[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 123 (Monday, July 23, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H6635-H6636]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       PUTIN'S DANGEROUS ACTIONS

  (Ms. KAPTUR asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, like a bull in a china shop, President Trump 
bulldozed his way through the NATO summit, offending our allies, and 
then in Helsinki was shamefully servile to Russia's autocratic ruler, 
Vladimir Putin. Autocrat Putin boasts a long list of brutal and violent 
threats to liberty here at home and abroad.
  In early 2014, Russian forces illegally invaded Ukraine's Crimea and 
the Donbass region. Thousands have been killed and millions of 
Ukrainians displaced.
  On February 27, 2015, Russian freedom fighter, Boris Nemtsov, was 
gunned down outside the Kremlin's crimson walls.
  In the 2016 election, Russian intelligence services used social media 
and cyber attacks to target our democratic elections and those of 
several of our allies.
  According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 58 Russian 
journalists have been brutally murdered since 1992.
  Mr. Speaker, Russia is ``Murder Incorporated'' under Putin's 
abhorrent rule.
  I include in the Record a long list of some of Russia's brutal, 
murderous actions.

  Brutal and Undemocratic Actions of Dictator Vladimir Putin's Russia

       2000--Putin was supposed to face a second-round runoff in 
     the 2000 presidential election, had it not been for 
     widespread fraud. Biased coverage by large media outlets 
     controlled by the Russian state and Kremlin supporters can be 
     accredited for this. (Freedom House)
       2003--Mikhail Khodorkovsky is arrested by Russian 
     authorities and charged with fraud. The trial was criticized 
     for lack of due process. Charges against him were grounded in 
     reasonable suspicion.
       2003--Russia ranked 86 out of 133 countries in Transparency 
     International's 2003 Corruption Perceptions Index.
       2003--Russia saw a significant deterioration of fundamental 
     rights and the emergence of an increasingly aggressive 
     foreign

[[Page H6636]]

     policy, reflecting the consolidation of power by former 
     security and military officers. Russia's constitutional court 
     struck down key provisions of the law that banned journalists 
     from making positive or negative observations about 
     candidates or parties.
       2006 October 7--Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who 
     exposed the corruption of the Russian army and its conduct in 
     Chechnya, was shot and killed in the lobby of her apartment.
       2006--Alexander Litvinenko is poisoned. Litvinenko was a 
     former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) 
     and KGB, who fled from court prosecution in Russia and 
     received political asylum in the United Kingdom.
       2008--Russia wages a war against Georgia. Today, thousands 
     of Russian troops occupy Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region, 
     which constitutes about 20% of Georgia's internationally 
     recognized territory. Russia has never fulfilled its 
     obligations under the Six-Point Cease-Fire Agreement (also 
     known as the Sarkozy Plan) that ended the fighting.
       2010: Polish Air Force Tu-154 Crash over Smolensk, Russia. 
     Antoni Macierewicz (Poland's defense minister) claims the 
     fatal crash which killed Poland's President Lech Kaczynski, 
     the First Lady and 94 others in 2010 in Russia was preceded 
     by two explosions on board. A previous Polish government 
     concluded that pilot error was to blame for the crash, but 
     Law and Justice ordered a new investigation which concluded 
     this year that the plane was brought down by explosions on 
     board. No international analysis was allowed by Russia.
       2013--Putin signs law banning gay publications. ``It 
     officially declares that gays and lesbians are inferior 
     beings,'' says Elena Klimova, a gay rights activist in Russia 
     who was convicted under the law in 2014.
       2014--Putin illegally invades Ukraine. More than 10,000 
     have been killed, and millions of Ukrainians have been 
     displaced.
       2014--Russia occupies Crimean Peninsula and nearly ten 
     thousand Crimean Tatars are displaced from their homes. 
     Russia under the Putin regime has violated UN human rights, 
     and infringements of the Geneva Convention.
       2014--Russian forces shoot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 
     MH17 over occupied Ukrainian territory, killing 298 innocent 
     passengers. Russia attempts to use disinformation and 
     propaganda to cover up obfuscate the truth of its brutality.
       2014--Human rights abuses in Russia are more prevalent than 
     ever. The LGBTQ+ community is targeted. Independent media 
     report that 31 civilians were killed in the first nine months 
     of 2014. Abduction-style detentions, torture, and enforced 
     disappearances persisted in the North Caucasus, as did 
     attacks against government critics, the report says, adding 
     that the situation is particularly bad in Dagestan.
       2014--Oleg Sentsov, Ukrainian filmmaker, is arrested under 
     charges of running ``terrorist organizations'' in Crimea.
       2015--Natalya Sharina, the director of the Ukrainian 
     Literature Library in Moscow, was put under house arrest in 
     2015 under the charges of inciting ethnic hatred and 
     spreading ``anti-Russian propaganda.''
       2015--Journalist Boris Nemstov is shot and killed. Nemstov 
     was planning on leading a rally to protest the war in Ukraine 
     days before his killing.
       2016--Russian authorities arrested Roman Sushchenko, a 
     Ukrainian journalist with the state news service, Ukrinform, 
     on dubious espionage charges.
       2016--Russia attacks U.S. election. Wisconsin, Ohio, 
     California and 10 other states said they were among 21 states 
     that Russian government hackers targeted in an effort to sway 
     the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump 
     though no votes were changed.
       Federal and congressional intelligence groups that have 
     stated that Russia interfered in the election: CIA, Office of 
     the Director of National Intelligence, FBI, NSA, Justice 
     Department, House Intelligence Committee, Senate Intelligence 
     Committee.
       2017: In December, the Central Election Commission banned 
     opposition leader Aleksey Navalny from challenging Putin in 
     the 2018 presidential election, removing from the contest the 
     only credible opposition to have announced a campaign.
       2017--Russian authorities banned the activities of the 
     Jehovah's Witnesses, which was deemed an extremist group.
       2017: Investigative journalist and Novy Peterburg cofounder 
     Nikolay Andrushchenko died in April, weeks after he was 
     severely beaten, and Dmitriy Popkov, editor of the 
     investigative online outlet Ton-M, was shot to death in May.
       2017--Workers on stadiums built for the 2017 FIFA 
     Confederations Cup and 2018 World Cup reported exploitation, 
     including non-provision of contracts, non-payment of wages, 
     and retaliation for reporting abuses. The Building and 
     Woodworkers International trade union reported at least 17 
     deaths on stadiums since construction began.
       2017--By February 2017, the number of people imprisoned for 
     extremist speech spiked to 94, from 54 in 2015.
       2017--In the first six months of 2017 alone, the number of 
     people administratively punished by Russian authorities for 
     supposedly violating the country's regulations on public 
     gatherings was two-and-a-half times higher than throughout 
     2016.
       2017--Denis Voronenkov, a onetime Communist member of 
     Russia's lower house of parliament, dies after being shot 
     outside a hotel in Kyiv. President Poroshenko calls the 
     shooting a ``Russian state terrorist act.'' Voronenkov, who 
     fled to Ukraine in 2016, is the latest in a string of Putin 
     and Russia's critics who were killed or injured under 
     mysterious circumstances.
       2017--Russia interferes in the French election between 
     opponents Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. The Macron 
     presidential campaign accused the Kremlin of election 
     meddling, saying that servers belonging to the team were 
     hacked by a group likely to be associated with Russia.
       2018--Father and daughter Sergei and Yulia Skripal are 
     poisoned. British foreign secretary Boris Johnson said on 16 
     March that it was ``overwhelmingly likely'' that the 
     poisoning had been ordered directly by Russian president 
     Putin, which marked the first time the British government 
     accused Vladimir Putin of personally ordering the poisoning.
       2018: Donald Trump accepts Putin's lies on Russian 
     interference in U.S. elections over statement from U.S. 
     Intelligence Community: ``My people came to me, Dan Coats 
     came to me and some others, they think it's Russia. I have 
     President Putin, he just said it's not Russia. I will say 
     this; I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great 
     confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you 
     that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his 
     denial today.'' --Trump, Helsinki Conference 2018

  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I urge our President to see Putin for what 
he is: an enemy of liberty, not a competitor.

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