[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 163 (Wednesday, October 16, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H8184-H8187]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    UKRAINE AND IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2019, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, the people of Russia have never known real 
freedom.
  During the 20th century, over the course of 70 years, Joseph Stalin, 
the Soviet Union's henchman and regime leader, and that of his 
successors were responsible for the brutal murder of millions upon 
millions of innocent people inside Ukraine, Russia, Poland, and many 
other Central and Eastern European countries that became familiarly 
known as the Captive Nations.
  During World War II, American soldiers never really made it east of 
Germany when they liberated camps in Germany, and so much of the truth 
about what happened behind what was called the Iron Curtain, the edge 
of Soviet rule, was largely unknown to the West.
  Russia's wretched rule included:
  Forced famine, starving millions of her own people to gain the 
acquiescence of others;
  Gulags, where individuals were sent to work in work camps and died. 
They died of starvation. They died of overwork. They died of disease;
  Genocide, the wiping out of ethnic groups that didn't fit the perfect 
image of the ruler of Russia;
  Ethnic cleansing and a horrific world war launched in collaboration 
with Nazi Germany, where Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union divided up 
Europe as they saw fit.
  Not all Europeans have experienced the same history. I am interested 
to read some press reports now about Eurocentric people. Well, let me 
tell you, the history of Nazi Germany and the history of occupied 
Ukraine or occupied Poland are completely different.
  There was little value for human life by the Soviet regime and, 
certainly, no value for liberty.
  Americans remember, some do, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 
after the free world had labored since 1946 to allow that moment to 
happen and the hope that it brought to millions of subjugated people 
beyond that

[[Page H8185]]

Iron Curtain who dreamed of a better way of life--not only across 
Europe, but, in fact, the entire world.
  The fall of the Berlin Wall was symbolic, and its anniversary is 
celebrated this year, 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall that 
ushered in a new order, a world that said liberty could still prevail 
over tyranny, even in the face of impossible odds in some of the most 
forgotten places in the world.

                              {time}  1700

  Images of East and West Germans ascending the old Berlin Wall that 
divided freedom from tyranny stood as that symbol. And those 
individuals who had lived in West Germany and East Germany who climbed 
that wall and met for the first time in decades serves as one of the 
most powerful symbols of freedom in human history.
  As families were reunited, new democratic institutions rose from the 
ashes, where tyranny once dominated.
  The United States became a beacon of light to those people in an 
ever-growing free world following the rebuilding of Europe in the post-
World War II climate and then, over four decades later, the Soviet 
Union's demise.
  The World War II Memorial that stands here in Washington, D.C., in 
fact, is testimony to the 20th century's greatest achievement, the 
victory of liberty over tyranny.
  Yet, in the ashes of the Soviet regime, the seeds of tyranny survived 
in the memories of its most ardent lieutenants and supporters. And one 
of them, the current Russian President, Vladimir Putin, who for years 
served as a Soviet spy in the KGB, is orchestrating Russia's vengeful 
march to restore its former empire.
  Today, Ukraine represents the scrimmage line in the fight for liberty 
on the European continent. And why does it matter to America? Because 
those allies in Europe have democratic republics like ours. They are 
our closest political allies on the face of the Earth.
  We do not live alone on this Earth. America does not live alone on 
this Earth, but, rather, we have a security system that was established 
following World War II that has held together the leaders of the free 
world.
  Vladimir Putin's greatest fear is an economically successful and 
democratic Ukraine at Russia's borders. A free Ukraine would undermine 
Putin's fragile, corrupt rule based on stealing--stealing land, 
stealing money from the people of Ukraine, and lining his pockets and 
those of his cronies.
  A free Ukraine sends a message, too, to the Russian people, a people 
who have never known liberty in their own right, that freedom is also 
attainable for them.
  For this reason, Putin would go to any length, and is--
assassinations, poisonings, war, torture--to steal from the Ukrainian 
people their right to choose their own destiny--40 million people--40 
million people at the stepstone to all of Europe, the largest landmass 
nation in all of Europe. They have a right to choose their own destiny.
  In the aftermath of World War II, the United States, alongside our 
allied partners in the then newly formed North Atlantic Treaty 
Organization, more familiarly called NATO, created precious 
institutions to build solidarity and security among the war's 
transatlantic allied victors--institutions that had never existed 
before.
  America invested trillions of dollars in programs, beginning with the 
Marshall Plan, to build vigilant networks to stymie and, ultimately, 
reverse the spread of state-imposed communism.
  The American people, in a very war-worn country after World War II, 
rebuilt Europe through the Marshall Plan. Wow.
  Western-funded programs worked to rebuild Europe, and, though the 
Nazis were defeated, millions still found themselves trapped under 
dictatorial rule behind that Iron Curtain east of the Berlin Wall.
  Ukraine was one of those nations forced to exist under Soviet 
occupation until Ukrainian citizens declared their own independence 
after the fall of the Berlin Wall in a democratic, nationwide 
referendum in 1991, the only such referendum by any former Soviet 
republic.
  An astounding 84 percent of their voting-age population participated 
in that referendum, and more than 90 percent of them voted to separate 
from the Soviet Union and chart their own national course.
  That was a new page that turned in world history. Even in the eastern 
portions of Ukraine, in Crimea, a majority voted to be part of 
independent Ukraine. In one voice, the Ukrainian people decisively 
voted for and favored liberty over tyranny. What a dramatic moment in 
world history as liberty attempted to move eastward.
  But, even then, the struggle for liberty in Ukraine was far from 
over. It was only beginning. And we can see it in real time even until 
today.
  In 2014, the Ukrainian people rose up in the Ukrainian revolution of 
dignity against leaders in Ukraine that had become utterly corrupt, the 
pro-Russian leader then, President Viktor Yanukovych, after he 
rejected--why did they rise up? Because he rejected an association 
agreement with the European Union.
  And at whose behest did he do that? Vladimir Putin's.
  Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian protesters immediately moved to 
occupy the central plaza of their capital city, Kiev, Ukraine. Clashes 
between those protesters and the riot police became violent and 
resulted in the deaths of nearly 130 civilians. Most of them died from 
government-ordered sniper fire.
  As tensions rose, Yanukovych fled--guess where?--to Russia to take 
cover. And, on that same day, by a vote of 328-0, their congress, their 
parliament, voted that Yanukovych be removed from office.
  The fight for liberty is being lived in real time. The world can see 
it--not just the Ukrainian people; the American people, the leader of 
the free world, for heavens' sake.
  In that very same year, Vladimir Putin mobilized Russia's vast 
military machine, one of the largest on Earth, to illegally and without 
provocation invade Ukraine at its Crimean edge and launch a not-so-
covert war on Ukraine's eastern flank, a clear effort to rewind history 
and reimpose his dreamed neo-Soviet empire.
  Over 5 years later, Ukraine remains in an heroic struggle to preserve 
its hard-fought freedom and sovereignty. Its people have bravely faced 
down artillery barrages and live sniper and machine gun fire carried 
out by pro-Russian forces coming across the border, including Putin's 
little green men.
  While the country, Ukraine, is not yet a member of the European Union 
or NATO, which it so wishes to be, its men and women, including 
civilians, have bravely fought and died defending Europe and their own 
fragile democracy.

  Put yourselves in their position. What would you do if that happened 
in the United States of America?
  In the 5 years since the war started, 14,000 Ukrainians have been 
killed, 30,000 have been wounded, and nearly 2 million internally 
displaced in the conflict with Russia.
  It is a war that groans on with little notice but enormous 
consequences for liberty in this modern era.
  As Ukraine's defense forces crumbled due to years of corruption and 
mismanagement, the Ukrainian people took up the cause to defend their 
own nation. They have been seriously underequipped. And their heroism 
and, I might add, sheroism shines. Courageous women from the invisible 
battalion left their college studies and took taxis to the frontlines 
to thwart Moscow's war.
  It was like a David and Goliath struggle. Indeed, it has been the 
strength of the Ukrainian people that has fought Russia to a standstill 
for a moment.
  Just as we and our allies fought Soviet aggression in the 20th 
century, the Ukrainian people are in the trenches fighting Russian 
aggression in the 21st.
  They have more than earned the respect and continuing support of the 
United States and the free world.
  When the Soviet Union collapsed, one-third of the Soviet nuclear 
arsenal remained in Ukraine. There are two countries in the world that 
have nuclear weapons aimed: Russia, at us; and the United States, 
prepared to take them down if they would ever dare send them in this 
direction.
  But one-third of what the Soviet Union held in terms of nuclear 
strength remained in Ukraine, de facto providing Ukraine the world's 
third largest nuclear weapons arsenal.

[[Page H8186]]

  But, in 1994, by signing the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine agreed to 
give up the nuclear weapons in its territory in return for security 
assistance by the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom. Think 
about that.
  A promise was made. Ukraine's independence, national sovereignty, and 
borders would be respected. By annexing Crimea and waging a devastating 
war on the eastern side of Ukraine called the Donbas, Russia has 
severely violated the terms of this foundational security agreement.
  Lest we forget, Russia retained its nuclear arsenal, and their 
weapons remain aimed at us, the United States of America, and our NATO 
allies in Europe.
  The list of violations goes on. The basket one provisions of the 
Helsinki Accords, which the Soviet Union signed in 1975, along with the 
United States, Canada, and more than 30 European countries, as well as 
bilateral agreements that the Russian Federation signed with Ukraine in 
1997, have effectively been thrown to the wayside.
  In addition, Russia's forcible annexation of Crimea and sponsorship 
of a hot war in Ukraine's east since 2014 violates numerous United 
Nations agreements that Russia, the Ukraine, the United States, and 
other countries have signed going back to the organization's founding 
in 1945.
  While it would be convenient to only blame Russia for the 
destabilization of this region, I must say, President Trump's recent 
illegal block of more than $391 million in military aid to Ukraine was 
not only a blow to Ukrainian security and to its new president, but to 
our own.
  Russia on the march does not serve the security interests of the 
United States. The United States and NATO have a vital interest in 
stopping the Kremlin's aggression in Ukraine. That Trump did so, in 
denying military assistance, in delaying military assistance to 
Ukraine, in pursuit of a personal political agenda for 2020, makes it 
not only a betrayal of U.S. security interests but, also, a legal 
issue.
  It looks like just the sort of perversion of the justice system that 
Ukraine has suffered for decades.
  To date, there are no records detailing President Trump's or his 
administration's official secret meetings and phone calls with Russian 
President Putin and his top lieutenants. There is no documentation to 
date on why President Trump lifted sanctions on key Putin oligarchs and 
supporters.
  If records exist, they, I hope, have not been unlawfully squirreled 
away somewhere by senior White House staff, similar to actions alleged 
in the September 2019 whistleblower complaint.
  It is clear that Putin has been at war with Ukraine to restore its 
domination in that neighborhood. The United States should do nothing to 
make it easier. Tragically, it appears President Trump is accommodating 
and, perhaps, abetting him.
  It is no wonder that our current the President was Putin's preferred 
candidate in 2016 and remains so for 2020.
  Now, Paul Manafort, President Trump's 2016 campaign manager, sits in 
Federal prison right now for tax evasion, but his crimes are much 
worse.

                              {time}  1715

  He took millions of dollars, millions of dollars to lobby for the 
pro-Russian, anti-American, Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, who 
he mentioned earlier, whose own people drove him out the country.
  Yanukovych personally took his orders from Putin, who personally 
directed Russia's interference in U.S. elections and ordered the war in 
Ukraine.
  Take Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal lawyer. He has been 
carrying out a shadow foreign policy campaign, at the Trump 
administration's behest, to undermine their political rivals and boost 
the President's reelection.
  Recently, it was confirmed that Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy 
Giuliani, turned to Manafort, who is sitting in jail, for advice in his 
efforts to fabricate falsehoods on Vice President Joe Biden. The 
President and Giuliani even enlisted the support of U.S. Government 
officials in this scheme, co-opting U.S. taxpayer dollars for personal 
political gain.
  When the United States Ambassador to Ukraine refused to aid and abet 
their plot, President Trump purged the highly respected U.S. 
Ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, who dutifully served our country with 
distinction throughout her adult life. During her service, Ukraine 
successfully carried out two democratic elections during a time of war 
and significant duress and made enormous progress on its anticorruption 
efforts.
  Ambassador Yovanovitch's steady and principled vision, steeped in a 
long tradition of U.S. diplomatic excellence, was exactly what was 
needed to shepherd the Ukrainian people along the jagged path toward 
democratic reform.
  Ambassador Yovanovitch represented the United States at the highest 
levels of her career in other countries facing similar challenges--
Armenia, for one, and Kyrgyzstan--under Republican and Democratic 
administrations. She served Presidents in both parties. It is, indeed, 
rare for a member of the Foreign Service to serve as an ambassador, let 
alone three times in very dangerous places. This is a true testament to 
her diplomatic seasoning, from which I believe our President could 
learn something.
  Tragically, the purging of Ambassador Yovanovitch is but the surface 
of the contempt that this White House and some of my Republican 
Congressional colleagues have treated public servants who place their 
lives at risk serving the American people's love of liberty, day in and 
day out.
  President Trump, let the record show, who dodged service in the U.S. 
military, seems to have no understanding of the value of our 
transatlantic alliances and at what cost they have been won and built. 
They are the single most important guarantor of our security and 
freedom. America needs friendly allies who share our democratic values 
and believe in the rule of law.
  Recently, we have learned that while the Trump-appointed U.S. 
Ambassador to the European Union should have been focused on repairing 
relations with Europe, as our own President has embarrassed European 
Presidents and leaders publicly, the Ambassador to the European Union 
found himself in Ukraine, arranging meetings to conduct opposition 
research on President Trump's political opponents.
  It cannot be overstated just how much the actions of our President 
and Rudy Giuliani have undermined U.S. strategic interests and the 
progress Ukraine has made to strengthen its democracy and deter Russian 
aggression.
  Imagine how the young new President of Ukraine felt when the 
President of the United States said to him that the military aid that 
was due to have been dispensed in the middle of this summer from the 
United States would actually be held until that President would do our 
President a favor related to his own reelection. Wow.
  For the Trump-led minions, our government does not serve the people. 
Rather, unfortunately, it is serving him.
  While we continue to seek cooperation with the Trump administration 
to help our own people here at home in so many ways--the cost of 
prescription drugs, trying to get an infrastructure bill passed in the 
House and the Senate, trying to deal with corruption in our own 
political system--Congress must investigate these deeply troubling 
episodes abroad. The Constitution demands that we conduct our affairs 
in a constitutionally mandated role of oversight and the impeachment 
inquiry, which is ongoing. We must ascertain to what extent the 
President and his advisers abused their power and held up critical 
military aid to Ukraine for their own political gain.
  Thus far, the President's defense has been complete resistance, not 
providing the materials necessary for a full congressional 
investigation in what seems to be an ongoing campaign to intimidate 
State Department officials from testifying before Congress, which 
really means before the American people.
  The American people have a right to know the truth. This is an open 
society. We don't need stonewalling from this administration.
  We should ask the President what he has to hide. The American people 
know the difference between truth and fiction.
  Mr. Speaker, what a historic defeat for liberty it would be if the 
West were to squander the sacrifices of the United

[[Page H8187]]

States, Ukraine, and our allies by allowing Putin to succeed in his 
sinister mission.
  Despite President Trump's negligence, the United States Congress 
remains laser-focused on the threat from Russia. It is serious, and it 
is real.
  While Ukraine fights for its very existence, the United States 
Congress and freedom-lovers everywhere must continue to support Ukraine 
through military aid, programs to fight corruption, and the development 
of civil society, which the American people do so well.
  Congress must get to the bottom of President Trump's effort to 
withhold vital defense aid to Ukraine. She is facing a mortal enemy. 
This is liberty at stake in our lifetimes. Will we meet the challenge?
  The abuses of power outlined in the whistleblower complaint 
underscore the danger that President Trump's decisions pose to American 
national security and democracy itself. The American people must learn 
to what extent the President solicited interference from a foreign 
country in the upcoming 2020 U.S. Presidential election.

  From our own FBI, we have learned how many times Russia interfered in 
the last election and how many times then-candidate Trump contacted 
Russia during the campaign.
  I was thinking about that one night. If I were running for President 
of the United States, would I be in touch with Russia nearly 200 times? 
Think about that. How unusual is that?
  The American Presidency cannot be a tool for Russia to gain its 
insidiously destructive power. Above all, the American people deserve 
liberty first, last, and always in a political system free of malign 
foreign influence.
  Long live a free America, and may the people of Ukraine ultimately 
gain the freedom they so justly deserve.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to refrain from 
engaging in personalities toward the President.

                          ____________________