[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 100 (Thursday, June 13, 2024)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E623]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    ILLEGITIMATE WAR CRIMINAL PUTIN

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. JOE WILSON

                           of south carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 13, 2024

  Mr. WILSON of South Carolina. Mr. Speaker, having the extraordinary 
opportunity to visit the people of Russia beginning in 1990 from St. 
Petersburg to Moscow to Novosibirsk to Chelyabinsk (which is the Sister 
City of my state capital, Columbia), I believe facts reveal that war 
criminal Putin's presidency is nonbinding and not a direct or 
legitimate representation of the Russian people.
  The inspiring people of Russia deserve better than endless corruption 
and dictatorship. War criminal Putin has shown time and time again that 
he is willing to subvert the law and the will of the people by 
continuing to enrich himself and his cronies. The United States should 
make it clear that it will not recognize desperate attempts by Putin to 
cling to power and continue murderous activities, enriching oligarchs 
across the globe.
  I have introduced bipartisan resolutions with Tennessee Congressman 
Steve Cohen noting that the election irregularities that kept Putin in 
power made his continuation in office illegitimate. In March 2024, H. 
Res. 1087 stated that ``. . . any attempt by the President of the 
Russian Federation Vladimir Putin to remain in office beyond May 7, 
2024, shall warrant nonrecognition on the part of the United States.''
  Author, professor, and journalist David Satter, a former Financial 
Times Moscow correspondent and former senior fellow at the Hudson 
Institute, has documented the basis of overwhelming evidence, the 
September 1999 apartment bombings which brought Putin to power were 
carried out by the Russian security services, and that the Putin regime 
has been illegitimate since the first day of his accession to power.
  Satter's writings in National Review, August 17, 2016, and his book, 
The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia's Road to Terror and 
Dictatorship Under Yeltsin and Putin (Yale University Press), include 
the following analysis and perspectives:

       ``The bombings in the cities of Buynaksk, Moscow, and 
     Volgodonsk killed more than 300 persons and injured hundreds 
     of others. They were blamed without evidence on Chechen 
     terrorists and used as a pretext to start a new war against 
     the semi-independent Republic of Chechen. When Putin was put 
     in charge of the war his popularity soared, making it 
     possible for him to be elected as Russia's second post-Soviet 
     president in March 2000.
       ``It is clear, however, that what had taken place was the 
     greatest political provocation since the burning of the 
     Reichstag. In an almost unbelievable slipup, Gennady 
     Seleznev, the Speaker of the Duma and a close Putin 
     associate, announced in the Duma on September 13, 1999, that 
     a building in Volgodonsk had been blown up. The building that 
     had blown up on that day was in Moscow. A building in 
     Volgodonsk was blown up three days later, on September 16, 
     1999.
       ``On September 17, 1999, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, head of the 
     Liberal Democratic party at the time, demanded an explanation 
     from Seleznev on how he had known about the bombing in 
     advance. Zhirinovsky stood at the podium in the Duma and 
     shouted, ``Do you see what is happening in this country? You 
     say an apartment building was blown up on Monday and it 
     explodes on Thursday. This can be evaluated as a 
     provocation.'' Seleznev refused to give a response, and 
     Zhirinovsky's microphone was shut off while continuing to 
     insist on one.
       ``In March 2002, Noviye lnvestiya, a daily newspaper 
     published in Moscow, Russia, obtained the transcript of 
     Seleznev's words on September 13, 1999, Which were: ``Here is 
     a communication which they transmit. According to a report 
     from Rostov-on-Don today, this past night, an apartment house 
     was blown up in the city of Volgodonsk.'' When asked who 
     informed him of the bombing three days in advance, he 
     responded, ``Believe me, not [exiled oligarch Boris] 
     Berezovsky,'' who had accused Putin of orchestrating the 
     bombing. Seleznev then said that on September 13, 1999, he 
     was referring to an explosion in Volgodonsk on September 15, 
     1999, that was part of a war between criminal gangs and 
     caused no deaths. Even if Seleznev was referring to this 
     explosion on September 15, how was he aware of it two days in 
     advance, on September 13?
       ``On September 22, 1999, a fifth bomb was discovered and 
     quickly deactivated in the basement of a building in Ryazan. 
     The bomb was found to be planted not by Chechen terrorists 
     but by agents of the Russian FSB. On September 24, 1999, Head 
     of the FSB, Nikolai Patrushev, stated that the bomb was a 
     dummy, planted as part of a training exercise in Ryazan. 
     Although, the bomb tested positive for hexogen, the same 
     explosive used in the four successful apartment bombings in 
     Buynaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk. Not a single local 
     government agency in Rayzan, including the local branch of 
     the FSB, was informed in advance of the ``exercise,'' even 
     though Russian law on civil defense requires any exercise in 
     residential areas are planned and confirmed in advance with 
     local officials. For two days, local authorities in Ryazan 
     believed they were dealing with an attempted terrorist attack 
     while official Russian media continued to inform people that 
     an attempted terrorist attack had been averted and Russian 
     air force began the bombing of Grozny, the capital city of 
     the Chechen Republic.
       ``On February 2002, after three failed motions in the Duma 
     to investigate the Ryazan incident failed due to opposition 
     from the pro-Putin Unity party, a group of Duma deputies and 
     human-rights activists formed a public commission to discover 
     the truth on their own. Among these members were Sergei 
     Yushenkov, Yuri Shchekochikhin, Anna Politkovskaya, and 
     Alexander Litvinenko, who were all murdered by 2006. This 
     developed a fear in people to investigate or question the 
     September 1999 apartment bombings and how Putin came into 
     power.
       ``The terror regime in Russia began with the 1999 apartment 
     bombings, which served as a prelude for the attack on the 
     Beslan school with grenades and flamethrowers that killed 
     nearly 300 hostages, most of them children, in 2004, the 
     shooting down of the MH17 civilian airliner in 2014 and the 
     Russian war against Ukraine with its human wave attacks from 
     the Russian side and hundreds of thousands of casualties.
       Speaking the full truth about the Putin regime is the first 
     step toward ending the carnage'';

                          ____________________