[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 38 (Monday, March 4, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1614-S1615]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Remembering Boris Nemtsov

  Mr. WICKER. Madam President, on Sunday, February 24, thousands of 
people marched in Moscow and in cities across Russia to remember Boris 
Nemtsov, a Russian statesman and friend of freedom who was gunned down 
in sight of the Kremlin walls 4 years ago.
  These people were honoring a Russian patriot who stood for a better 
future--a man who, after leaving the pinnacle of government, chose a 
courageous path of service to his country and his fellow Russians. 
Boris Nemtsov was a man who walked the walk. When others were silent 
out of fear or complicity, he stood up for a future in which the 
Russian people need not risk jail or worse for simply wanting a say in 
how their country is run.
  Sadly, since Mr. Nemtsov's assassination, the risks of standing up 
for what is right have grown in Russia. With every passing month, 
ordinary citizens there become political prisoners for doing what we 
take for granted here in the United States--associating with a 
political cause or worshipping God according to the dictates of one's 
conscience.
  Last month alone, in a high-profile case, a mother was jailed for the 
crime of being a political activist in Russia. She was kept from caring 
for her critically ill daughter until just hours before her daughter 
died. Jehovah's Witnesses have been sentenced to years behind bars for 
practicing their faith. Also, a leader of a small anti-corruption 
organization was beaten to death with metal rods on the outskirts of 
Moscow. This was all just in February, and it is not even a 
comprehensive account of the Russian state's using its powers not 
against real enemies but against its own people--peaceful citizens 
doing what peaceful citizens do.
  As for the Nemtsov assassination, 4 years later, justice has yet to 
be served. It appears that President Putin and his cronies have little 
interest in uncovering and punishing the masterminds behind Russia's 
highest profile killing in recent memory. While a few perpetrators who 
had been linked to the Kremlin-appointed leader of Chechnya, Ramzan 
Kadyrov, were convicted and sent to prison, Mr. Nemtsov's family, 
friends, and legal team believe the organizers of his murder remain 
unidentified and at large.
  I understand that Russia's top investigative official has prevented 
his subordinates from indicting a close Kadyrov associate, Major Ruslan 
Geremeyev, as an organizer in the assassination, and the information 
linking Geremeyev to Mr. Nemtsov's murder was credible enough for a 
NATO ally to place Geremeyev on its sanctions list. Yet there has still 
been no indictment. Russian security services continue to forbid the 
release of footage from cameras at the site of the assassination. 
Russian legal authorities refuse to classify the assassination of a 
prominent opposition leader and former First Deputy Prime Minister as a 
political crime. Despite all of this, they have declared the case 
solved.
  Given this pattern of deliberate inaction on the part of Russian 
authorities, the need for some accountability outside of Russia has 
grown more urgent. Russia and the United States are participating 
states in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or 
the OSCE, and have agreed

[[Page S1615]]

that matters of justice and human rights are of enough importance to be 
of legitimate interest to other member states. Respect for these 
principles inside a country is often a predictor of the country's 
external behavior. So countries such as ours have a reason to be 
involved.
  At the recent meeting of the OSCE's Parliamentary Assembly, we began 
a formal inquiry into Mr. Nemtsov's unsolved murder and have appointed 
a rapporteur to review and report on the circumstances of the Nemtsov 
assassination as well as on the progress of the Russian investigation. 
As the chair of the U.S. delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, 
I supported this process from its conception at an event I cohosted 
last July in Berlin.
  Yet, as the United States of America, there is more we can do. To 
that end, I am glad to cosponsor a resolution with my Senate colleagues 
that calls on our own government to report back to Congress on what we 
know of the circumstances around Boris Nemtsov's murder. This 
resolution also calls on the Treasury Department to use tools like the 
Magnitsky Act to sanction individuals who have been linked to this 
brutal murder, such as Ruslan Geremeyev.
  We hear constantly from Russian opposition figures and civic 
activists that personal sanctions, such as those imposed by the 
Magnitsky Act, have a deterrent effect. Vladimir Putin has made it 
abundantly clear that these sanctions, based on personal 
accountability, are more of a threat to his regime than blunter tools, 
such as sectoral sanctions, that often feed his propaganda and end up 
harming the same people we are trying to help in Russia--innocent 
citizens. To its credit, the Trump administration has done a better job 
than had the previous administration in its implementing of the new 
mandates and powers Congress authorized in both the Russia and Global 
Magnitsky Acts. We are in a much different place than we were when 
these tools were originally envisaged nearly 10 years ago.
  The administration is mandated to update the Magnitsky Act's list 
annually, with there being a deadline in December that sometimes slips 
into January. Now it is already March, and we have yet to see any new 
designations under the law that the late Mr. Nemtsov himself called the 
most pro-Russian law ever adopted in a foreign legislature. While the 
law has been lauded by Russian democrats, it is rightly despised by 
those like Vladimir Putin who abuse and steal from the American people.
  Recall that it was at the Helsinki summit late last summer between 
the leaders of Russia and the United States of America--perhaps the 
grandest stage in U.S.-Russian relations in a decade--where Mr. Putin 
himself requested that his investigators be able to depose U.S. 
officials most closely associated with passing and implementing the 
Magnitsky law, as if they were criminals.
  We need to show the Russian dictator that this sort of bullying will 
not stand and that we will continue to implement the Magnitsky Act 
thoroughly and fairly.
  A year ago, I participated--along with many of my colleagues in the 
House and Senate--in the unveiling of Boris Nemtsov Plaza in front of 
the Russian Embassy here in Washington, DC--the first official memorial 
to Boris Nemtsov anywhere in the world.
  One day, I hope there will be memorials to Boris Nemtsov all across 
Russia, but the best tribute to his memory will be a Russia he wanted 
to see, a just and prosperous Russia, at peace with its neighbors and a 
partner with the United States.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Boozman). The Senator from Iowa.