policy. So is our NATO unity better today than 4
years ago? Nobody would say we are better today than 4 years
ago. The U.S.-Ukraine relation, a complete mess because of the
politicization of that military assistance. And when the
President does not speak about democracy and human rights, it
makes it very difficult for lower-level officials to do so and
have any credibility.
But there is another piece that I think was very important
in your question. Sometimes the U.S. Government has to
declassify secret intelligence to expose and embarrass foreign
government officials.
I was in the government in 2009 at the U.N. General
Assembly when we made the decision, the Obama Administration
made the decision, to declassify what used to be very sensitive
information about the Iranian nuclear program. And I sat in the
White House Situation Room while we decided to do that. Lots of
people said, well, this is going to expose our intelligence
resources and means for gathering this. And we decided to make
that decision so that we could create a coalition that later
led to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1929, the most
comprehensive multilateral sanctions against Iran ever.
It was the declassification of that information, done in a
very public way, in New York, with all the leaders of the world
there, that led to that coalition. And I think this is a moment
where it would be very appropriate to use a similar tactic.
Mr. Kara-Murza. Mr. Chairman, could I quickly comment on
the first point you made, because I think it is very important,
when you asked about going after the Kremlin's deniability or
supposed deniability.
I think the best tool, or the most effective tool, against
authoritarianism is transparency. And I think it is very
important for democratic nations to kind of have the truth out,
whether it concerns, for example, the corruption and the
illicit financial flows, as we have seen 4 years ago with the
publication of the Panama Papers.
You know, everybody knows in Russia that those $2 billion
in that offshore jurisdiction belonged to Vladimir Putin, but
ostensibly it was hidden in the name of his longtime friend
from his days in Leningrad, you know, a man by the name of
Sergei Roldugin, a cellist. I remember a lot of people said in
Moscow at the time, you know, we all thought that Paul
McCartney was the richest musician in the world. Apparently, it
is some guy who nobody has ever heard of, because he is hiding
Putin's money.
It is things like this. It is also things like the
activities of the Wagner Group and making it absolutely clear,
as Professor Marten said a few minutes ago, that everything the
Wagner Group is doing, that, in fact, is the Kremlin regime and
Vladimir Putin just hiding behind this facade.
And, you know, I have read again through the draft
resolution that you cosponsored, H. Res. 996, before the start
of this hearing, and I want to thank you again for
cosponsoring. And I hope that it will be passed and have
official force soon, because it is very important in exposing
the truth and in undermining that plausible deniability of the
Kremlin.
On your question about domestic accountability for Vladimir
Putin, as I mentioned in the opening statement and as you all
know very well, Vladimir Putin has used his years in power to
destroy all mechanisms of domestic accountability. You know,
our parliament is a voiceless rubber stamp with no genuine
opposition; our elections are meaningless rituals with
prearranged results; all of our national television networks
are directly controlled by the State; and so on and so forth.
The only effective way for Russian citizens, for Russian
society to protest against the system and to protest against
this regime is to go out into the streets, as we have seen many
times in the last few years, beginning with the big pro-
democracy protests in 2011-2012 and with the anti-corruption
protests around the country in 2017 and 2018 and, most
recently, last year, with the mass protests in Moscow against
the removal of opposition candidates from municipal elections.
And, 1 day, this is how change will come to Russia. In the
system that Vladimir Putin has created, change can only come
through the streets, not through the ballot box.
And, you know, I have yet to actually meet anybody in
Russia who seriously believes that Vladimir Putin will be able
to stay in power until 2036. Given the clear trends in Russian
public opinion, which are turning against this regime, I think
it is very implausible that he will be able to stay in power
for that long.
But it is very important that, while the regime remains in
power and for however long it remains in power, it is important
to use the international mechanisms of oversight and
accountability to hold the Kremlin to account.
And those mechanisms exist. Russia, as you know well, is a
member of the OSCE, the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe, as is the United States of America.
Russia is a member of the Council of Europe and has ratified
the European Convention on Human Rights. All of these
instruments contain very strong international levers of
oversight and accountability.
And I want to use----
Mr. Keating. Be quick.
Mr. Kara-Murza [continuing]. Just two specific examples in
this regard. One concerns the assassination of Boris Nemtsov,
which I mentioned in my opening statement, the most high-
profile political assassination in the modern history of
Russia.
A few months ago, just before this quarantine began, my
colleagues and I were in Vienna at the winter session of the
OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, where, in the presence of the U.S.
delegation--and Congressman Wilson was present there--the OSCE
rapporteur, Margareta Cederfelt from Sweden, presented a
comprehensive and detailed report, oversight report, on the
Nemtsov case, making the I think very obvious conclusion that
the reason for the impunity of the organizers of the
assassination is not because Russian law enforcement lack the
ability but because the Russian Government will not allow them
because there is no political will. And things like this are
very important.
And, second and finally, I think it is this plebiscite that
all of us refer to. I think it is very important that those
strong statements that we have been hearing in the last few
days about the fraudulent nature of this plebiscite be actually
reflected in policy and that there is a clear move toward a
policy of nonrecognition, of Vladimir Putin as an illegitimate
dictator that he now is, certainly after the end of his current
mandate in 2024.
Mr. Keating. Well, thank you very much.
The clock in my head made it clear that we were over the 5
minutes, and I did not know if you were seeing in your screen
the timer. I am not seeing it in mine. But if the staff could
help the witnesses and our members keep track of the time, that
would be helpful, if that can be done.
I will now recognize the ranking member, Mr. Wilson, for
his questions.
And thank you all.
Mr. Wilson. Chairman Keating, thank you very much. And I
was so much appreciative of the persons testifying, I wasn't
about to point out 5 minutes was up. But you can point it out
for me.
And so, again, I am just really grateful. As a student of
Russian history, I appreciate the comments and, gosh, the
expertise of everyone who is here today. And I still am so
hopeful, 1 day, indeed, that the extraordinary people of Russia
can be free.
Mr. Kara-Murza, last week's nationwide vote--and you have
correctly questioned its legitimacy--paved the way for Putin to
remain in power until 2036. But signs indicate the Russian
people aren't buying the rigged vote nor the regime's attempt
to provide legitimacy on what was in reality a power grab.
I am concerned that, as you cited the waning public
support, could this lead to a more aggressive Russia?
Mr. Kara-Murza. Thank you very much, Congressman Wilson,
for your question.
And you are absolutely right that the trends in Russian
public opinion make it absolutely clear that Vladimir Putin
could not have won an honest referendum, an honest vote on the
continuation, on the prolongation of his mandate.
There are always important caveats about measuring public
opinion in an authoritarian system, where a lot of people do
not have access to information and also where a lot of people
are hesitant to State their opinion for the reason of, you
know, obvious potential consequences. Imagine you are sitting
in your house somewhere in Russia and get a knock on your door,
and somebody you have never seen before asks you, you know,
``What do you think of Vladimir Putin?'' What are you going to
say? This is not very meaningful.
But even with all of those caveats, the trends in Russian
public opinion have been absolutely clear. A few weeks ago, the
Levada Center, which is the last more or less reliable
independent pollster in our country, revealed, for example,
that the level of public confidence in Vladimir Putin, in an
open-ended poll, has plummeted to 25 percent, down from about
60 percent 3 years ago.
And I think a much more telling poll, even, that came out
over the spring showed that a clear majority of Russian
citizens, 58 percent, want to age-limit the Presidency at 70
years of age. And Vladimir Putin, as everybody knows, will turn
72 in 2024. So I think it is kind of a safe, euphemistic way
for opposing Putin's rule without pronouncing his name.
And so it is clear to everyone, including the Kremlin, that
they could not have won an honest vote about this. And this is
why they organized this sham with no independent or
international observers, with no oversight control over the
ballots that were stored for 1 week while the voting was going
on. For 1 whole week, every night, they were stored in
electoral commissions with no opportunity to prevent, you know,
tampering. When all the public-sector employees were coerced
all over the country to go and participate in this sham. We
know that, while all the government resources were mobilized to
ensure a ``yes'' outcome, the ``no'' campaign had their website
blocked and their rallies prohibited, of course under the
pretext of concern for public health during the pandemic. And
so on and so on forth.
So I think it is absolutely clear, and we are seeing this
in these statements that have been coming out in the last few
weeks from the leaders of Western democracies, including in the
United States, that nobody is accepting this sham and nobody is
accepting this spectacle that Putin has organized.
And I think it is very important that these statements do
not just stop at the analysis but actually move into the realm
of policy and that the leaders of the democratic nations of the
world, backed by the United States of America, make it
abundantly clear that they will no longer afford Vladimir Putin
the legitimacy or the prestige that he so desperately craves
but he has no longer any right to.
Mr. Wilson. And I want to thank you for the specifics of no
international observers and the storage of the ballots. So, how
absurd.
Dr. Marten, I am really concerned for the Ukraine if the
Nord Stream II pipeline proceeds. What actions can the United
States take to protect Ukraine and other allies from Russian
energy weaponization?
Dr. Marten. Well, I am less of an expert on Ukrainian
energy matters than I am on the Wagner Group, but I will try as
best I can to answer your question, Ranking Member Wilson.
My sense is that we have to keep in mind when we are
thinking about pipelines that pipelines go in two directions.
And that means that Russia is as dependent on the recipients of
its natural gas as those recipients are on Russia.
And I am not sure that there is much that the United States
can do to stop those pipelines from going ahead, but what we
might do instead is work with our allies in Europe to try to
find alternatives for Ukraine so that Ukraine is not dependent
on Russian energy supplies, as it has been in the past, that it
develops its own resources, that it diversifies its energy
supply, and to think perhaps less about focusing our energies
on punishing Russia, since that does not always seem to stop
Russian behavior, but instead positive actions that we can take
with our allies to provide alternatives to what is really
Russian bad behavior.
Mr. Wilson. Well, hey, for somebody who is not familiar
with the issue, you certainly answered it well. Thank you very
much.
And I yield back.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Representative.
For those of you that want to keep track of your own time,
I have been informed, if you hit in the upper right-hand part
of the screen, there is a grid of everyone, and there will be a
timer present.
If people want, I will gently tap when you hit 5 minutes. I
do not want to hold people's feet to the fire that closely, but
just to give you an idea.
With that, I will recognize the vice chair of the
committee, the gentlelady from Virginia, Ms. Spanberger.
Ms. Spanberger. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you to our witnesses today for participating. I
appreciated your opening comments as well as your lengthier
statements for the record. Thank you so very much for your
participation.
I would like to begin by following up on the discussion
related to the allegations that the Russian Government,
specifically the GRU, has put bounties on the heads of U.S.
servicemembers.
We know that Russia is known for using proxy actors to
carry out violence while maintaining its level of deniability,
having done so in Ukraine and Syria. And, of course, as some of
the witnesses mentioned, the GRU certainly has attempted
assassinations across Europe.
So I would like to begin with you, Ambassador McFaul. In
your experiences in Moscow, what are the limitations that we
face in dealing with the Kremlin when it comes to these types
of threats, especially when the Kremlin does deny a
relationship to entities or knowledge of these actions?
And, relatedly, what tools could potentially strengthen the
hand of our diplomats as they are dealing with or attempting to
deal with the Kremlin?
Mr. McFaul. Well, thank you for those very hard questions,
because they are difficult. Vladimir Putin is a very smart
operative when it comes to intelligence matters. I probably do
not need to tell you that. And he has been at the job for 20
years; let's remember that. That gives him experience. And this
notion of deniability, as we saw in all of those instances, is
always there.
For me, there are two very clear things, though. Just
because he is denying it does not mean we should ignore it.
And what really disturbs me about this current situation
and these current allegations, as somebody who used to work at
the White House--I want to remind everybody, I worked 3 years
at the White House before going to Moscow. And I had the
privilege of having the most incredible intelligence in the
world. I think the Russians always underestimate how good we
are at this. They most certainly underestimated the information
that was declassified for the Mueller investigation. And I
think that gives us a tool that we do not use enough.
So, one, I think declassification, when it is appropriate,
is a way to expose it so that it cannot be denied so easily for
Vladimir Putin.
But, No. 2, it also means that the President of the United
States has to take intelligence seriously. We can talk until we
are blue in the face about all the things the White House
should do, but if the President won't listen to his own
intelligence--and here I also want to say that the Trump
administration--I worked at the White House. I got the PDB
every day. I worked for the National Security Advisors, two of
them. They got the PDB every day. It is their job to inform the
President about intelligence like this. I am sorry, it is not
an excuse to say, ``Well, he does not read, so he does not see
it.'' If it is important, he needs to be aware of it.
And I do not need to tell you, we do not verify
intelligence, right? We do the best we can with what we have.
And you are not doing your job if you are not telling the
President about this possible damning intelligence, especially
when he is calling Vladimir Putin six times, especially when he
is inviting him to the G7, especially when he is making the
decision to withdraw troops from Germany. Those are policy
decisions, and you need the intelligence community to be part
of informing policy decisions.
And that is what disturbs me about--it is not just the
President ignoring the intelligence. I feel like the national
security decisionmaking process has broken down.
Ms. Spanberger. Thank you very much.
And, with the limited time left, because, Mr. Chairman, I
now see the clock, I would like to ask Ambassador Fried very
briefly when we are talking about the opaque actors, such as
the Wagner Group, the Wagner Group that we have discussed
already, how in your estimation--and perhaps, Dr. Marten, if
you would like to comment on this as well--does Russia's
reliance on private and opaque actors affect the tools that the
United States can and should use to respond?
Mr. Fried. Dealing with the Wagner Group is difficult
because there are issues of deniability, but to deal with it,
we need to call it out for what it is. We need to expose
Russian maligned behavior. I agree with Professor Marten right
down the line, expose it, and also expose it to the Russian
people.
The Russians are sensitive to their people dying in Putin's
foreign wars. We know this because Putin has gone to such great
lengths to criminalize publicizing information about those
soldiers dying, which suggests an opportunity. Publicize it,
reach out to the Russian people, and do not assume that they
are idiots or patsies or sheep following Putin because they are
not.
Ms. Spanberger. Thank you very much.
And I think your comment goes well with Ambassador McFaul's
that just because he is denying it does not mean we should
ignore it.
And, Mr. Chairman, on that, I will yield back. Thank you so
much to our witnesses.
Mr. Keating. Thank you.
The Chair will now recognize the gentleman from Texas, Mr.
Wright.
Mr. Wright, I think your mute is still on.
Mr. Wright. How about now?
Mr. Keating. Yes.
Mr. Wright. We are good.
I want to thank all of the witnesses for joining us today.
Mr. Kara-Murza, you mentioned that the future of Russia
would be determined in the streets not at the ballot box. And
my question to you is, if there is enough of a groundswell
protest against Putin by the Russian people, what do you
anticipate the Russian military would do?
Mr. Kara-Murza. Thank you very much, Congressman, for this
question.
Well, I think we know the answer to this question from the
previous instance where an authoritarian regime in our country
was toppled through street protests, and that, of course, was
in August 1991, the 3 days that ended the Soviet regime, when
there were half a million people on the streets in Moscow
protesting against this attempted coup d'etat led by the top
leadership of the KGB and the Communist Party, and there was an
order given to the military to shoot peaceful protestors and to
storm the Moscow White House where Boris Yeltsin, the Russian
President, was based. And we know that the Russian military
refused to do this.
And I think, of course, you know, every situation is
different, but I think that this is what is likely to happen
the next time there are large street protests. I do not believe
that Russian soldiers will be willing to shoot at unarmed
Russian demonstrators on the streets of Russian cities, and I
think the Kremlin knows this, too. And this is why every time
you see larger position protests in Moscow, as happened, for
example, in 2011 and 2012, over that winter of protest, you see
that the Kremlin regime is bringing in the operatives from the
Chechen regiment that is controlled by Ramzan Kadyrov, who is
one of the most egregious human rights abusers, even by the
standards of Putin's system, the Kremlin-backed and Kremlin-
appointed leader in Chechnya. He has this kind of, you know,
Praetorian Guard that is fiercely loyal to him and that would
be prepared to do essentially anything. And we know, for a
fact, that during those protests, during those large opposition
rallies in 2011 and 2012 in Moscow, there were operatives and
armed officers of these Chechen battalions loyal to Kadyrov
that were brought to Moscow and stationed around the city in
hotels in the event of the use of force against demonstrators.
And this, I think, is the most dangerous factor that we
need to consider, and it is very important that there are
finally measures of accountability being taken also with regard
to Ramzan Kadyrov, who is one of the most egregious enforcers
of everything that Vladimir Putin has been doing. We know from
established facts that Ramzan Kadyrov's people have been
involved front and center in the assassination of Russian
opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in 2015. We know that Ramzan
Kadyrov's security forces were involved front and center in the
military incursions in eastern Ukraine in Donetsk and Luhansk
that began back in 2014.
Ambassador McFaul mentioned these murders, recent murders
in Berlin and Vienna. Well, these are all opponents of Ramzan
Kadyrov, and I do not think anybody doubts that he had a hand
in these events.
And I think it is very important that the international
community is finally beginning to pay attention. There were two
very important resolutions that were passed in Congress last
year, S. Res. 81 in the Senate, and I think the number for the
House was--let me just get it correct for the record--H. Res.
156. These were two resolutions on the case of the
assassination of Boris Nemtsov, and one of the provisions in
those resolutions was a call on the U.S. Government to
investigate Ramzan Kadyrov's financial dealings in Middle
Eastern countries, especially in the United Arab Emirates, with
a view to potentially imposing secondary sanctions on him if
that were found to be in violation of U.S. law.
And there was a very important request that was sent a few
months ago, a bipartisan request, signed by Congressman Joe
Wilson, who is with us here today, and Congressman Tom
Malinowski, Democrat of New Jersey, requesting that the
administration investigate those financial ties and financial
links of Ramzan Kadyrov in the Middle East, particularly in the
UAE. And there was actually a very strong response from the
State Department that came, I believe, in the beginning of
March in which the leadership of the State Department promised
to pay attention to those issues.
So I think the Kadyrov factor is a very important one, and
it is time that it gets more international attention.
Mr. Wright. Great. Thank you.
And I yield back.
Mr. Keating. Thank you.
The chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Nevada, Ms.
Titus.
Ms. Titus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you for these wonderful presentations. It has
been very educational.
I am used to seeing the Ambassador on TV, so I thought I
would get to see you in person, but now we are still on TV. So
thank you.
You know, we tend to focus mostly on Putin's foreign policy
without as much attention to what is going on within the
country. Some of you have mentioned that things may be changing
or you may see some uprising. We tend to be optimistic. We were
in China. We were in Iran. Maybe in Russia, we think the people
are going to take back the system and overthrow the regime.
That seldom really happens.
But I wonder if all of you could address the fact that now
that Putin is more secure in his own position, having changed
the Constitution and potentially be around until the 2030's,
will his behavior improve internationally, or do you think now
that he is more secure, it will get worse internationally?
Mr. Fried. Let me jump in and try.
I do not think Putin is more secure, and I do not think he
thinks he is more secure. He went to elaborate lengths to push
through a dodging plebiscite, ignoring even Russia's procedures
for elections. That is not secure. That is insecure. The
economy is getting worse. COVID-19 has hit them hard. So I
think Putin is operating from a position of significant
weakness, and, therefore, I think he is going to lash out where
he can. I think he will be unremittingly hostile to us and to
democracy, which does not mean we have to be hostile to him,
but it means we have to be clear-eyed and resist his
aggression, as well as invest in a possible better future with
a possible better Russia.
Ms. Titus. If this election goes in a way that we have a
new President, what can that new President do to change course,
or are things too established or is he too--oh, too set in his
ways in what he needs to do that it really won't make much
difference?
Mr. Fried. I would not be over creative and reach out to
Putin. Look, I was part of the Bush outreach to Putin, just
like Michael McFaul was part of the Obama reset. I mean, they
both tried, and they failed because neither Bush nor Obama
would accept Putin's position for good relations, which was
ignore it if I beat up on people at home and let me crush
democracy in the countries I think belong to me, like Georgia
and Ukraine. Neither President would do it, to their credit. I
wouldn't--if I were advising a possible President Biden, I
would say: Don't be in such a hurry with Putin, to reach out to
Putin.
Ms. Titus. Ambassador McFaul.
Mr. Kara-Murza. Ambassador, if I could jump in for 1
second?
Ms. Titus. Please.
Mr. McFaul. Vladimir, go ahead. I will go third.
Mr. Kara-Murza. Very quickly. I just want to support what
Ambassador Fried said a few minutes ago. You know, a secure and
popular leader would not need to rig and falsify a vote. He is
not secure. He is not popular, and he knows it. And as we know
from history--and I am a historian by education--so speaking
more with this hat on than as a political activist, we know
that history has amended the best laid plans of dictators on
more than one occasion, including in Russia, including
something that happened in my own lifetime in August 1991, when
the Soviet regime, you know, one of the most oppressive regimes
in the history of humanity, collapsed in 3 days.
This is what can happen in our part of Europe, in our part
of the world. So let's not forget about that possibility as
well.
Dr. Marten. Can I jump in here? I think the fear that Putin
has is not so much a popular uprising because I think the
intelligence agencies do a really good job of keeping people
down. What they have been doing recently is not doing massive
amounts of violence but choosing at random people to put in
prison, to send an example to everybody else. So I would not
expect a massive popular uprising to happen in Russia.
What Putin is afraid of is that his own intelligence
agencies will turn against him, and I think that is why he put
in place a referendum. He wants that legal safeguard, not
against his people, but against the other people in the
hierarchy who support him. And one of the things that we could
do that would be most important is to reveal the illegality and
to make public, as much as possible, the corruption and the
terrible human rights violations, including by supporting civil
society, which has done a great job in recent times of
uncovering everything that is happening in Russia.
Mr. McFaul. And if I could add, I have two things I would
like to say.
First of all, on Putin, he is very weak. He wouldn't have
to do this plebiscite if he was a strong leader. And what I got
to know over the years, he is an extremely paranoid leader. Why
did he poison our colleague here, Mr. Kara-Murza, twice? Why
has he banned me from Russia, a Stanford professor, for
goodness' sake? You do not do that if you are a strong leader
that fears nothing. You do that if you are afraid of society,
if you are afraid of criticism. And we could talk about whether
that leads to his demise or not, that is a different thing.
That is a harder thing to predict, but I do not see him as a
strong leader.
With respect to policy, I, in my written testimony, tried
to outline what I hope could be a bipartisan transatlantic
strategy for dealing with Putin over the long haul. If he is
going to be around for a long time, we have to have the ability
to have a sustained policy, and I think it is a big dose of
containment, a little dose of isolation--I think we spend way
too much time chasing people like Putin around thinking we need
him to do this, that, and the other. We most of the time do not
need him--and a small dose of engagement when it is in
America's national security interest.
My biggest criticism of President Trump, President Trump
mixes up means and ends. He always says, I want a good
relationship with Russia, I want a good relationship with
Putin. I do not care about that. I do not even care about good
relations with France, by the way. I care about what is good
for the American people, what is in our national security
interest and economic interests. And sometimes you engage to
pursue that and sometimes you contain to pursue that.
The difference between President Bush, President Obama and
President Trump, I would argue, is that, in very limited
moments, those previous presidents engaged with the Kremlin to
advance our national interests. It was in our national
interests to negotiate the START Treaty and to ratify it. It
was in our interest--I want to remind people, in 2009, we
expanded the Northern Distribution Network to supply our troops
in Afghanistan with Russia's cooperation. Putin has now
reversed that. It was in our national interest to have a United
Nations' Security Council resolution against Iran in 2010 that
Russia supported.
So, when it is concrete, we should engage, but we should
never engage with Putin as an end, in and of itself. And here I
just want to underscore, one of my good friends and mentors
here at Stanford is George Shultz. You may remember he was the
Secretary of State for Ronald Reagan, and he always talks about
this. You can engage with an interlocutor without checking your
values at the door. And they did that in the Soviet times. They
did that in the cold war era before Gorbachev. I believe there
are some important lessons for us moving forward together for a
new policy toward Russia.
Ms. Titus. Thank you.
Mr. Keating. Thank you.
The chair recognizes the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr.
Burchett.
Mr. Burchett. Every time you say ``gentleman,'' I look
around to make sure you are not talking to somebody else, but
thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate you all. And I appreciate the ranking member,
my buddy, Joe Wilson. And I appreciate the panelists.
It seems to me that all of these Russian political
assassinations, they have increased recently, and over the
weekend it seemed like there was another one, another political
assassination. This time it happened in Austria.
Do you all feel like there is anything we can do to deter
these kind of assassinations in the future. And, if so, what?
And is that economic? Is that putting people on the border, or
what?
Mr. Fried. I remember the U.S.-European combined response
in reaction to the attempted Russian assassination of the
Skripals, the two--the former intelligence officer in the U.K.
Mr. Burchett. Right.
Mr. Fried. That was an interesting example of swift and
effective action, where the U.S. and the Europeans talked,
threw out a bunch of Russian diplomats simultaneously in a
coordinated effort. That was pretty good. That was a strong--
that was Trump administration, by the way. Later I heard the
President thought he had been tricked and he had gotten too
far, but let's put that aside. That was a solid piece of work.
So, to answer your question, yes, we can do things, and we
should do things with our European colleagues, not against
them. We shouldn't be wasting our political capital in
pointless fights. We ought to be working with the European
Union and individual member States to push back against Russian
aggression, particularly assassinations. I think that there is
a willingness on the part of the Europeans to do so. Look, even
the Germans, Chancellor Merkel's government has asked the
European Union to sanction Russians over a hack against the
German Parliament a couple of years ago.
So there is an audience out there for exactly the kind of
leadership that I think you are talking about, and I think we
ought to go in that direction.
Mr. Kara-Murza. Could I jump in for a minute?
Mr. Burchett. Sure.
Mr. Kara-Murza. Thank you so much for the question,
Congressman.
First of all, I would say we know what the lack of reaction
does. We remember when, in 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, a
British citizen, was murdered on British soil using a
radioactive substance.
Mr. Burchett. Right.
Mr. Kara-Murza. And there was almost no reaction from the
British authorities, and it took Marina Litvinenko, Alexander's
widow, years and the necessity to go through the entire British
judicial system to force the British Government--Teresa May at
the time, who was the Home Secretary, later became Prime
Minister--to even have an inquiry in this case, and remember
the outcome of the inquiry, when a retired British judge
concluded that Vladimir Putin was likely personally behind this
operation.
Well, there was basically no reaction, and we know the
results of that. We know the impunity continued, and we know
the Skripal case happened in the same country, and it was a
very different reaction then as Ambassador Fried just outlined.
And in response to your question, on a practical side, I
think it is very important to create actionable consequences
for these people. You referred to the murder in Vienna a few
days ago. Again, this was somebody who has crossed the paths of
Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed strongman in Chechnya. And,
you know, Ramzan Kadyrov a few years ago, under this
administration, by the way, was included in the sanctions in
the open sanctions list of the Magnitsky Act, and that was very
important symbolically and very powerful as a message,
practically less so because Kadyrov most probably does not have
any assets in the United States. He has a lot of assets in the
Middle East, particularly in the United Arab Emirates, even
what is publicly known, he is receiving millions of dollars in
personal profits from horse racing there, and the UAE is
investing tens of millions of dollars in Chechnya, and
everything in Chechnya is basically--you know, it is the same
as Kadyrov's personal pocket.
So it was very important when a few weeks ago there was--
first of all, when last year there was an almost unanimous
passage, I think it was 416 votes to 1, that the House of
Representatives passed House Resolution 156 relating to the
assassination of Boris Nemtsov that contained this provision of
inquiring as to the introduction of secondary sanctions against
Kadyrov's interests in the UAE. And when a few weeks ago there
was this congressional request from Congressman Malinowski and
Congressman Wilson to the State Department to actually act on
that resolution, that time Kadyrov did not laugh as he did
when, you know, he kind of bragged about being included in the
U.S. Magnitsky list. He said, look for my U.S. bank accounts,
look for my U.S. homes. He is probably, you know, one of the
rare people in Putin's establishment that does not have assets
in the United States. He has a lot of stuff in the UAE. And
that congressional request that I referred to basically said
that, you know, how is it possible that the UAE is a country
that claims to be a close ally of the United States and yet it
is doing large-scale business with somebody who has been
designated by the U.S. Government as a gross human rights
abuser.
So I think that secondary sanctions area, which is provided
for by U.S. legislation, is a very important way to create
actionable practical consequences for somebody like Kadyrov who
is clearly involved in all of these Kremlin-sponsored murders
outside of Russia.
Mr. McFaul. Could I add just one footnote to that, Mr.
Chairman?
Mr. Keating. Yes.
Mr. McFaul. In addition to all of those great ideas, I
would just like to mention one other mechanism, and that is
indictments.
What was very striking to me in talking to Russians was
when Mueller indicted_those GRU intelligence officers, that had
a very tangible effect on what they can do and cannot do,
particularly with respect to travel abroad and the use of
INTERPOL to try to arrest people in third countries. And I
think it was a big mistake not to follow through on the
prosecution of those criminals.
Mr. Keating. Thank you.
The chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Pennsylvania,
Ms. Wild.
Mr. Burchett. Is my time up, Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Keating. It is. Did you have anything more to say? Mr.
Burchett?
Mr. Burchett. No. You can go ahead. I am sorry.
Thank you.
Mr. Keating. Thank you.
Ms. Wild. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you
to the witnesses for being here on this what I think is a
really important issue.
My first question that I would like to ask of Ambassador
McFaul is this. We know that reports have recently come to
light that Russian officials may have offered Taliban-linked
militants bounties in exchange for killing American and NATO
coalition forces, and, obviously, this is truly disturbing
news. But even more disturbing in some ways is that President
Trump has not acted on these reports, despite the White House
being aware of this scheme for months. And if true, these
reports show an enormous escalation by an already aggressive
adversary.
So I guess my first question to you is, if these
intelligence reports are accurate, what do you think President
Putin would be seeking to gain by encouraging Taliban forces to
attack American troops?
And my second question is, what would be an appropriate
response by the U.S. in view of these reports?
Mr. McFaul. Two great questions, and I do not want to
pretend I have a great answer to the first one.
I follow what Mr. Putin does, but I do not have direct
contact with him anymore. But to me, if I were to give a theory
for what he is doing: Remember Putin sees us as the enemy. He
wants to weaken the United States. He wants to form a disarray
in the international system. He wants to see the collapse of
NATO and even the liberal international order. He has said this
on the record.
Anything that weakens us is good for him, and he sees the
world in zero sum terms. If it is plus 2 for Russia, it is
minus 2 for the United States, and vice versa. I think he wants
us to be bogged down in Afghanistan. I think he wants us to be
fighting there. That has been good for him.
And remember this is just the latest escalation. In other
reporting we had--and I think you will be talking to General
Nicholson later in the week--of their escalatory engagement of
the Taliban. So, this is not a one-off thing. So that would be
my interpretation there. He just wants us to be bogged down.
With respect to response, again, if you are not willing to
recognize the crime, then it is hard to talk about the
punishment, right? My plea would just be for the Trump
administration to recognize what happened. And if it is not
true, do not just put out a tweet that it is a hoax, but say
that, for instance, it has been reported that this information
was in the PDB on February 27. That is an easily verifiable
fact or not. It has been reported that there was a transfer of
funds from a GRU bank account to a Taliban-controlled bank
account. Is that true or not? That is an easily verifiable
fact. And if it is true, then we should declassify the
information and make sure that the world, all of the American
people, as well as all of the Russian people, know that this is
going on. Because if that is true--I want to underscore,
sometimes we get too rational in our discussions of Putin. I
want to say this with some emotion.
If it is true, that means that the gentleman that our
President just invited to come back to the G7 is putting
bounties on the heads of U.S. soldiers that signed up to defend
and protect the United States of America. That is outrageous.
And if it is not true, we need to learn that it isn't. But if
it is true, we need to call it out for what it is, outrage, and
we need to be outraged about it, and the President himself
needs to make that statement. It is simply not enough for
somebody else within the administration to say it because that
is exactly what Vladimir Putin is looking for. He has said it
many, many times. There is the deep State, right? People like
me, like Ambassador Fried and others, we are the ones
controlling what President Trump wants to do. The President of
the United States, if this is true, needs to say that it is
true. And then the consequences we can talk about later, but
the first thing_he has to just admit the facts if they are
true.
Ms. Wild. And do you believe that if that were admitted by
this or some hypothetical administration that further
consequences would be warranted?
Mr. McFaul. Absolutely, yes, of course, sanctions, as have
been discussed before. Again, I want us to see--I want us to
have a grand strategy for containing Putin's Russia. I think we
sometimes get too reactive and tactical. That is what we did
during the cold war. By the way, the cold war lasted a long,
long time. For 40 years, we had to maintain that strategy. It
wasn't inevitable that we were going to win.
So I want to see us develop, in a bipartisan manner and
with our allies--you have got to have both of those things
together, that is what we had during the cold war--where we
have multiple things we are doing simultaneously across the
board, supporting NATO, supporting Ukraine--I am quite worried
about what is happening in Ukraine, by the way; That is not
getting enough attention from the Trump Administration--keeping
sanctions in place, only reducing them if Putin changes his
behavior; you know, across the board, diversification of
energy, reengaging in multilateral institutions like the OSCE,
like the Law of the Sea Treaty Convention. That would help us
in terms of containing Russia in the Arctic. In other words, we
have got to have a multi-pronged grand strategy, not just a
one-off response here and there to be successful over the long
haul.
Ms. Wild. And so, as I understand your answer, it requires
that we have strong cooperative relations with our allies so
that it is not just sanctions being imposed by the United
States, correct?
Mr. McFaul. Without question. We have no chance if we are
not united with our allies in Europe and, I would say, the
liberal world, the liberal democratic world, as Ambassador
Fried said in his remarks. We have got to reengage to be the
leader of the free world.
Ms. Wild. Well, you will get no argument from me on that at
all, Ambassador.
I have one last question for you. And that is whether you
have concerns about whether these reports, assuming them to be
true, of bounties being offered to the Taliban show--does it
show an increasing level of Russian aggression toward the
United States and a growing reliance--maybe this is a second
part of the question--a growing reliance by Russian on proxy
wars to spread its power?
Mr. McFaul. Yes, I think there is an escalation here, and
the only way we will push Putin back is if we have a
concentrated grand strategy to push back.
But I also want to say another thing it shows. I want to be
clear: I do not support the release of classified information
to the press. I find that that is not in America's national
interest, and the level of detail that has been leaked suggests
that the President is losing his own intelligence community.
Think about what you must have to do--you go to jail to put
that information in The New York Times, and that suggests a
real discontinuity and a breakdown of our national security
decisionmaking apparatus in the U.S. Government. That also
troubles me.
Ms. Wild. Thank you, Ambassador. I believe I am out of
time.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your grace in allowing me to
finish that. I yield back.
Mr. Keating. Thank you.
Mr. Wilson. Mr. Keating, I want to apologize. I have to run
to another meeting, but I have been grateful to be with you and
my colleagues and the witnesses. Thank you, everybody, for your
participation here today.
Mr. Keating. Thank you to the ranking member. Thank you for
your participation as well and your work in this area.
The chair will now recognize the gentleman from Maryland,
Mr. Trone.
Mr. Trone. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it.
I want to thank Ambassador McFaul for his comments to
Congresswoman Wild's questions. They were really well thought
out, and I could not agree more.
This question goes to Dr. Marten, and if Ambassador McFaul
wants to jump in, that would be great. The long-term presence
of a Russian base in Libya could harass, impede freedom of
movement in the Mediterranean Sea by us, NATO, the EU, et
cetera. What is your assessment of whether Russia will be
successful in this area in Libya and what more can the U.S. do
to prevent this from happening?
Dr. Marten. Thank you for that question, Representative. I
think you just hit the mark.
There is no question that the reason that Russia is using
the Wagner Group right now in Libya on behalf of the warlord
Khalifa Haftar is to try and split the country in two and to
have the central and eastern part of the country be Russia's
preserve where they could both have significant control over
the oil and gas deposits that Haftar controls and also
establish a permanent air or naval base on the Mediterranean
that could harass NATO and EU and U.S. activities.
And I think the most important thing that we should keep in
mind is that when we withdraw our attention from various places
in the world, that tends to be where Russia moves in. I think
that perhaps the United States could be doing more to support
the U.N.-recognized governments in Libya, again reengaging with
our allies--this has been emphasized by so many people at this
hearing--and taking the stance that says that the U.N.-
recognized government in Tripoli is the one that deserves
international support, deserves its entire territory returned
to it, and to call out Russia for what it is, in fact, doing.
And the other thing to keep in mind is that, in Libya, just
as has been the case in Syria, Russia is carrying out terrible
human rights violations for people on the ground by attacking
civilians because the Wagner Group is not following the rules
they are supposed to follow under the Geneva Conventions and is
just very much a loose cannon.
So I think the strongest thing that we can do is to
reengage globally, to reengage with our allies globally, and to
call out Russian behavior for what it is and recognize that
some of the best work that has been done on discovering what
Russia is doing is being carried out by private actors. It is
not just States that are releasing that information, but
investigators that are having a great deal of information
released and analyzing it that can be useful for States as
well. And so, again, it is reengaging with civil society as
well.
So thank you for a terrific question.
Mr. Trone. Ambassador McFaul, anything you want to add to
that?
Mr. McFaul. I think that was a terrific answer about Libya.
I just want to underscore the broader point that my colleague
made. When we withdraw from leadership from multilateral
institutions, from bilateral diplomacy, and we say we are going
to go it alone, we are going to pull up and look inside, that
has direct consequences for our long-term national security
interests.
Pulling out of the Paris climate accords affects how we
deal with Putin, and I would say the same thing about China, by
the way. We just have to understand that when we withdraw, we
limit our ability to deal with Putin with our allies and in
multilateral institutions that advances American national
interests. I think sometimes that gets confused. We are
supporting our interests, and we are always better off if we
are doing it with our allies as opposed to going it alone.
Mr. Trone. That is good. I agree.
Mr. Kara-Murza, what does the average Russian actually know
about the Wagner Group and other private military organizations
about their connections to the Russian government, and how
important is it, the public perception of Putin's government,
that this information be more widely dispersed?
Mr. Kara-Murza. Thank you so much, Congressman. That's the
fundamental question, and I think the best answer to it is,
unfortunately, provided by the fate of three Russian
investigative journalists whom I referred to in my opening
statement, Orkhan Dzhemal, Kirill Radchenko, and Aleksandr
Rastorguev, who were working on exactly what you are asking
about, uncovering the shadowy activities of the Wagner Group.
And in the summer of 2018, they flew to the Central African
Republic, which is a country essentially fully controlled by
the Wagner Group and, hence, by the Kremlin.
Just to give you one fact, the National Security Advisor to
the President of the Central African Republic, President
Touadera, is a Russian National by name of Valery Zakharov. I
am not aware of any other precedent in the world where one
country's National Security Advisor is himself a citizen of
another country. But that is what is happening in the Central
African Republic, just gives you an idea of how overwhelming
the control of the Kremlin via the Wagner Group is of the
Central African Republic.
And 2 days after they arrived in the country, the three
journalists were murdered in a clearly prearranged ambush.
There were valuables in their cars, such as cans of gas, a very
valuable commodity in the CAR, that were not taken. It is
absolutely clear that the reason for the murder was not, you
know, quote/unquote,_``robbery''_ as the Russian Foreign
Ministry was very quick to announce before even any kind of
investigation took place. And we are now almost 2 years after
that fact--they were killed on July 30 of 2018; we are now in
July 2020--no meaningful investigation has been happening
either in the Russian Federation or in the Central African
Republic, as you would not be surprised to hear.
And I think it is very important to go back to something
Ambassador McFaul said a few minutes ago about the importance
of the U.S. engaging in multilateral institutions. I think this
is an area where the multilateral system should step in and do
what the Kremlin regime and its proxies in the Central African
Republic are refusing to do and conduct an international
inquiry into what has happened. And there were two very strong
bipartisan letters from the U.S. Congress last year that were
led by Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Christopher Coons
addressed to the U.N. Secretary General on exactly this
question, on the need for an international inquiry into this
case.
And if you look at some of the facts that have been
uncovered, for example, by the Dossier Center, which is a
United Kingdom-based NGO that has conducted a thorough private
investigation of what has happened, there is absolutely no
doubt that, you know, Russian intelligence officers and their
Wagner proxies were front and center involved in the murder of
these journalists in the Central African Republic.
So this is the answer to your question. Apart from all of
the other characteristics of the Wagner Group that we have been
discussing with our colleagues during this hearing, another one
is secrecy. They are obsessed with secrecy. One of the things
or perhaps the thing they are most afraid of is transparency
and shining the truth on their actions.
So I think this is precisely why it is so important to
uncover the abuses and the crimes that this organization has
been involved in and also to try to push for an international
independent inquiry into what happened to those three Russian
investigative journalists who tried to uncover that truth about
the Wagner Group.
Mr. Trone. And the Russian public knows zero about the
Wagner Group?
Mr. Kara-Murza. So, you know, the one big difference
between the authoritarian regime in our country and the
totalitarian, I guess, regime in China is that, unlike the
Communist China, we still have internet, and we still have
social media. There are some attempts by the Putin regime to
block online access and websites, but they are miniscule
compared to what was happening in other regimes.
So, when it comes to national television, that is fully
controlled by the State. In fact, that was the first thing Mr.
Putin ensured after he came to power, to either shut down or
take over privately held independent television networks. There
was NTV, TV6, then TVS. So all of the national television
channels are directly controlled by the government, so for
about--this is according to public opinion surveys--about 70 to
80 percent of the Russian population use television as a
primary source of information, and that is fully controlled by
the State. So, of course, people who gather information from
State TV know nothing about this or almost nothing.
That part of the Russian population, we are mostly talking
about younger educated people in large cities, so the urban
middle classes, who do have access to the internet, who do use,
you know, Facebook and You Tube and Twitter and all of those
same instruments that you use in the U.S. as well, they know,
of course, much more because there have been some private
investigations conducted by, for example, the Dossier Center
and other organizations, including international media
organizations, into the Wagner Group and its operations. And so
those people who do have access to online reporting do know
just how dangerous, just how entrenched, and just how
influential this particular proxy arm of the Putin regime is.
Mr. Trone. Thank you very much. That was very enlightening.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back, and thank you for having this
hearing.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Representative.
And talking about the importance of transatlantic allies,
the chair now recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr.
Costa.
Mr. Costa. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I think is a
very good subcommittee hearing that we are holding with these
experts who I think we all have a great deal of respect for.
As the chair of the Transatlantic Legislators' Dialogue,
you and I have worked together, along with many of our other
colleagues, to foster that institution as part of the glue to
maintain our multilateral relationship. But I agree with you,
Ambassador McFaul, when you say that, when we advocate our role
in these institutions, whether it be the Paris climate accord
or whether it be today the World Health Organization, we create
a vacuum in which our adversaries quickly take that space.
I have got several questions. One, the situation where
Russia has put itself in with Syria and the complexity of
agendas between themselves and Iran and Israel and our
abdication there, more or less, does that have the potential
for Russia to be the same quagmire that Afghanistan was for the
Soviet Union?
Who would like to take that?
Dr. Marten. Sir, on that, what Russia is attempting in
Syria is something that is actually modelled on their actions
in the Central African Republic, which is to become the
linchpin in between militias that are in the outlying areas and
the central government, and trying to use its efforts at what
it calls reconciliation to bring these groups together and
create stability.
One of the problems that it is facing in Syria is that this
goes against the interests of Iran in Syria, because Iran
really wants to be politically dominant in Syria in order to
have a Shia presence that would extend beyond Syrian territory.
So I think that is one of the areas where the United States
could do the most to try to put a brake on what Russia is
doing, by emphasizing those conflicts that are happening
between Russia and Iran and by trying to pull them apart in
ways that demonstrate that neither of them are going to be
capable of controlling that situation as strongly as they would
like to.
Thank you.
Mr. Costa. In partnership with Israel?
Dr. Marten. I think Israel's primary goal is to have
stability in Syria, and for that reason, we have seen actually
a very high degree of cooperation between Israel and Russia in
Syria, because Israel believes that Russia is the more stable
actor in comparison to Iran. It is very afraid of what Iran
might be doing with Hezbollah and other Shia militias in Syria,
whereas it sees Russia as having a desire to have a success
case.
Mr. Costa. No, that is my sense, and I find that troubling.
Ambassador Fried, you talked about our partnership with
NATO and, Ambassador McFaul, you talked about a strategy much
as we did during the cold war, where it was multifaceted, that
we need to reinstitute. As the chair with the Transatlantic
Legislators' Dialogue, I find that a lot of our NATO allies
these days, Members of Parliament that I interact with, have
great concern as to whether or not we are going to be able to
maintain that commitment that we have had in the past, and I
have tried to suggest to them that this is a passing moment,
but I am wondering if either of you would care to comment, and
then I have one other quick question.
Mr. Fried. I share some of your concern, and I have had
similar conversations with European officials and
Parliamentarians. But the other sense I get from them is that
they want us back. They are somewhere between apprehensive and
terrified of the thought that the United States has pulled
itself out of world leadership for the foreseeable future.
Mr. Costa. I get that same sense.
Mr. Fried. But they want us back, and they are not partisan
about it. It is not a Republican or Democrat thing. It is
American leadership, and they are hungry to have us back. I
think the opportunity is there if people take it.
Mr. Costa. Well, and over the years--and I have been
involved with these folks for a number of years--they have
always been very appreciative of the fact that our policy has
always been bipartisan, that we have always come to Europe
together with a bipartisan effort.
One quick question. When we talk about a quick strategy--
and I have talked about the interaction with a reference to
their personal holdings--we know a lot about the personal
holdings of not only Putin, but I mean, I refer to Russia
sometimes as the Russian version of the Sopranos because,
clearly, their personal wealth and its investment in Europe and
other financial institutions I think is a vulnerability, and I
do not think we have ever tried to use it as such.
Do either of you care to comment? And, Mr. Kara-Murza, I
would think a lot of the Russian people would be very concerned
if they found out how much wealth of Russia is no longer in
Russia but in Europe and elsewhere.
Mr. Kara-Murza. They are, and I think--thank you so much
for this question because I think nothing has been as effective
as a tool of policy on the part of Western democracies, with
regard to the Putin regime in the last several years, as the
Magnitsky Act, and the U.S., of course, was the first country
to pass this law. Boris Nemtsov, the late Russian opposition
leader, described the Magnitsky Act as the most pro-Russian law
ever passed in a foreign country because it targets those
people who want to steal in Russia but spend in the West. That
is the motto of those people who have seized power in our
country. If you look at those people, you will see that they
spend their vacations in the West. They send their children fo
schooling in the West. They send their wives and mistresses on
shopping tours in the West. This goes both for Western Europe
and for North America.
And I think it is very important that the democratic world
do something about it and stop this hypocrisy for those people
who abuse the most basic norms of democratic society in our
country, in Russia, and then come to your countries in the West
and enjoy the fruits and benefits that democratic society
offers. This should be stopped, and that is why it is so
important to raise this issue.
Mr. Costa. Well, I have seen pictures of their yachts in
the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, and they are quite
luxurious.
Mr. Kara-Murza. There was a very important development this
week, yesterday in fact, when the United Kingdom finally began
implementing its own Magnitsky Act that has been on the books
for 2 years but has sat inactive, and now they have announced
yesterday some of the first names on the sanctions list, again
those individual sanctions, not targeting a country but
targeting those individual crooks and human rights abusers who
want to steal in Russia and abuse in Russia but spend their
stolen money in the West, and that hypocrisy should be stopped.
Mr. Costa. Could we prevent their access to those bank
accounts?
Mr. Kara-Murza. That is exactly the point of such
legislation, and I, you know, as the only Russian citizen on
this panel, I do not and cannot advocate sanctions against my
country. But I certainly advocate and support individual
targeted measures against those corrupt official crooks and
human rights abusers in Vladimir Putin's regime who abuse the
rights and freedoms of Russian citizens and steal the money of
Russian taxpayers at home and then bring that stolen money to
the West.
This is why measures such as the Magnitsky Act are not
anti-Russian but pro-Russian, and as of today, there are only
six countries that have these laws on the books. The OSCE has
57_-member States. Forty-eight of them are functioning
democracies, yet only six have this law on the books. So I hope
there are more countries that follow your example and pass this
legislation, and I hope that this law and other similar laws
and targeted individual sanctions are used more actively in a
more widespread fashion and more effectively in the United
States as well.
Mr. Costa. Ambassador McFaul.
Mr. McFaul. Well, I agree with my colleagues. I think I am
a little more worried about transatlantic relations maybe
because the battle we are having with Putin is not just between
states. It is an ideological battle, and I think Americans do
not appreciate that he has an ideological agenda, populous,
nationalist, anti-multilateralist, orthodox, antigay rights. It
is a set of ideas. Two decades ago, he was focused just on
propagating those ideas within Russia. Now, he is exporting
those ideas, and he is spending a lot of money to export and
propagate those ideas. And he is picking up some wins. Viktor
Orban, Matteo Salvini, even a lot of Americans these days, they
are sympathetic to those ideas. I think we have got a lot of
work to do, small D democrats, small L liberals, not Democrats
and Republicans; but if you believe in liberal democratic
values, there is a fight not just between the East and the
West, like the cold war, but it is within Italy; it is within
Hungary; it is within Germany; it is within Serbia; it is
within the United States of America.
And I think we have to understand that Putin is seeking
alliances within those countries, and we have got to have a
better strategy to push back on it. Some of it is transparency,
like we are talking now. But as I said in my opening remarks, I
think it is really sad what is happening at RFE/RL right now,
that we need to regain the independence of that organization.
We need a firewall between that organization and political-
motivated organizations.
And I would just remind my Republican friends, you know,
you are not going to be in power all the time. So, do not you
want a firewall between what that organization does and what
the next President wants? And I think the separation between
the President of the United States and the U.S. Government
should have its outlets to speak about our policy. I 100%
support that. But RFE/RL is not that. RFE/RL is independent
reporting, by and large people from the regions, by the way. It
is mostly people from the regions. I really think we have got
to get back in this ideological game. We have kind of lost our
focus on it, and I feel we are losing right now. I really do
feel we are losing.
Mr. Costa. Well, my time has expired, but I thank you, Mr.
Ambassador, and let's talk some more offline. Karl Eikenberry
says hello. And I look forward to seeing you sometime here
soon. Fresno is not that far from Stanford.
Mr. McFaul. Great.
Mr. Keating. Thank you.
We are up against our prescribed time pretty closely, but
we do have a few minutes for some quick second round questions
if someone would have them. And, if not, I will proceed to
closing remarks.
Mr. Fried. Mr. Chairman, I wanted to jump in just to say
that I usually agree with Mike McFaul, and I do in this case as
well. And as I said in my testimony, the way to push back
against Putin's world view is to challenge it, not agree with
it, and get back to that bipartisan spirit of supporting the
values in institutions of the free world and then updating them
and fixing them so that they work better.
Mr. Keating. Great. Thank you.
Mr. Kara-Murza. Mr. Chairman, just for a few seconds. I
think it is very important to make this point again. It has
only been a few days. So maybe the importance hasn't sunk in
yet. But what happened with this fake plebiscite last week in
Russia was actually a fundamental difference. It is no secret
to anyone that Vladimir Putin has lacked real democratic
legitimacy for a long time, that he has been illegitimate de
facto for a long time. But until now, he has--you know, even
while he violated the spirit of the rule of law, he was careful
to maintain the appearances by sort of pretending to stick to
the letter of the law. So, for example, to avoid the initial
term limit, he put in a placeholder puppet president by the
name of Dmitry Medvedev. I do not know if anybody still
remembers him, but so he kind of stuck to the limits initially.
Then we all remember how he won, quote/unquote, the
Presidential_``election''_in 2018 when his main opponents were
simply removed from the ballot, like Alexei Navalny, for
instance. But, again, on paper there was a, quote/unquote,_
``election.''_
This time, by actually just simply subverting, tearing up
and throwing away the term limits, Vladimir Putin is doing the
same thing as Blaise Compaore did in Burkina Faso, as Alberto
Fujimori did in Peru, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Alexander
Lukashenko in Belarus, and I can continue this list of
illegitimate rogue dictators who had used this trick before
him.
And it is very important that the attitude of the
democratic nations of this world, beginning with the United
States, reflect this new reality and that he is denied the
recognition and the legitimacy and the prestige he so
desperately craves but he has no longer any right to.
Mr. Keating. Thank you.
Dr. Marten. Could I just add that, because of Russia's
patronage system, there has really not been the level of
popular discontent about corruption that we might find in the
United States, for example, if the same things were revealed to
the American public about what our leaders were doing. But now
as Russia is entering a recession and as things, as many of the
speakers have said, are going so badly for Putin, it may be a
time when informing people in more depth about exactly what
wealth is out there and what the wealth is doing in foreign
countries may have more of an impact on Putin's popularity than
it has in the past.
Mr. Keating. If I could follow on that quickly. We bear
some responsibility here in the United States when it comes to
some of the things that you have just spoken about. Money is
being laundered in the United States with real estate and art,
and that much we know, and that is how so many of the oligarchs
and people like Prigozhin are using our country to benefit
themselves. What can we do? This is something I do not think we
have concentrated on fully. But this idea of money laundering
in the U.S. for real estate, that is pretty well documented,
and art.
What can we do to expose this? Do you have any suggestions?
Mr. Fried. Actually, sir, that is an area where we have
considerable potential. After 9/11, the U.S. Government
increased its capacity to detect financial flows by terrorists,
and we did a pretty good job.
We now need to expand that and work at uncovering the
corrupt financial flows, including but not limited to Russia,
and we need to do it with the U.K. and with Europe because the
Russians do the same thing in all of our countries. They buy up
real estate through hidden deals. They do weird LLC
arrangements through Delaware. They buy art. They go through
fancy law firms.
We have the capacity and Congress has the capacity to
tighten this up, and there are a lot of people in the U.S.
Government and Treasury, even in this administration with its
inconsistency about Russia, who want to do the right thing.
This is an area of considerable upside potential for us, and it
means drawing up those flows of corrupt funds and exposing
them. And the U.S. Government can do some of that, and some of
the exposure of corrupt Russian money could be done by
investigative journalists. A lot of it is being done. The
discovery--I think Mike McFaul mentioned in the Panama Papers
of Putin's corrupt Russian funds being channeled through his
cellist. You know, we can do this, and we need to do it with
our allies or else it will just be a shell game.
Mr. Keating. Well, we have legislation sponsored dealing
with hypocrisies and trying to focus on this and put us in a
better position internationally, but we can also do a better
job here at home. The fact that we are complicit in this Putin
enabling is troubling.
I want to thank a very gifted group.
I see Representative Costa has a quick question, or maybe
he is signing off.
I just wanted as closing remarks, this is reinforced by all
of you, a panel whose knowledge is decades long and very in
depth. You have just been an important way to start this week
where we are going to concentrate as a Congress on these
issues. It is just a beginning. You have really has shown the
widespread approach that we have to take. It is a dynamic
issue. It is not singular to one event. As outrageous and
shocking as the reports on the bounties are, we have to
approach this at all levels and get answers and hold people
accountable.
But it is very clear that, right now, this administration
and our country, and it is a challenge we are taking in
Congress and on this committee and on the full committee, is to
have a Russian policy. We do not have a comprehensive Russian
policy and strategy in place to deal with this. And it is clear
from today's testimony that the situation is only escalating,
and it will continue to escalate until we act. And in the
absence of action by the administration in this regard, it is
incumbent on Congress to do so.
So we are going to ask you for your continued help going
forward. We will act in Congress. We will act in the House. We
have no alternative. We owe it to the family members who go to
bed at night and wake up in the morning with questions of how
their son or daughter might have died serving their country. We
owe it to our allies. We owe it to democracies in the world
because we cannot fail to take the leadership role, something I
am afraid that our closest allies are concerned we are taking a
backseat to.
So thank you for what you are doing. We will continue. We
will be having, as I mentioned, hearings this week, full
committee on Thursday. We will be back on Friday with more
hearings. Please--and for those people listening, I took the
time, as I think members did, to read your full written
testimony. I would suggest strongly that people that are
viewing this take the time when that becomes available to read
all of your written testimony, as well as the expertise and
knowledge you shared with us today.
Thank you so much. And this will be a continuing effort
until we get it right.
So with that, I will adjourn the hearing.
Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 4:01 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
APPENDIX
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