[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
UNDERSTANDING AUTHORITARIANISM AND
KLEPTOCRACY IN RUSSIA
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE, ENERGY, THE ENVIRONMENT AND CYBER
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
May 27, 2021
__________
Serial No. 117-43
__________
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
44-635 PDF WASHINGTON : 2022
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York, Chairman
BRAD SHERMAN, California MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas, Ranking
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey Member
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
KAREN BASS, California SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania
WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts DARRELL ISSA, California
DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois
AMI BERA, California LEE ZELDIN, New York
JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas ANN WAGNER, Missouri
DINA TITUS, Nevada BRIAN MAST, Florida
TED LIEU, California BRIAN FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania KEN BUCK, Colorado
DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee
ILHAN OMAR, Minnesota MARK GREEN, Tennessee
COLIN ALLRED, Texas ANDY BARR, Kentucky
ANDY LEVIN, Michigan GREG STEUBE, Florida
ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, Virginia DAN MEUSER, Pennsylvania
CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania AUGUST PFLUGER, Texas
TOM MALINOWSKI, New Jersey PETER MEIJER, Michigan
ANDY KIM, New Jersey NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS, New York
SARA JACOBS, California RONNY JACKSON, Texas
KATHY MANNING, North Carolina YOUNG KIM, California
JIM COSTA, California MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR, Florida
JUAN VARGAS, California JOE WILSON, South Carolina
VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas RON WRIGHT, Texas
BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois
Jason Steinbaum, Staff Director
Brendan Shields, Republican Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Europe, Energy,the Environment and Cyber
WILLIAM R. KEATING, Massachusetts, Chairman
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania BRIAN FITZPATRICK,
ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, Virginia Pennsylvania,Ranking Member
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey ANN WAGNER, Missouri
THEODORE DEUTCH, Florida ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois,
DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island BRIAN MAST, Florida
DINA TITUS, Nevada DAN MEUSER, Pennsylvania
DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota AUGUST PFLUGER, Texas
JIM COSTA, California NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS, New York
VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas PETER MEIJER, Michigan
BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois
Leah Nodvin, Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Gessen, Masha, Author, Staff Writer, The New Yorker.............. 8
Information referred............................................. 16
Weber, Dr. Yuval, Research Assistant Professor, Texas A&M's Bush
School of Government and Public Service........................ 22
Grozev, Christo, Lead Russia Investigator, Bellingcat............ 32
Lucas, Edward, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Center for European
Policy Analysis (Cepa), Former Senior Editor at the Economist.. 38
APPENDIX
Hearing Notice................................................... 65
Hearing Minutes.................................................. 66
Hearing Attendance............................................... 67
RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
Responses to questions submitted for the record.................. 68
UNDERSTANDING AUTHORITARIANISM AND KLEPTOCRACY IN RUSSIA
Thursday, May 27, 2021
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Europe, Energy, the Environment and
Cyber,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:03 p.m., via
Webex, Hon. William Keating (chairman of the subcommittee)
presiding.
Mr. Keating. The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee 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 material, and questions
for the record, subject to the length limitation of the rules.
To insert something into the record, please have your staff
email the previously mentioned address or contact full
committee staff.
Please keep your video function on at all times even when
you're not recognized by the chair. Members are responsible for
muting and unmuting themselves, and please remember to mute
yourself after you finish speaking.
Consistent with House Res. 965 and the accompanying
regulation, staff will only mute members and questioning
witnesses as appropriate when they're not under recognition to
eliminate background noise.
I see that we have a quorum. I'll now recognize myself for
opening remarks.
Pursuant to notice, we're holding a hearing today entitled
``Understanding Authoritarianism and Kleptocracy in Russia.''
For more than two decades, Vladimir Putin has ruled Russia
with an iron fist. He seized control of the Russian economy,
co-opted and controlled Russia's political and security
institutions in a brazen attempt to spread Russia's malign
influence far beyond the near abroad to Western Europe to
Africa, and to right here in the United States.
Putin, supported by a close group of elite oligarchs,
personal connections, and mutually dependent relationships, has
threatened democratic movements around the world and stifled
dissent within Russia's borders.
Opposition leader and politician Alexei Navalny represents
the most recent and most visible member of--example of Putin's
crushing reaction to any inkling of dissent.
Today, Mr. Navalny remains in prison on bogus charges after
having suffered from an assassination attempt, the evidence of
which was largely released from the work of one of our
witnesses here today, Mr. Christo Grozev.
Despite the treatment he's endured, Mr. Navalny continues
to show bravery in the face of such malicious and malign regime
activities. But Mr. Navalny is not alone as a target and victim
of the Kremlin's assassination squads.
Sergei and Yulia Skripal were the target of an attempted
poisoning in 2018. Vladimir Kara-Murza was the target of an
attempted poisoning in 2015 and 2017, and Boris Nemtsov was
tragically assassinated within walking distance of the Kremlin
in 2015.
Unfortunately, hundreds more political prisoners, including
Paul Whelan, exist in Russia today. This is a higher number
than at the height of the Soviet Union.
Yet, what we miss in these discussions about political
repression are the daily realities that everyday Russians have
to face. Russia is fraught with economic hardship, decreased
standards of living, and limited opportunities for young
people.
Environmental disasters are now affecting the health and
safety of Russians around the country. This includes just last
year, when during the height of the pandemic, 21,000 tons of
oil spilled directly into the Arctic from a Russian refinery.
In addition, Russians continue to face treacherous housing
conditions with most people continuing to live in crumbling
Soviet-era concrete blocks and Soviet-era landfills face
catastrophic overflows directly affecting the health and safety
of nearby residents.
But it's just not the environment and environmental and
economic problems that Putin wants us and, most importantly,
the Russian people to forget. It's the widespread and
outrageous corruption that he and his government fosters at
home.
Russian oligarchs and Putin himself have stolen billions if
not trillions off the backs of hardworking Russians. That
stolen money has since been laundered through Western financial
systems, tax havens abroad, and hard-to-trace assets like art
and real eState.
In short, under the corrupt leadership of Vladimir Putin,
Russian authoritarianism and kleptocracy know no bounds. In
order to fill the gap in public knowledge and perception
created by the brutal crackdown on independent media in Russia,
Radio Free Europe and a few of the remaining independent
outlets like Meduza have been on a mission to cover the stories
of everyday Russians.
Their work has gained widespread recognition and
following--throughout the world and in Russia, and in response,
the Russian government has enacted undemocratic legal
frameworks in a clear attempt to force them out of business.
Radio Free Europe, under the skillful leadership of Jamie
Fly, has been forced to relocate their offices and employees,
and Meduza has had to call upon their own readership for
resources to pay exorbitant fines.
We have seen similar crackdowns on free speech in Belarus
and just this past weekend the world witnessed the first ever
illegal forced landing of a civilian plane, resulting in an
unlawful imprisonment of Nexta founder Roman Protasevich. He
was taken hostage as well as his girlfriend, Sonia Sapega.
These acts just simply cannot be tolerated. They are
unprecedented and free speech must be maintained throughout the
post-Soviet space.
So how does Putin maintain control with such bleak
circumstances facing Russians at home and chaos surrounding
their international exploits abroad?
To answer this question, Ranking Member Fitzpatrick and I
have invited four outstanding witnesses to help us better
understand the ways in which Vladimir Putin has wielded his
power in the political, economic, and security spheres.
Through this hearing we'll be able to assess the seemingly
ever-increasing status of Russian authoritarianism and its
mission to threaten democracy both at home and abroad, and
we'll explore the proportional and appropriate steps that the
Biden administration and we, as members of the U.S. Congress,
can take to confront and prevent Russian malign influence.
In the face of increasing Russian aggression and with
Russia's upcoming parliamentary election set to take place in
the fall in an environment which many predict will lack
democratic oversight, this conversation is more important right
now than ever.
And I look forward to our discussion and now welcome the
ranking member to give his opening remarks.
Mr. Fitzpatrick. Good afternoon, and thank you, Chairman
Keating, and I would also like to thank this panel for joining
us.
Today we gather to acknowledge the system of corruption
established by the Putin regime to consolidate power and
resources amongst his closest circles at the expense, by the
way, of the people of Russia.
We will also discuss how Putin and his regime use their
ill-gotten gains to advance the Kremlin's malign agenda.
Congress has the ability and the obligation to inspire whole of
government strategies to counter kleptocracy and
authoritarianism abroad.
The damage caused by kleptocracy is not simply contained
within Russia's borders but takes advantage of all nations
engaged in free enterprise, and since around 2000, Putin has
cemented his authoritarian rule by enriching his closest
colleagues and confidants and placing them in positions of
power.
In doing so, Putin has fused government, business,
organized crime, and covert operations together into one
kleptocratic system that threatens Western interests.
This cohort has gone on to wield their enormous ill-gotten
wealth abroad to purchase real assets and influence for their
own benefit.
A report by the Atlantic Council on Russian dark money
estimates that up to $1 trillion dollars in dark money is
invested globally, which stands in stark contrast to the
stagnant economy of Russia itself.
Last summer, at the height of the pandemic, Vladimir Putin
held an illegal referendum on constitutional changes that would
allow him to remain in power until the year 2036. This
phenomenon, therefore, cannot be ignored.
Instead, it must be addressed with decisive diplomatic
action, cooperation amongst our allies, and by building our
collective resilience against this threat.
Earlier this year, Chairman Keating and I introduced a bill
to slow the creep of kleptocracy. H.R. 402, known as the
Countering Russian and Other Overseas Kleptocracy Act, passed
through our committee markup with bipartisan support.
Anti-corruption measures must be at the forefront of our
foreign policy strategy, as dirty money impoverishes everyday
citizens from its origin and it stains its destination.
Russian kleptocrats abuse democratic societies' freedoms to
infiltrate their own financial systems, their own institutions,
and their own markets. The Russians have developed a powerful
set of tools to undermine democracies around the world and have
shown their willingness to use it.
And, sadly, there are too many enablers who allow dirty
money to enter Western financial systems and influence our
domestic policies. A very clear example of this is Nord Stream
2, which not only exports a dependency on Russian natural gas
to Europe, but it's also the largest symbol of Kremlin
strategic corruption and elite capture in all of Europe.
This project has been condemned by Congress literally since
the pipeline's inception through targeted mandatory sanctions
that I and many others in this room have supported to stop this
project once and for all.
It must be the policy of the United States to continue
opposing this geopolitical weapon and I urge this
administration to immediately remove the waivers that spared
Nord Stream 2 AG, the company, its CEO, and its corporate
officers from sanctions.
And it's my hope that Mr. Edward Lucas can further explain
how Nord Stream 2 will be used by the Kremlin as a mechanism to
export corruption throughout Europe.
Finally, it's critical to note how this crony government
enriches itself while oppressing the everyday citizens of
Russia. The U.S. Department of State's Human Rights Report for
2020 on Russia details a litany of human rights issues.
Under Putin's authoritarian play book, extrajudicial
killings, torture, arbitrary and unjust arrests are--and
imprisonments are commonplace.
Russia also actively suppresses independent media, peaceful
assembly, associations, religious freedom, and the ability to
participate in the political process.
This ongoing attack by the Putin regime on Radio Free
Europe, Radio Liberty's operation in Russia, is an example of
how the autocrat in the Kremlin will use any means necessary to
silence voices he cannot control.
Addressing global kleptocracy must not be a partisan issue,
and I believe every member of this committee would agree that
the Putin regime is a destabilizing malign actor that poses a
serious threat to our shared democratic values.
And it's, therefore, my hope that with the information
gleaned today, we can continue working together to raise our
resilience and combat Putin's kleptocric system.
I yield back the balance of my time, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Keating. I'd like to thank the ranking member.
And as I introduce our witnesses, I think we'll all realize
what an extraordinary panel we have in front of us here today.
I want to thank all of you for taking the time to be part
of this important hearing, one that, clearly, has great
significance in terms of current ongoing events.
Professor Masha Gessen is a staff writer at the New Yorker
Magazine, an author on issues related to authoritarianism,
democracy, and human rights and a distinguished writer in
residence at Bard College.
Professor Gessen's best-selling books on Vladimir Putin and
totalitarianism in Russia have moved the needle in examining
Russia's malign activities.
Dr. Yuval Weber is a research assistant professor at Texas
A&M's Bush School of Government and Public Service, and
currently serving as the Bren Chair of Russian military and
political strategy at the Brut Krulak Center for Innovation and
Creativity at the Marine Corps University.
Mr. Christo Grozev is the lead Russian investigator with
Bellingcat, an independent research organization which
specializes in open-source intelligence investigations.
Mr. Grozev received the 2019 European Press Prize for
Investigative Reporting award for his reporting on the
poisoning of Sergei Skripal in the U.K., and Bellingcat as an
organization has received numerous awards for it's reporting.
Mr. Edward Lucas is a nonresident senior fellow at the
Center for European Policy Analysis, also known as CEPA. He was
formerly a senior editor at The Economist.
I'll now recognize the witnesses for 5 minutes each, and
without objection, your prepared written statement will be made
a part of the record.
Professor Gessen, you're now recognized for your opening
statements.
Professor Gessen.
STATEMENT OF MASHA GESSEN, AUTHOR, STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORKER
Mx. Gessen. Apologies.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Masha Gessen. I have
spent most of my life trying to describe political and social
transformations in Russia.
In 2011-2012, I was also an activist in the protests
against Putin's regime. I had to leave in 2013 when, like many
opposition journalists and organizers, I was threatened by the
government.
In my case, the threat was that my adopted son would be
removed from the family because he was being raised by a same-
sex couple.
Vladimir Putin has been in power for almost 22 years and
appears to plan to stay in power forever. His power and his
longevity rests on three pillars: fear, domination over the
information sphere, and perceived legitimacy.
So I will go through those in turn. One, fear--it is
impossible to compile a full list of deaths and assassination
attempts in which the Kremlin is implicated. The attempt to
kill opposition politician Alexei Navalny with the nerve agent
Novichok is the best known and best documented example.
The violent or sudden death of a high-profile activist
sends a message to anyone who is considering speaking out:
you're risking your life. The reminders keep coming.
For members of Navalny's organization, including junior
behind-the-scenes staff in their 20's, police visits in the
middle of the night, violence searches, and arbitrary
detentions have become routine.
And you never know when one of those detentions will turn
into a criminal case that will send you to prison--to a prison
colony for several years.
According to the human rights organization Memorial, Russia
currently has 80 political prisoners and more than 400 people
who are facing politically motivated charges but are not in
prison. This is more political prisoners than Russia held at
the height of the cold war, and the tally is likely far from
complete.
To create an atmosphere of terror, the Kremlin goes not
only after prominent national and local activists but after
ordinary protesters.
In the winter and spring of 2021, Moscow police made a
point of detaining at least three different well-known and
much-loved retired school teachers, women in their 60's and
70's.
In each case, police officers came to the woman's home,
told her that she had been identified by facial recognition
software, and took her to the precinct for as long as 24 hours.
All together this year, police have made more than 10,000
arrests as a result of protests against Navalny's arrest. About
a hundred people are facing likely prison sentences. Some of
these people stand accused of violating pandemic regulations.
Anti-pandemic measures have become merely the tools of a
punitive bureaucracy. Russia is the first country to have
started distributing a vaccine. Yet, vaccination rates are
negligibly low and death rates are strikingly high.
The regime kills its enemies and lets ordinary people die.
Not only acting politically, but simply living in Russia is
scary.
Domination over the information sphere--Putin's kind of
autocracy does not need to control every media outlet. What it
has to do is dominate. This year, law enforcement has
specifically targeted for arrests, detentions, and apartment
raids journalists who have covered protests for opposition
media.
Last month, the leading Russian language independent media
outlet Meduza was declared a foreign agent, a scarlet letter.
Meduza lost its entire advertising base overnight. In the last
few weeks, they have had to forfeit their office space, cut
salaries, and ask their readers for help. Any media outlet can
be effectively silenced with the stroke of a bureaucrat's pen.
Perceived legitimacy--you often hear that Putin is very
popular. It's easy to be popular in the absence of an
alternative. Putin's domination over the information sphere
ensures that no one is allowed to appear to challenge him. We
often talk about rigged elections when we talk about Russia,
but even that is an understatement. It suggests the existence
of a contest.
But arcane regulations and doctoring of the numbers ensure
that results are virtually always predictable. Navalny and his
organization refuse to act out of fear. They have challenged
Putin's monopoly on the media. They have also campaigned to
consolidate the protest vote.
The Kremlin has responded by attempting to murder and often
jailing Navalny by bringing charges against his closest allies,
forcing many of them into exile, and most recently, by starting
the process of designating all Navalny--affiliated groups as
extremist.
This disqualifies members of these organizations from
trying to get on the ballot and also threatens them with prison
terms up to 6 years, 10 years for the leaders. Often,
descriptions such as this end with the conclusion that Putin's
regime is weak.
I do not want you to come away with that impression. Yes,
Navalny personally, his supporters, mass protests, and
independent media scare Putin. But this fear does not mean that
the regime is vulnerable.
It means, rather, that crackdown is the regime's animating
force, its lifeblood.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gessen follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Professor Gessen, and certainly,
much of what we're concerned about is happening in the
journalistic field and thank you for your work in that regard.
I'll now turn to Dr. Weber. You're now recognized for your
opening statement.
STATEMENT OF DR. YUVAL WEBER, RESEARCH ASSISTANT PROFESSOR,
TEXAS A&M'S BUSH SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC SERVICE
Dr. Weber. Mr. Chair, I would like to submit a visual aid
for the record.
Mr. Keating. Without objection.
We can display that as you begin your testimony.
[The information referred to follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Dr. Weber. Thank you.
Thank you, Chairman Fitzpatrick, Ranking Member Keating,
members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to
appear before you today.
I'm excited to be with you because I've devoted my entire
professional career to the study of Russia and to finding
peaceful understanding between our country and theirs.
From 2012 to 2016, I lived in Russia and there are many
wonderful things to say about its culture, people, language,
and nature.
But I also experienced firsthand the grinding effects of
authoritarianism and kleptocracy, people facing jail for trying
to exercise their constitutional rights, and the best and
brightest striking their fortunes abroad rather than having
their businesses expropriated or limiting their ambitions.
My testimony today is to describe the nature of power and
politics in Russia, about which my room testimony goes into
much greater detail.
I'll conclude by describing avenues for U.S. policies to
support peaceful, democratic, and economic change in Russia
that are consistent with American values without putting
individuals at risk, a serious concern in the current
repressive environment.
The picture there on the right side of your screen is from
Vladimir Putin's latest inauguration in 2018. Unlike the joyous
public events here in Washington or many world capitals, the
general public in Moscow is kept far away from such an event.
Instead, the very top echelon of Russia's elite, its
political, military, economic, and cultural leaders, all fit
into one very ornate room.
Now, keep this picture in mind as I describe Putin the
politician. Beyond the numerous malign acts ordered or
sanctioned by Putin with which we're all familiar, I'd like to
answer a seemingly simple question. How has he held on to power
for so long and why does he seem to be in power for so much
longer?
The short answer is that practicing politics and
representation in Russia means making sure there's enough
authoritarianism and kleptocracy to keep the people in that
room happy.
The longer answer is in three parts. First,
authoritarianism and kleptocracy are important tools for Putin
because limiting the ability of regular Russians to participate
in their country's political and economic life is the very
mechanism by which Putin has held on to power for all this
time.
Second, Putin's hold on power is based on optimizing for
stability and not growth. Those elites value Putin because he
performs a critical service. He resolves their disputes so that
they do not have to.
Whenever those people have a problem with each other, they
can go to him instead of fighting it out in Parliament, in
court, or with guns.
Too much democracy or economic openness would limit Putin's
ability to be useful because that would mean more
constituencies to please and being less able to pick and choose
winners in the economy.
After all, according to Forbes magazine, Russia's 117
billionaires, the fifth highest in the world, control more than
a third of Russia's entire GDP, the highest such percentage in
the world. So Putin knows exactly whom to please.
But it's not a one-way street. Those billionaires keep
their positions because they're loyal, and they're called upon
to repay the Russian State, to funding military research and
development, private military companies, social programs, and
cultural endeavors.
Finally, Putin wins, so to speak, when the Russian
population and the outside world think he's so strong that
change is impossible. He relies on the perception of
inevitability that keeps everyone believing that no change is
forthcoming. Good if you're in that room and bad if you're not.
Now, my written testimony goes into further detail. The
power in Russia is practiced through two very different tasks:
seizing and consolidating the formal levers of governance, and
then keeping all the factions balanced so that no group can
dominate others.
Putin can continue indefinitely if his supporters believe
that life without him is worse than life with him. In essence,
if both supporters and opponents believe that the future looks
like the present, then why bother changing anything?
In the pictures on your screen you see, in that sense, two
great stereotypical images of Russia. On the bottom, nesting
dolls, evoking Winston Churchill's famous description of the
country, ``It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an
enigma.''
And on the right probably my favorite picture about Russia
because it has a bear in the snow in front of the Kremlin with
a fur hat, felt boots, and a flag around its shoulders while
holding an AK-47 with a couple of fighter jets above.
These two pictures have everything you need to know about
Putin's success as a politician. Balancing all the elite
factions, enforcing order upon the State through violence or
the threat thereof, and defining a clear grand strategy, making
Russia a great power by any means necessary or else it'll all
come crashing down without him.
So what can the U.S. Congress do? A lot, actually. First,
in terms of authoritarianism, when I asked friends and
colleagues in Russia for their advice on my testimony, the most
pressing requests were not to forget about them because
international attention is one of their primary defenses.
To keep the names and individuals of individuals and
organizations receiving U.S. Government assistance private
because the government there uses that to target people, and to
help, honestly, with small-bore stuff like subscriptions to pay
walled media, professional tools, and professional development
courses.
In a broader sense, the surest long-term inoculation to
authoritarianism is education. I would call upon the U.S.
Congress to fund online educational services for students in
Russia such as spoken English lessons and preparation for
standardized and college entrance exams such as SAT, GRE,
TOEFL, LAST, AP tests.
It would create positive interest in the United States, and
given what we've experienced over the pandemic, we all now have
the online learning figured out. Such a program would export
education, one of our greatest assets, without having to send
any money abroad.
The other issue is kleptocracy. There are numerous acts
that will be discussed later today. But the reason these
measures are important is that the elites Putin needs to govern
at home also want to take their money out of the country.
As long as they can engage in all the capital flight they
want, they have no incentive to change anything at home. That
matters to them even more than sanctions, because Putin can
compensate them for being sanctioned but not for being unable
to enjoy their money abroad.
And with that, I thank you for your attention.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Weber follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Dr. Weber, and thanks for
underscoring the point, too, that today's hearing and much of
what we talk about is not about the Russian people themselves.
We have an affinity for the Russian people themselves and
their aspirational hopes, and part of the hearing is to try and
bring some of that forth so that they are aware of the
difference. So I really appreciate your underscoring that
point.
And I now recognize Mr. Grozev for your opening statement.
Mr. Grozev, are you on mute? I think you have to unmute
yourself.
STATEMENT OF CHRISTO GROZEV, LEAD RUSSIA INVESTIGATOR,
BELLINGCAT
Mr. Grozev. I hope I'm unmuted now.
Mr. Keating. We can hear you. Thank you, Doctor. Thank you.
Mr. Grozev. In the last 7 years, Bellingcat has
investigated more than 15 previously unresolved crimes
involving Russian suspects for Russian victims. In all of these
cases, our analysis has shown that the crimes were
commissioned, planned, and perpetrated by Russian security
services.
Many of the criminal incidents took place outside of
Russian territory involving either attempted assassinations or
acts of sabotage, sometimes with collateral fatalities. Most of
these unlawful extraterritorial operations were conducted by
Russia's military intelligence known as the GRU.
They included the blowing up of ammunition depots in
Czechia in late 2014 that left two Czech civilians dead,
assassination attempts on the Bulgarian arms manufacturer
Emilian Gebrev and two other Bulgarian citizens in fall of
2015, explosions at a range of Bulgarian weapons depots storing
weapons earmarked for export to Georgia and Ukraine, and the
Novichok poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal as well as the
Dawn Sturgess in the U.K. in 2018.
All of these assassinations and terrorist acts were the
actions of a secretive subunit of the GRU's unit 29155 that
reports directly to the director of the GRU and to the Kremlin.
The operatives of this unit received Russia's highest
military award, the Hero of Russia in the immediate wake of
these explosions and assassination attempts.
We have identified more than 30 members of this black ops
operation, who, in the past decade, have traveled hundreds--on
hundreds of trips across Europe and the world under government-
issued fictitious identities.
However, our investigations have shown that the GRU by far
does not have a monopoly on Russian extrajudicial
assassinations abroad.
In 2019, Bellingcat and our investigative partners
discovered evidence that linked Russia's other security agency,
the FSB, to the murder of a Georgian citizen, Zelimkhan
Khangoshvili, in Berlin in August 2019.
This investigation allowed us to solve a string of other
cold cases involving assassinations of other victims, all
Russian or ex-Soviet nationals whom the Russian authorities had
labeled terrorists or separatists.
In the course of these investigations, we uncovered also a
sprawling proxy structure conducting overseas operations on
behalf of the FSB, the Second Service of the FSB, which is
called, non-ironically, the Service for Fight Against Terrorism
and Extremism.
This proxy structure is hidden within the so-called Vympel
group of companies, which masquerades as a private security
group owned by former FSB officers but, in fact, serves as a
deniable assassination squad doing the FSB's bidding.
Like with the GRU black ops operatives, members of this
assassination squad got the highest military awards from Russia
and travel on government-issued identities around the world.
Apart from these extraterritorial sabotage and
assassination programs, we've uncovered the existence of a
domestic assassination program run by the same Second Service
of the FSB, often in collaboration with another FSB entity, the
Technical and Scientific Service, which provides assistance in
deploying chemical weapons and masking the traces of their use.
It was these two FSB units which, based on multiple and
mutually cooperating data points, appear to have planned and
perpetrated the Novichok poisonings of Alexei Navalny in August
2020.
Our followup investigation found that members of the same
cross-functional FSB team that poisoned Navalny had been
systematically tailing other--at least five other Russian
nationals who were ultimately poisoned with unidentified
chemicals, at least three of whom died.
Members of this FSB unit were always in the vicinity of the
victim in the hours or days before they fell into a coma or
died from multiple organ failure in unexplained circumstances.
The victims included political opposition figures like
Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was targeted and poisoned at least
twice, as well as other outspoken Russian journalists and human
rights activists.
Our investigation also uncovered the existence of a
clandestine Russian program of development and synthesis of
banned toxins and nerve agents carefully designed to circumvent
and disguise Russia's noncompliance with its obligation to
terminate this chemical weapons program under the Chemical
Weapons Conventions.
This program, which we believe is centered around the
government-run Signal Institute in Moscow, provides cover
employment for Russia's leading military scientists who
previously worked for Russia's military chemical weapons
program.
Dozens of these scientists continue working in a
distributed manner under the guise of civilian research in a
cluster of State-owned private labs. Telephone metadata
obtained by us established persistent communication patterns
between these labs and members of the GRU and the FSB poison
squads, which peaked just before known poisoning operations.
Last, I would like to end with the fact that there seems to
be a gap and a gaping hole in law enforcement internationally,
we have discovered, because none of these terrorist and
extrajudicial operations we have identified have been
prosecuted properly simply because of the current system of the
law enforcement that requires the cooperation of nation States
in providing legal assistance.
This system simply does not work when one of the countries
that is supposed to provide legal aid is the perpetrator.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Grozev follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Keating. Well, thank you, Mr. Grozev, for the rather
chilling remarks.
I'll now turn to Mr. Lucas. You're now recognized for your
opening statement.
STATEMENT OF EDWARD LUCAS, NONRESIDENT SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER
FOR EUROPEAN POLICY ANALYSIS (CEPA), FORMER SENIOR EDITOR AT
THE ECONOMIST
Mr. Lucas. Thank you.
Chairman Keating, Ranking Member Fitzpatrick, distinguished
members, it's an honor to be able to share my thoughts with the
committee on this vitally important topic. I'm going to
summarize my written testimony and then look forward to your
questions.
I've spent all my adult life dealing with this region. I
lived behind the Iron Curtain, I lived in post-communist Russia
and other places, and I yearn for the time when the Russian
people will live in freedom and prosperity and the peace of
their neighbors.
But that day is a long way off. I strongly endorse my
friend and colleague, Masha Gessen's, testimony and that of my
fellow witnesses.
I am going to concentrate for my--in my remarks on the
external picture, the interaction of the Kremlin kleptocracy
with the West, and I have to tell you now we're losing and
we're losing because our adversaries understand something about
our society less than we do.
They understand that they can attack us using money and by
abusing the freedoms that are inherent in our system, and Nord
Stream is a great example of that. Sell cheap gas, buy
political influence, and it's not against the law.
And because of the greed and complacency not just in
Germany but also in my country, the United Kingdom, and
elsewhere, we are not willing to defend ourselves.
We could defend ourselves, and I give details in my written
testimony about what we could do with different legal and
normative instruments, but we do not.
And there's a real paradox here because it was the free
market capitalist system enabled us to beat communism. It
brought us prosperity and dynamism. Democracy works better than
dictatorship.
The same economic system that triumphed over communism is
losing to kleptocracy. It allows our enemies to buy political
influence and uses that to attack our decisionmaking when
they're inside our system. They also use the rights and
freedoms given by our political system and the courts to
intimidate their critics.
We have to understand the threat and then make the changes
necessary to put secure alliances first.
Now, Russia is not the only problem here but it's a great
place to start because it combines both a technocratic system
and a geopolitical threat.
Russia uses its money and its influence far beyond what
just what a rich person has. They have access to State
resources. They can run disinformation campaigns to demoralize
and distract Western societies.
They can use cyber and intelligence means to surveille and
harass whistleblowers and anti-corruption campaigners and
investigative journalists. They can apply diplomatic pressure
to protect their wealth, conduct physical intimidation
campaigns including abductions like the one we just saw in
Belarus, assaults and assassinations.
Now, many people say, well, hang on, isn't China the big
threat. One hears that a lot these days. And it's true that
China is far more important than Russia when it comes to global
economic governance.
But it's still the case the Kremlin is the biggest source
of instability on Europe's borders. It's the biggest source of
interference inside democratic societies. It funds extremist
parties for spreading disinformation and, as you mentioned in
your opening remarks, Russian pipelines do not just export
natural gas. They export corruption.
Germany is a weak country because of its energy dependence
on Russia. It's also a weaker member of NATO, and that means
that the United States has to bear a bigger burden.
How we deal with Russia's kleptocracy sends an important
signal to China's leaders. If we cannot deal with Russia, a
stagnant country with an Italy sized economy, then what chance
have we of dealing with the biggest country in the world,
China, and China takes advantage of the economic, legal,
political, and social vulnerabilities that are created and
exploited by the Kremlin.
Now, what do we do about this? We need a whole of
government approach, we need to have a societal approach, and
we need an international approach. The tentacles of kleptocracy
are global and our responses, as Christo mentioned, are
national.
Now, we can do this. No tanks crunched down Wall Street,
forcing us to open our financial system to our enemies. We did
that to ourselves because we are complacent, naive, and greedy.
Well, we can undo that. It's kryptonite for kleptocrats and
we have it in our hands.
And just, finally, I want to say, speaking from outside the
United States, we really appreciate the lead you're taking.
The Caucus Against Foreign Corruption, the CROOK Act, the
Foreign Extortion Prevention Act, the REPEL Act, the TRAP Act,
these are templates for us and the rest of the world and I
yearn for the day when my country will not be seen as the
global headquarters of money laundering.
We are--it's a source of great shame to me that the city of
London is the kleptocrats' best friend.
I look forward to your questions. Thank you again for the
opportunity to testify.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lucas follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Lucas.
And I want to recognize members for 5 minutes each, and
pursuant to House rules all time yielded is for the purposes of
questioning our witnesses.
Because of the virtual format of the hearing, I'll
recognize members by committee seniority, alternating between
Democrats and Republicans. If you missed your turn, please let
our staff know and we'll circle back to you. If you seek
recognition, you must unmute your microphone and address the
chair verbally.
I'll now start by recognizing myself for 5 minutes.
You know, there have been numerous public reports regarding
microwave attacks on Americans working for the government, both
overseas here and abroad.
Mr. Grozev, with your background and experience, can you
give any details about any specific threats posed by the GRU
and SVR to the United States and to individuals working for our
government?
What research have you conducted on event--on these type of
microwave attacks and their potential usage by Russian security
services, and any history that Russia had in using these type
of tactics?
Mr. Grozev, you can lead and then anyone else that wants to
comment after that.
Mr. Grozev, you're muted, I believe.
Mr. Grozev. Yes, now I'm unmuted.
So I would like to answer by saying that we are currently
investigating, together with our investigative partners from
other media, the series of sonic or microwave attacks that took
place across several consular sections around the world,
including the United States.
We're not--we have not completed our investigation. So I
would not like to provide a final judgment on that. However, I
would say that in our investigation of the activities of the
GRU and, in particular, their medical and scientific unit,
which part of it is based in--it's in Petersburg at the--at a
institute called the Institute for Experimental Biology, we see
that the GRU had a particular interest in a particular type of
a technology that impacts--that can impact the human capacity
to operate--the brain's capacity to operate under the duress of
particular sound waves.
And we have seen this--we have seen that there is a
communication between the GRU and a particular institute called
the Applied Acoustics Institute, which is in the domain of the
Ministry of Defense. Whether that exactly is the program that
has resulted in these sonic attacks we are not at this point
ready to opine.
However, what is clear is that the GRU have looked at that
and that also the GRU have a tendency to look into innovative,
from their point of view, weapons that can affect the human
brain, and this may be one of them.
Mr. Keating. Do any of our other witnesses want to comment
on that?
If not, I would just like to ask, something that's been
broached upon in all your opening remarks and your written
testimony that we have to take a broader view of how we deal
with these Russian threats and malign activities, looking at
it, and I think the opening statements our witnesses have made
really covered a lot of ground in that respect.
One of them in particular, however, draws the U.S.--and Mr.
Lucas mentioned this in particular--but draws the U.S. to
really reflect on its own ability to control what occurs
throughout our own country and our institutions here, and
that's the idea that in order for Putin to maintain his
authority, as has been referenced in the opening testimony of
our witnesses, he has to appease and please oligarchs and
elites.
That's who his audience is that keeps him in power. And
it's important, as was mentioned in the testimony, that they--
from their perspective, that they have the ability globally to
use their wealth and resources.
And so when you look at Western countries, U.K., and you
look at the U.S., we, in fact, are facilitating some of this
money laundering and covering up of assets.
You really stressed what we can do about that here. You
mentioned some of the legislation, but some of your own
opinions how vital that is in terms of U.S. response.
Mr. Lucas?
Mr. Lucas. Thank you, sir.
There's a theory that one can destabilize the Putin regime
by putting pressure on the oligarchs. I have to say that we
have tested that. It does not seem to work, and the oligarchs
close to Putin, you know, clustered around him rather than
trying to do anything against him.
But in a way, that's not the point. The point is, this is
important for our system. We need to keep dirty money out of
our politics, out of our decisionmaking, and it's good for us
whether or not it has an effect on Putin.
I think that the key thing is corporate anonymity and it's
really important. This register of beneficial ownership is an
absolute master stroke by the United States.
It's really important that it's implemented properly, and I
hope that members of your committee will be really holding the
U.S. Treasury and FinCEN's feet to the fire, making sure this
is implemented in a broad and effective way.
And then you put pressure on other countries and say, hey,
you do the same, because sunlight is the best disinfectant.
When we see who owns stuff, then we can start asking
questions--other questions about it.
Mr. Keating. I agree. I think it's important to work with
our allies in this regard, but not to wait for our allies to
move on this. We have the ability ourselves to move on that. So
I thank you.
My time has expired. I now recognize the ranking member,
Mr. Fitzpatrick, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Fitzpatrick. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First question for Mr. Lucas. In your testimony, you note
that Russian pipelines do not just export energy dependence on
Russia but also export corruption.
Can you elaborate, sir, on how the Nord Stream 2 pipeline
will enable the Kremlin to export corruption into Europe and
the consequences of this to both the United States and our
European interests?
Mr. Lucas. Thank you, sir. It's a great question, and I
would commend the work of Ilya Zaslavsky, who's written two
excellent reports on the politics of Nord Stream, and I'll be
happy to send those to your staff after the--after the hearing
so you can look at more detail.
There are many elements to this. One is that pipeline gas
creates a monopoly. Once the pipeline is built, the gas that
comes through the pipeline will be cheaper than, for example,
bringing it in from--by liquefied--in liquefied natural gas
form from tankers.
So the pipelines are inherently monopolistic and one needs
a legal framework in order to prevent that.
And the Kremlin is guilty in court of abusing its gas
pipelines, which are legacy of the Soviet Union, to try and
distort the gas market in Western Europe, and the EU did a
pretty good job of pushing back against that. But the job's not
done.
Particularly with regards to Germany, Nord Stream 2 makes
Germany a weaker ally for the United States and that means the
United States have to carry even more of the water in European
security, and that's a big issue. It's something that every
U.S. administration has complained about. Nord Stream makes
that worse.
But it also, as you said in your question, it exports
corruption and the best example of that is the role of the
former German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroder, who is the chairman
of the consortium that is in charge of the Nord Stream 1
pipeline and is building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
But it's not just. That's the kind of conspicuous tip of
the iceberg. Once you have this bastion of economic influence
in the German system, then you have all the jobs and sinecures
and contracts that go with it, and we see the way in which
German politicians, friends, relatives were put onto the
payroll of Russia-related energy companies.
It creates a sort of web of interests and obligation, which
pumps a sort of pro-Kremlin mind set and pro--Kremlin views and
pro-Kremlin actions into the heart of the German system.
It's amazing, commendable to me, that so many Germans are
now fed up with this, and perhaps the disquiet in Germany about
fossil fuel dependency and worries about human rights in Russia
and elsewhere is helping this.
But I think that the Gazprom lobby in Germany is to some
extent on the--on the back foot. Boy, they had a good run over
the last 20 years. Germans have benefited from this cheap gas.
Everyone else has paid a price for it in terms of security,
not least in Ukraine, which, of course, would be the great
loser if Nord Stream 2 is built and gas transit through Ukraine
finishes.
And there's a real paradox here that American taxpayers and
American servicemen are trying to defend Europe, and greedy
German--the greedy German energy lobby is working on the
other--in the other direction, and I'm really sorry that
sanctions are being dropped on Nord Stream and I hope it's not
too late to reimpose them and to try and put a stake through
the heart of this project.
Mr. Fitzpatrick. Thank you, Mr. Lucas.
I want to shift briefly to China. In your testimony, you
assess that China's taking advantage of the economic, legal,
political, and social vulnerabilities that have long been
created and exploited by the Kremlin?
Sir, can you go into more detail and provide some concrete
examples? And what can we do on this committee and in Congress
to address these vulnerabilities of the Russia-China issue?
Mr. Lucas. Well, it's really interesting to compare and
contrast Chinese and Russian tactics, and I worry that the
Chinese are learning from the Russians, particularly in the
realm of law fare where we see, for example, supply chain
dependency, the use of access to the market, the access to the
Chinese markets far more important than access to the Russian
market, but Russia pioneered this targeted use of sanctions
against countries it did not like and now China's doing the
same against the great U.S. ally of Australia.
We also see a much more powerful Chinese presence on
campus. This is something the Russians tried. It did not get
very far. But the attempt to try and intimidate academic
discussion, China is very effective on that.
Russia has pioneered the use of intimidatory lawsuits,
these so-called SLAPPs, but I think China's going to be moving
in the same direction.
So it's almost like a hole in the roof. You've got a hole
in the roof, rain will get through 1 day, wind will get through
the next. The key thing is to, first of all, fix the hole in
the roof.
And we can do this. What is so frustrating nobody made us
do this. We chose to open our system up in a way that the
Russian and Chinese adversaries can attack us.
Mr. Fitzpatrick. Thank you, sir.
My time has expired. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Keating. Thank you. The chair now recognizes the vice
chair of the committee, Representative Spanberger, for 5
minutes.
Ms. Spanberger. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and to
the witnesses thank you so much for joining us today.
It's unfortunate that we have seen for too many examples in
recent years of the negative consequences of the
authoritarianism and corruption in Russia, consequences that,
of course, deeply impact the Russian people but also the
security, the democracy, and human rights internationally.
And this disruptive behavior of the Kremlin has, in fact,
directly affected Americans, whether it be the safety of our
troops abroad, the security of our elections, or our
cybersecurity and government infrastructure.
And so I'd like to begin by question--by providing
questions that relate to some of the motivating factors here,
and that's the proliferation of illicit finance and the
corruption that really fuels some of this malign influence and
malign efforts.
Like so many other members of this committee, I am
concerned about how Putin and his collaborators do utilize
illicit financing corruption to advance their own aims while
repressing their people, weakening human rights and security
internationally.
And so along these lines, I did lead an effort with nearly
40 of my colleagues calling for a significant increase to the
U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, FinCEN, so that we,
the United States, can better go after money-laundering illicit
transactions that underlie some of these criminal, corrupt, or
dangerous behaviors that we see from States like Russia and
nonState actors who take refuge in the country.
And so, Mr. Grozev, I would like to begin with you and ask,
very generally, you know, what is known about the role of
Russian oligarchs in financing illicit activities and
operations, and can you speak to the strategy of how they
finance some of these activities, including the links between
the oligarchs, the actual government, and perhaps transnational
actors?
And then what loopholes the oligarchs might exploit in
international financial systems to carry out these activities
or to secure their own wealth?
Mr. Grozev. Thank you. It's a very good question, and I
have to say that it's something that I always caution against,
this seeing Russia, the Russian autocracy, as a centralized
planned economy.
The equivalent is much more closer to an actual marketplace
of both--of operations that are disruptive, and in that
marketplace a lot of oligarchs offer their services, and they
offer their innovation as well in exchange for funding or for
solutions or solving other problems that they have. We can take
a couple of examples just to make it more vivid.
At the start of the war in Ukraine, there was a particular
oligarch, a Russian oligarch--his name is Konstantin Malofeev--
who took the initial risk of sending some of his proxies, a
mini army financed by him on his own account and delivered what
turned out to be a pretty successful operation for the Kremlin
whereby he solved a lot of legal issues that they had. There
was a criminal case pending against him.
There was a large debt that he had accumulated toward one
of the State banks. All of that debt vanished, disappeared,
after he delivered the result.
This is an example of interplay between an oligarch and the
Kremlin. The Kremlin has only a limited number of assets that
they can share with the oligarchs. But that includes solving
legal problems.
That includes giving them access to new resources and
resources, such as when Crimea was in--was a large resource
that was a part--was stolen by Russia, but a lot of licenses,
concessions, access to mineral resources were given to some of
the oligarchs as part of a trading deal.
Another oligarch who has been in a similar position
offering such deniable services of international disruption is
Yevgeny Prigozhin.
I mean, you know him because he did take part in disrupting
your elections in 2018, at least, and he is funding a private
army and he's being funded himself for that operation through
large State contracts that are awarded to his catering
companies that provide services--food and beverage services--
and other logistical services to the army.
So it's a vicious circle. In this particular case, it's not
legal solutions that are offered by the Kremlin, but actually
they have a sort of symbiotic relationship where they're giving
him--they're allowing him to overcharge for the logistical
services in order for him to deliver this deniable proxy
arrangement.
So these are just two examples, and there are many more
that I'm sure my colleagues can also speak to.
Ms. Spanberger. And do you and anyone else on the call--do
you have recommendations for what we, Congress, or the Biden
administration could do that could potentially--you know, much
of what you just described is occurring domestically within
Russia.
But are there any things that we could do to close
loopholes or cutoff some of the tools that they use in this
illicit finance or movement of money?
Mr. Grozev. Well, I think we--you have to be inventive and
you have to sort of come to the challenge, and one of the ways
to be inventive is to actually make it difficult for people
with whom these oligarchs trade and trade also privately, not
necessarily commercially.
I mean, Yevgeny Prigozhin and his family are very avid.
They have racing horses in several countries around Europe, and
but this is an example of continued operation and commercial
transactions between the family and people in Europe or people
in the United States.
So, essentially, there has to be very good intelligence
work trying to find out what are the spheres of private lives
that these people will feel affected by if they lose them. But
that will be about the only way that I can think at this point.
Ms. Spanberger. Thank you very much, sir.
And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank you.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Representative.
The chair now recognizes Representative Wagner for 5
minutes.
Mrs. Wagner. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for organizing this
important hearing, and I thank the witnesses for their tireless
work to shed light on Russia's corrupt and illicit practices,
especially its egregious human rights abuses.
As the State Department documented in its 2020 Human Rights
Report, Putin's Russia has engaged in extrajudicial killings,
disappearances, torture, wrongful arrest, attempted
assassinations, and persecution of religious minorities.
The United States should honor the many victims of the
autocratic Putin regime, including the unjustly imprisoned
opposition leader Alexei Navalny, by holding Putin and his
cronies accountable for the crimes that they have committed
against their own people.
Dr. Weber, what has been the effect of Alexei Navalny's
poisoning and imprisonment on civil society, and to what extent
has it changed the way the Russian public views the Russian
government?
Also, how can the United States best support those who are
continuing to stand up to Putin?
Dr. Weber?
Dr. Weber. Thank you. That's a--that's an excellent
question. So, you know, for many years, the Russian leadership
did not say Alexei Navalny's name in public. They would use
such constructions as a blogger that nobody needs, the Berlin
patient, so on and so forth.
So what we can see in the past couple of months is that
they've taken a lot of money and, essentially, raised the
amount of repression over the entire society just to illustrate
the fact that they're not terribly bothered by him.
And it's clear that in--that what Alexei Navalny represents
to them that is such a threat is that he's a political
alternative.
He may be a good alternative for president, a viable
alternative for president. The fact that the people can think
of him as an alternative to Putin, that's the main threat that
he poses.
And so that's why they've taken him, you know, in and out
of prison, poisoned him, and what they've done right now is, as
has been mentioned earlier, they have labeled his entire
organization or gone through the political steps to or the
legal steps to call his organization an extremist one, so at
the same level as ISIS within Russia. That's how much of a
threat the idea of political alternatives are.
And, you know, there was a previous question from
Representative Spanberger that touches upon an aspect of this,
that what Putin wants is all of these different, you know,
oligarchs or security services or whatever else, all of these
different groups to think that Putin is going to, basically,
keep increasing their funding, their money, indefinitely into
the future. That's why they support him. That's why he supports
them.
But it's a relationship that's, in fact, kind of futile. He
also expected----
Mrs. Wagner. Thank you, Dr. Weber. I appreciate it.
Dr. Weber. Thank you.
Mrs. Wagner. I need to move on.
For decades, the American media service Radio Free Europe
and Radio Liberty, or RFE/RL, has been a key part of U.S.
efforts to share stories of freedom and democracy with millions
of people around the world.
Today, the Kremlin is working to compromise RFE/RL's
ability to expose the truth of dangerous propaganda and
disinformation campaigns propagated by totalitarian--pardon
me--regimes like Russia.
Mr. Lucas, how can RFE/RL fight the Russian government's
efforts to limit and control its operations, and what more,
again, can the United States do to assist both in maintaining
Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty's presence on the ground in
Russia and to support freelancers facing the consequences of
Putin's assault on freedom of the press?
Mr. Lucas. Well, thank you, ma'am. It's a great question,
and if there was an easy answer, we'd have it. This is a point
of vulnerability for us. We want to do things inside Russia,
and when we're inside Russia we are vulnerable to pressure from
the Russian authorities.
I think, you know, so long as Russians can still travel
abroad we can do stuff there. We can support these
organizations that trade abroad. We can support people coming
abroad. We can support organizations like Meduza.
In this, they put up a great firewall of Russia, like we
have a great firewall of China. We can operate on a pool model
where Russians are finding stuff on the internet. It won't be
broadcast in the conventional sense.
I still have a hankering for shortwave radio. But that,
perhaps, is my--says something about my generation. Some of us
on this call may remember the joys of shortwave radio.
But the key thing, ma'am, is we have got to want to do it.
We have got to believe that we have a story to tell, and we
have got----
Mrs. Wagner. Absolutely.
Mr. Lucas [continuing]. To feel that it matters to get that
story across because when we stop believing in our values and
our message, then what chance is there of anyone else believing
it either?
Mrs. Wagner. I couldn't agree more. I thank you for your
answer.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman, and thank you again for the
hearing.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Representative.
The chair now recognizes Representative Cicilline for 5
minutes.
Mr. Cicilline. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to
the ranking member for calling this important hearing and thank
you to our witnesses.
The influence of Russia and its leadership under the long
rule of Vladimir Putin on global democratic backsliding and
corrupt governance cannot be overStated.
For over two decades, Putin has enriched himself and has
enriched a tiny circle of elites through global money
laundering schemes that harm democracy in the West, compromise
critical markets around the world, and ensures that Putin is
isolated from criticism and political opposition.
And, unfortunately, in America and in places around the
world a cottage industry has arisen to service the needs of
Russia's corrupt elite that seek to hide and launder dark
money.
And so my first question is for you, Mr. Lucas. You know,
as we think about what Congress can do, you reference in your
written testimony--you use the term enablers, bankers, lawyers,
accountants, real eState agents, and other members of the
professional class in North America and Europe and beyond that
are all too happy to service the needs of Russia through
corrupt financial practices.
And what can we do here in the United States and along with
our partners to ensure that that does not continue?
Mr. Lucas. Well, it's a very broad problem and but you've
got to start somewhere, and the United States, as the most
important foremost democracy in the world with the biggest
capitalist economy, is a great place to start.
And this legislation before Congress and the legislation
that was already passed is a good jumping off point, because
one of the great things about the United States is people are
scared of doing things that will get them into trouble in the
United States.
It was very interesting, just now on social media someone
pointed out that there may have been some American citizens on
board that flight that was brought--forced to land in Belarus,
and that's just a game changer.
If it uses a single U.S. cent or single U.S. person
involved, then suddenly it's different from if you're just
mucking around in Cyprus or Luxembourg or one of these other
jurisdictions that the Russians also exploit.
So it's really important for the United States to
confidently take the lead, and I think there's two big things
here. One is to go after corporate anonymity. Insist that you
know where the money comes from.
Don't just say--a lobby will say, this is a shell company
and its buying business real eState. It's only residential real
eState that's caught by FinCEN. So FinCEN's rules on real
eState have got to go.
Mr. Cicilline. Mr. Lucas, I'm just--I'm going to try to get
in a couple more questions. So I just----
Mr. Lucas. Sure.
Mr. Cicilline. Yes. No, I get your point, and I guess--and
I think we have some legislation before the committee that I
hope we'll move forward in a bipartisan way.
I want to now turn to Professor Gessen. I would like, if
you would, just speak for a moment about the impact of this
autocratic rule in Russia and, particularly, during COVID-19
and how it has impacted human rights, particularly for women,
girls, and members of the LGBTQI community and kind of what's
happening on the ground.
Mx. Gessen. Well, as I mentioned--thank you. As I mentioned
in my testimony, Russia is a country that is uniquely
positioned to vaccinate its population and this hasn't happened
and, in fact, we're seeing--you know, we have lost count. It's,
like, the second or third wave of COVID deaths in Russia and
that's sort of vastly underestimated.
To answer your question about women, girls, and the LGBT
community, I think one of the things that have--that has
impacted people a lot is the isolation--the de facto isolation
of Russia.
Russians have, effectively, lost the ability to travel
abroad and to leave the country. This, for LGBT people, for
women and girls facing abuse, means cutting off a lifeline,
right?
We have seen so many refugees and asylum seekers coming out
of Russia, especially as a result of sort of the so-called
traditional values anti-LGBT campaign, and that has effectively
stopped in the last year and a half.
Mr. Cicilline. Thank you. And finally, Dr. Weber, you spoke
about the importance of partnering with Russian pro-democracy
and pro-reform forces and, of course, the challenge is how we
do that in a way that does not endanger the very lives of the
people engaged in this work.
And so you talked about some online courses, but are there
other things we can do to sort of get the story out about the
way that this Russian kleptocracy is destroying the lives for
ordinary Russians and that, you know, Vladimir Putin and his
cronies are, you know, robbing the treasures of this great
country at the--to the detriment of the Russian people? And it
feels like that's a big part of the untold story, and how do we
effectively do that?
Dr. Weber. So great. I mean, one of the things that, you
know, these sorts of organizations when I was reaching out to
them, they said, things like, you know, a subscription to Adobe
Photoshop or other editing software, really small things like
that, because what the Russian government has gone after is the
investigative news journalists inside of Russia.
So these are Russian journalists and activists who want to
talk about their own country in their own language, and so
that's the support that they need. They, basically, need the
spotlight from abroad and the tools to actually do their jobs.
That's their core desires, and, you know, an evacuation plan if
it really goes pear shaped.
Mr. Cicilline. Got it. Thank you. My time is expired. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Representative.
The chair recognizes Representative Meijer for 5 minutes.
Mr. Meijer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to our
witnesses who are here today. You know, obviously, we have been
watching over the past two decades, and I think we have this
kind of nagging feeling of a window slowly starting to close
that had been opened after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
But, you know, I guess there's a number of reasons to be
pessimistic, and I think Dr. Lucas, you mentioned, some room
for optimism in terms of greater transparency on property
purchases, right, or other areas where beneficial ownership can
be achieved.
And then there are still those green shoots on the activist
front, Alexei Navalny being one but, obviously, as we all know,
that whole path has really just gotten beaten down.
Professor Gessen, I wanted to turn to you. In your
testimony, you mentioned the kind of dark joke of modern Russia
being two crayfish turning to one another and saying, you know,
10 degrees ago it wasn't so bad in that, you know, slowly
boiling pot of water.
If you were a pro-democracy activist or an anti-Putin
activist today that isn't already associated with Alexei
Navalny or an existing movement, I mean, is there--is there any
room for that to grow that hasn't--any soil that hasn't been
kind of salted by the regime?
Mx. Gessen. That's a great question and I think--I think if
you're looking for reasons for optimism, I'm not going to give
you any. I think it's a scorched earth situation.
I mean, we--the vector of the regime is to kill everything
in--on sight and the scale and brutality of the crackdown that
we have seen just in the last few weeks is unprecedented.
We have said this before, but this just shows that yes,
there's room for this to get much, much worse, and it's getting
exponentially worse just in the last few weeks.
The extremists designation, which a couple of us have
mentioned, that has--that has been--is going to be applied to
Navalny's organizations opens up room for a scale of arrests
and the kind of prison terms that we simply have not seen
before.
Mr. Meijer. And that--yes, I guess, looking for optimism
may be an overly optimistic assessment. I know we saw some mass
protests or at least a decline--I shouldn't say mass protests.
We saw some isolated ones, but a decline in Putin's popularity
when he was implementing some retirement reforms a few years
ago.
I mean, is there still room outside of the pro-democracy--
you know, kind of pro-Putin outside of that dynamic? Are there
other areas where there may be simmering discontent that could
undermine that hold?
You know, we talked about the oligarchs earlier and then
that targeting. You know, they kind of, you know, circle the
horses or circle the wagons, if you will, you know, when it
comes to other elements of the civil society that aren't
necessarily engaged in the democracy advocacy front. You know,
where is the--Putin standing at the moment?
Mx. Gessen. I think, Representative Meijer, you're asking
me if there's a way for the Russian people to bring down the
Putin regime, and I think the answer is no.
Not because there's no discontent. There's a lot of
discontent. But because all the levers that could possibly be
set in motion by mass discontent, by mass protests, have long
since been destroyed. There's no independent judiciary. There's
no possibility of independent political action by any people
who have official power.
There's nothing for protests--you know, there's nothing
for--there's no way to express the discontent publicly, except
by going out into the streets and going out into the streets
with a more and more brutal crackdown every time it happens.
Mr. Meijer. Thank you, Professor.
Dr. Lucas, real quick before my time expires, you know,
obviously, we touched upon earlier the Ryanair flight that was
kind of air piracy, you know, and forced to land in Belarus,
and then just today we had an Air France flight from Paris to
Moscow that was told if it wasn't going to transit Belarusian
airspace, it wouldn't be allowed to land in Moscow.
Any insight into how you view this escalating tension with
Minsk getting closer to Moscow and forming kind of that
authoritarian alliance? How does that play out for the rest of
the EU?
Mr. Lucas. I think that Moscow is pretty surprised about
what Minsk did. I do not think it was part of a plan. I wonder
if Putin will tell Lukashenko to back down and then present
that as a gift-wrapped something for the table at the summit
with Biden. But if I knew the answer, I would be running some
intelligence organization. I wouldn't be here.
Mr. Meijer. Fair enough. Fair enough.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Representative.
The chair recognizes Representative Titus for 5 minutes.
Ms. Titus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to these
witnesses.
You know, we have heard a lot this morning about how Putin
and the oligarchs of Russia have used their wealth to kind of
control or maintain a stranglehold on the internal economy and
politics of Russia itself.
But we also know they've used these funds in turn to
influence politics around them. They've supported separatist
movements in Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova.
They've tried to influence elections in some of their--the
countries that are near their sphere of influence. They
interfered in the referendum in Macedonia even.
I wonder if the panel would discuss what the United States
can do to try to stop that extended influence without playing
into the hands of Putin who actually needs the U.S. to be an
enemy to buildup his position internally.
Dr. Weber. So, ma'am, if I may, I would suggest better
enforcement of secondary sanctions. So a lot of these oligarchs
and different sorts of people they provide some service to
Putin and the Russian State, but they also have totally normal
business dealings.
And so there isn't any real reputational risk of dealing
with those people because they can say, you know, this is my
one State business but I have all my other business that's
totally normal.
So to increase the risk--the reputational risk of working
with them on other people, that would be the sort of thing that
could raise the costs to, basically, business as normal within
Russia and would then essentially create these, these long-
term, you know, doubts within the elite, do I want to
participate in trying to influence a referendum in Montenegro
or wherever else if I cannot also have my normal, you know,
stock listing in, you know, New York or London or Hong Kong or
wherever else.
So that would be a core thing to raise the costs on the
elites from inside of Russia through secondary sanctions.
Ms. Titus. You may.
Mx. Gessen. Can I jump in?
If I may be so bold as to suggest that we think about
sanctions a little bit differently. I think the traditional way
of thinking about sanctions is to try to measure their
effectiveness and see if they've actually changed the behavior
of somebody like Putin.
I think that's unrealistic. Putin's behavior is not going
to change nor is the propaganda machine going to stop
positioning the United States, no matter what the United States
does, as the enemy.
As you rightly pointed out, that is what Putin needs for
the survival of his propaganda machine. I think if we could
reframe it as doing the right thing, as not--as the right thing
being not doing business with a regime that kills its own
citizens, that throws people in jail for thought crimes, that
has assassination squads roaming the world, that interferes in
other countries and works to undermine other democracies, then
I think that question becomes a little bit simpler, right.
It's not a question of effectiveness. It's a question of
maintaining the integrity of the West, maintaining the
integrity of U.S. actors and not getting in bed with that
regime. Thank you.
Ms. Titus. Thank you.
Mr. Lucas. If I could just jump in.
Mr. Keating. Yes, go right ahead.
Mr. Lucas. Yes. It's absolutely right, maintain--the best
defense we have is the integrity of our system. The greatest
weakness we have is problems in our system, which enemies can
exploit.
As I already said, we have already done this with terrorist
finance. If I'd said to you 30 years ago we are going to worry
about how Islamic extremists handle money, people would have
said why is that a problem.
9/11 taught us that's a big problem. And we have dealt with
it. We have very sophisticated extensive measures for dealing
with threat finance. We just need to refocus that a bit and
start thinking not just about terrorists but about
kleptocracies.
Ms. Titus. Thank you.
Just really quickly, something that hasn't been mentioned
is environmental progress in Russia. Now, often the way
oligarchs or leaders get away with things is a lack of rule of
law or a lack of regulation.
Is that occurring in Russia too where Putin says one thing
and, yet, we do not have any way to hold him accountable for
anything that's improving the environment like the Paris
Accords?
Professor, I guess----
Dr. Weber. The law of Russia is very flexible. So it's--
there are many laws and regulations that are in conflict with
each other and they get interpreted as is necessary.
So the way the Russians view climate change writ large,
just quickly enough, is they look at, basically, China saying,
you know, President Xi said we'll reach maximum coal usage in
2035 but we'll be carbon neutral in 2060.
The U.S. is sort of in and out. They look at that as the
other two major players of the system aren't taking this very
consistently and very seriously. They look at climate change as
actually good for them. It's better growing seasons inside of
Russia, which is a cold country.
It's greater access to the mineral resources in the Arctic
itself, and if the Arctic becomes a navigable zone, well, then
they can militarize it and make it something in which they are
a founding member of the Arctic as something to negotiate with
the United States and others akin to nuclear weapons.
So they're actually all in on climate change as being a
good thing.
Ms. Titus. Very interesting.
Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Representative.
We'll just take a few moments to do some followup or some
areas that weren't covered for the members that want to
participate. At least, I have a few.
We really touched on Crimea. Just yesterday, I had
conversation with several of the reform leaders in the Ukraine.
As they move forward and they realize their challenges, but
they are moving forward, I believe, working on areas of
judicial reform, dealing with corruption issues in Ukraine, you
know, their aspirational goal is to move toward, you know, the
EU, maybe NATO, as Russia masses anywhere between 80,000, maybe
more, troops just for a show of force.
As they go along this, what do you anticipate Putin's move
will be? We know what happened the last time in the Maidan
after, you know, they were moving toward, you know, application
toward the EU and Russia's response.
What do you anticipate the problems there for Ukraine,
moving forward? What intervention do you think Putin is capable
of, going forward now?
Go ahead, Mr. Lucas.
Mr. Lucas. Yes. I think the key thing for Russia is that
Ukraine has become a much stronger country now. This is not the
Ukraine of 2014, which was, basically, unable to defend itself,
and the thought of an all-out war with Ukraine, even if it did
not have Western help, is a really serious prospect for Russia.
So I think that we are in an era of bluff and intimidation
rather than outright conflict, and Russia looking for pressure
points, and I would particularly point to the Sea of Azov and
attempts to try and cut the Kerch Straits and put pressure on
the east of Ukraine there and, of course, the continued
attempts to destabilize Ukraine through its economic system and
corruption and so on.
I think it's really the number-one priority for us is to
help the Ukrainians deal with corruption and strengthen
themselves because a successful Ukraine, a politically strong,
economically vibrant Ukraine, is like--is a terrible thing for
Russia because it shows that this can work. Putin's approach,
fundamentally, is nihilistic. He says there is no other way.
This is never going to get any better. You just got to stay
with me.
And if people look across the board in Ukraine and say,
hey, there's an alternative that's better, that's terribly--
that's really destabilizing for him?
Mr. Keating. Anyone else? Other prospects there?
I know, you know, Mr. Grozev, you know, did they act in
ways where it's deniable, and that's where you concentrate a
lot of your efforts in reporting. They can continue to use the
Wagner Group or--to destabilize things. What are their options?
Mr. Grozev. Well, first of all, I would like to say that an
escalation at this point in Ukraine will be most likely a
function of internal domestic issues in Russia of dropping of
popularity just before elections, for example, or, as we had a
lot of discontent on the ground in Crimea because of the lack
of--a shortage of water.
So whenever we see such symptoms of sort of a downward
spiral of popularity of the Kremlin, we see an escalation of
rhetoric, at least toward Ukraine.
So this is one of the risks for Ukraine, that actually
something happens inside Russia and Putin needs a sort of a wag
the dog situation.
And the second one is, as we just discussed, an
improvement--a significant improvement in the economic position
or in sort of the happiness in Ukraine because that will be a
nightmare for the Kremlin.
So I think that if we see signs of escalation, this might
not be a thing, and I agree completely with Edward that it's
very unlikely that today's Kremlin will risk an all-out war,
even a war via proxy, just because the Ukrainian army and the
Ukrainian secret services are much better than they were 5
years ago.
Mr. Keating. Thank you.
Representative Vice Chair Spanberger, would you like a
followup question?
Ms. Spanberger. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and to
our witnesses, thank you for spending a little bit more time
with us.
I was just wondering if we could--just any general answers
or perceptions, observations you all want to share related to
the Russian intelligence operation. So I've previously served
as a case officer with CIA and this is always an area of
interest.
So, just generally speaking, if you could speak to how
intelligence operations really fit into Putin's larger aim of
consolidating power, either domestically or expanding influence
internationally, I would be interested in your thoughts on
that.
Mr. Lucas. If I might just jump in very briefly because I'm
sure Christo has also got some thoughts on this. But I think
it's one of the weaknesses in the preconception. As a former
intelligence officer, you may recognize this from your past
life.
He tends to overestimate the importance of things that are
called secret and he has a slightly distorted world view. He's,
I think, sees the secret world in very sharp colors and perhaps
sharper--sharper than they should be.
He's got tremendous--and I think another thing that's worth
looking at is the competition between the intelligence
branches. So they're not all playing on the same team.
Obviously, that would never happen in a Western country the
intelligence organizations would be rivals.
But that's, certainly, another element and what to take
certain, we saw in the attack on the United States political
system, the SVR was conducting one cyber operation and the GRU
was conducting another and they were on the same network.
Ms. Spanberger. And when you talk about the differences
there, are there also significant differences in terms of how
they're funded, how they're prioritized, and how does that
impact us? And I think one of the other witnesses wanted to add
something. So I'll just open that back up.
Dr. Weber. So if I may just sort of jump in on that exact
point. So one thing to think about, there are many intelligence
services.
The FSB, the successor to the KGB, can also be thought of
as perhaps the largest economic organization in all of Russia,
having a little slice of just about everything in the entire
country.
So part of the reason that Putin is so afraid of what
happens after Putin is his belief and everyone's belief that
if, basically, a new group comes in, they're all going to
whatever is the modern version of the guillotine and they'll
all be expropriated.
So in that sense, their life is a day-to-day existential
struggle to keep that future from happening, and so that's part
of their fear. The success will be reversed in a very awful
way.
Thank you.
Ms. Spanberger. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Thank you.
Mr. Keating. Thank you.
The chair recognizes Representative Costa--Representative
Costa is the chair of the Transatlantic Dialogue--for 5
minutes.
Mr. Costa. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I think
this morning's hearing is very important to our collective will
to coming together with a strategy with our European partners
on the flexing problem of Russia that we have discussed this
morning.
I have a different version of how I describe Russia today
that I suspect does not--I hope many of you would agree with. I
think modern-day Russia is their version of ``The Sopranos,''
and ``The Sopranos,'' of course, a--the situation in Russia
with the oligarchs, I think, dependent upon one another and
Putin.
You touched upon a key to destabilizing this partnership as
their common interest in their financing and whether it's
laundering money in London or their Swiss bank accounts.
Why do you believe that the West there's just a lack of
leadership has been--discounting the last 4 years where there
was something else going on, in my view--a strategy to really
undermine the financial underpinnings of how this underworld
system, this corrupt Soprano group continues to function?
Mr. Lucas. Well, if I may, Congressman, just jump in
quickly on that. It's incredibly lucrative, and if you are a
lawyer, a banker, an accountant, a PR guy, selling real eState,
you can make a fortune.
You can make life-changing amounts of money working for
these people, and it does not feel that bad. We do not yet
have--I think always the first thing we need is normative
pressure. People should feel bad about taking these people on
as clients.
They should feel that people aren't going to talk to their
kids at school, that no one's going to want to talk to them at
parties, they won't get into golf clubs, whatever. We need
normative pressure this is bad. We do not have that at the
moment.
In many countries, it seems completely respectable, normal,
understandably even creditable to be building bridges with
Russia and doing business with these people. And until that
changes, it's going to be very difficult to get some--get some
traction.
Mr. Costa. But isn't there, basically, just a lack of a
strategy that the West can agree on to implement?
Mr. Lucas. Well, we need--we need to stick--I mean,
someone's got to lead, and I think if we sit around waiting for
a united Western strategy we're going to be waiting a long time
and we'll----
Mr. Costa. But I think the strategy has to come from us.
Mr. Lucas. Absolutely. As I said in my testimony, the U.S.
has to lead on this You're the biggest and the strongest
element in this.
Mr. Costa. And what would be involved in that strategy
between our European allies and ourselves?
Mr. Weber?
Dr. Weber. Oh, sure. So, I mean, the--I think part of your
question is to understand what are the limitations of
sanctions, as mentioned by Professor Gessen.
We think that sanctions are there's a bad thing, stop it,
we'll put this pain on you and we'll take it away when it
leaves--when you stop doing it.
But because we sanction so many different things of Russian
foreign policy that, basically, if Putin were to acknowledge
any one part of it he would, in effect, create a market for
sanctions and for Russian foreign policy, and we'd know exactly
what to do in order to get him out of Crimea or whatever else.
And so that's it, in essence. So what we can do in terms of
sanctions is just the thing, what are, basically, the secondary
ones and to--and one of the other things that Putin is able to
do is that the secretary--so in the State Department's Office
of Chief Economist, they've published research that showed that
Putin was able to compensate every single sanctioned
individual, private company, and State-owned enterprise in
Russia, either directly from the State budget or through
increased State orders.
Because what happens in these authoritarian countries is
that these sanctions on, basically, like, the oligarchs for the
big companies is just an opportunity to be compensated by
Putin. It becomes this loyalty test.
So I think what Mr. Lucas and others have been describing
is what are the second and third order effects that we can
think of, whether it's basically normative pressure or to think
about what are the sanctions' effects on people who are not
directly that oligarch and not directly working with the
Russian State.
That's the sort of stuff that I think is being suggested
here.
Mr. Costa. Thank you. My time has expired. But this is a
conversation, Mr. Chairman, that I think the subcommittee needs
to continue to pursue to try to see if we can, on the
congressional side, put in place a framework that would allow
us to move forward on a bipartisan strategy. I think we have to
do this.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Representative, and we do have
legislation that's been moved and others that will moved
together. So I appreciate that, and this committee will
continue to look at this issue. It's so integral to the area of
responsibility we have on the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Mr. Costa. We need to get our European help to work with us
on this, I think.
Mr. Keating. I agree. And thank you for your work in that
regard.
Just as some closing remarks I might have where I'll give
you an opportunity to--if you'd like, to comment on may not be
necessary. We touched on one of my concerns with Vice Chair
Spanberger's questioning about succession.
You know, one of the alternatives in how Putin maintains
his control in an authoritarian way is the argument, well, no
one else can do it. Well, no one else could do it in his
narrative because no one else is there.
You know, several years ago, people like--people like
Rogozin as the possible successor, you know, those things
disappear quickly, politically. And I know that we even have
people that in--that are concerned privately that if he leaves,
there could be, as Dr. Weber had said, the guillotines and
violence and unrest, maybe even civil discord of major
proportions in that country.
If you want to comment on those concerns as the closing
remarks that you may have.
And No. 2, if Russia does have a setback, if the people--if
there is a chance for reform there, what effect might that
have? It seems like in this world authoritarianism breeds more
authoritarianism, and if we start to see some of these
countries like Russia continue to fail--I say continue because
in terms of fulfilling their obligations and responsibilities
to their own people they are failing. What could that be
effect--what could be the effect of that?
So, yes, I'll give you a chance, just closing remarks if
you want to just touch on either of those two issues or
something we have not touched on, very briefly.
I'll start, perhaps, you know, with Professor Gessen first.
Mx. Gessen. Thank you. So I actually think that the
question of succession and the--and the question of--and the
fears of unrest and the question of whether authoritarianism
breeds more authoritarianism are one question.
And the answer is, yes. The longer the Putin regime
survives, the less possibility there is for anything positive
to grow on that scorched earth. As to whether----
Mr. Keating. Go ahead, Professor. I thought you were done.
Mx. Gessen. As for whether things will get worse when Putin
leaves office, I would just like to remind you that those same
fears were expressed by intelligence services in the United
States when Stalin was getting older and weaker. And this
country is already gripped by violence.
It is already a dying place where people are dying from
violence, where people are dying from despair, where just
living there is a terrible, frightening experience.
It is a nonzero possibility that it will get worse. But
it'll also be a moment of great opportunity, and the sooner
that moment comes, the better our prospects.
Mr. Keating. Thank you.
Dr. Weber?
Dr. Weber. So thank you all for your attention and for your
excellent questions.
As you said in your--in your remarks, Putin does not have
any other reasonable political opponents. So he's been running
against this idea of the 1990's, that after me it's the flood.
And that is, in essence--you know, one of the things that,
you know, I'd like to leave the subcommittee with is Russia,
the country, is great. The Russian people are totally great.
The people who are afraid of democracy and the people who
are afraid of political change in Russia itself is Putin, the
circle around him, and that larger political elite who are
afraid of the exact sort of payback that they've done to their
predecessors, and it's that fear which is making sure that they
are trying to hold the country, basically, in this arrested
development, you know, for on and on.
So it's not that the Russian people do not want democracy.
It's that they look at the elite and then thinking if Putin
isn't there what are those elite going to do to each other, and
that might be the war of all against all that the Russian
people are actually afraid of.
And so that's, in essence, you know, the very delicate line
that we need to thread. Thank you.
Mr. Keating. Thank you.
Mr. Grozev?
Mr. Grozev. Couldn't agree more. I have to say that until I
saw and until we identified this domestic assassination program
that is so pervasive that culminated in the attempt on Navalny,
I did not realize how unlikely it is for this government to
ever allow a change through peaceful means.
Having this program, which is completely out of any
domestic law and anti-constitutional, have run--having run it
for so many years makes it very, very unlikely that there will
be a mechanism that would allow for a peaceful change.
So coming back to some of the mechanisms to encourage a
possible desire by the oligarchs or the elite to enforce a
change on its own, I cannot agree more, that secondary and
tertiary sanctions--put sanctions where they cannot be
substituted and offset by gifts by the Kremlin.
Yes, the Kremlin can offer money to offset the loss of
revenue for oligarchs. What the Kremlin cannot often in
exchange for Western sanctions is replace, for example, visas
or residence permits for the wives and for the families of the
oligarchs who definitely want to live and study outside of
Russia.
So just do this. It's a sovereign right of the Western
world to decide who gets visas and who does not. But look for
things that cannot be substituted by the Kremlin in order for
it to hurt.
Mr. Keating. Thank you.
Mr. Lucas?
Mr. Lucas. Thanks. I endorse what my colleagues have said.
There are two things we are really bad at. One is
predicting what's going to happen in Russia and the other is--
the other is influencing it. If you put those two together,
you're bound to get it wrong.
So I think that we should--analytically, we can see
succession is a real problem and the system is highly unstable.
Its personalized institutions have been hollowed out. Regimes
tend to split at the top or crumble at the bottom, but how and
when and where we do not know.
So in the meantime, let's just concentrate on what we can
do and that's cleaning up our system. That's not just does it
make it safer in terms of attacks from outside. It boosts
confidence inside if people see that the system is running in
the interests of the voters and the taxpayers and not by
mysterious dark money behind the scenes.
So that's super important, live by--live by our own values.
And if we do that, we are--at least have a fighting chance of
influencing things in Russia in the--in the right direction.
And also defending ourselves against other threats, such as
China, which we have touched on. So all these tools are in our
hands.
We are not weak because we were outgunned in some great
war. We are weak because we unilaterally disarmed some
protections we have. We can put them back again.
Mr. Keating. Great. Well, thank you.
I want to thank all our witnesses, our members. As
Representative Costa had said, I think this is a subject that
we just touched the surface of, that we will continue to find
more information on.
This panel has been extraordinary. I thank you for your
time and your insight.
Members of the committee will have 5 days to submit
statements, extraneous material, and questions for the record,
subject to the length and limitations of the rules.
With that being said, this hearing is adjourned.
Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 2:40 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
APPENDIX
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RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
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