Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It’s a great honour for me to present testimony on Ukraine to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Commons. It is also great for our two capitals to be linked electronically.
Let me note also that at the beginning of the hearing we heard Canadian bipartisanship, and that's also reflected in the National Endowment for Democracy. Michael represents our Republican institute, but we also have a Democratic Party institute, and we're all working together on the issue of Ukraine.
The Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea, backed up by President Putin's revanchist doctrine enunciated in his appalling speech on March 18, threatens more than Ukraine’s security and territorial integrity. In the words of this week’s The Economist magazine:
...it poses a broader threat to countries everywhere because Mr Putin has driven a tank over the existing world order.
Vladimir Putin is not Adolf Hitler, and Russia today does not pose as ominous a threat as Nazi Germany did in 1938-39, yet the analyst Anders Aslund is correct in drawing deeply disturbing parallels between Putin's emotional, belligerent, and self-pitying speech in the Kremlin and Nazi Germany’s public discourse in the years leading up to World War II, in particular Hitler’s speech declaring war against Poland. These parallels include defining nationality by language and ethnicity and not by statehood, reserving the right to intervene to support ethnic Russians anywhere, emphasizing historical grievances, claiming that borders were drawn wrongly, charging that post-Soviet leaders betrayed Russia, justifying the annexation of Crimea with a rigged referendum, and holding the west at fault for the current crisis, just as Hitler blamed the duplicity of the United Kingdom and France for his attack on Poland.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, looking for ways to contain and not inflame the present crisis, prefers the analogy of 1914 to that of 1938. The implicit assumption here appears to be that the main danger is not a belligerent and revanchist power but the possible failure to anticipate and prevent the carnage that may lie ahead. However, the 1914 analogy also raises other troubling parallels between the world of 1914 and today: the complacency of affluent democracies, the assumption that economic globalization has overcome nationalist divisions, the belief that emerging global norms obviate the need for diplomacy backed up by military deterrence, and the instability created when, as George Weigel said in a recent lecture on the origins of the Great War, “the great powers that stand for order in the world [remain] idle while the forces of disorder gather strength.”
Some foreign policy realists have argued that Russia today is simply defending its interests within its own sphere of influence, but that argument completely sweeps aside the essence and the source of the Ukraine crisis. It did not come about because the European Union or the United States was challenging Russian interests in its “near abroad”, as Russia calls the countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union. It happened because millions of people in Ukraine rose up against a thieving kleptocracy and demanded accountability and the rule of law.
Are we to ignore the aspirations of the people of Ukraine or subordinate them to the demands of geopolitics? In his March 18 address, Putin charged that the Euromaidan movement was controlled by nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russophobes, and anti-Semites, who resorted to terror, murder, and riots to seize power. Here he shows himself to be a worthy successor to the Soviet rulers and a true product of the KGB, for he has elevated the big lie to the pinnacle of its political discourse. He has revived the Orwellian inversion of the truth as a tool to justify actions that are otherwise indefensible. He reminds us of what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said in his Nobel lecture in 1970, that anyone who has once proclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose the lie as his principle. Our task, Solzhenitsyn said then, is to defeat the lie.
That is what the Ukrainian Jewish leaders did on March 5, when they joined together to denounced Putin's “lies and slander” and declared, and this is a quote:
...we certainly know that our very few nationalists are well-controlled by civil society and the new Ukrainian government—which is more than can be said for the Russian neo-Nazis, who are encouraged by your security services.
The charge that the Euromaidan movement was led by Russophobes is also a lie. The Economist notes that many of those gunned down on Independence Square by Mr. Yanukovych's snipers were from the Russian-speaking east.
When the former Russian political prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky recently spoke on the Maidan to tens of thousands of Ukrainians, praising their popular and multi-ethnic revolution for freedom and dignity, the Ukrainians chanted in response, “Glory to Russia! Glory to Russia!”
Responding to the Russophobe charge, Timothy Snyder, the author of the famed study Bloodlands, which tells the story of the slaughter of some 14 million non-combatants by Stalin and Hitler before and during World War II, writes:
There is a country where millions of Russian-speakers lack basic rights. That country is the Russian Federation. There is a neighbouring country where tens of millions of Russian-speakers enjoy basic rights—despite the disruptions of a revolution and Russian invasion. That country is Ukraine.
Putin's real Ukraine problem, Snyder writes, is not Russophobia, but the fact that Ukraine is a country of “free people who speak freely in Russian, and might set an example one day for Russians themselves.” What Putin fears, in other words, is a Maidan in Moscow, and all of his demagogy, as well as his attempt to reimpose Russia’s rule in the near abroad, is an attempt to prevent that from happening. This fear lends a special irony to Putin's repeated pretension that Russia and Ukraine, as he said in his Kremlin speech, “are one people” and “we cannot live without each other”.
As we defend Ukraine's freedom, therefore, we cannot forget Russia's. We must remember that there is another Russia, the Russia of the exiled Khodorkovsky; the Russia of such courageous people as the late Andrei Sakharov, Anna Politkovskaya, and Natasha Estemirova; and the Russia of countless activists on the front lines of the struggle today, who are now in the greatest danger, with Putin, in his Kremlin address, having designated them as a fifth column and a disparate bunch of national traitors.
Putin has enjoyed a brief spike in popularity with his nationalist demagogy. But discontent in Russia is as great under Putin as it was in Ukraine under Yanukovych, and there is just as much hatred of corruption and bribe-takers. This discontent is likely to intensify as the consequences of Russia's and Putin's imperialist overreaching begin to be felt in the form of expanded budget deficits, shrinking foreign direct investment, and greater capital flight, which the exiled Russian economist Sergei Guriev notes could not come at a worse time since the Russian economy is now stagnating.
As we look to the future I believe we need to focus on three core priorities. The first is to do everything possible to help Ukraine take advantage of the Maidan-inspired breakthrough to become a successful democracy that fulfills the hopes for dignity and freedom for which so many Ukrainians have sacrificed and given their lives.
The most urgent need, in addition to providing the resources needed to stabilize the Ukrainian economy, will be to help Ukraine conduct free, fair, and peaceful presidential elections on May 25. This will involve support for both domestic and international monitors, for civil society groups promoting voter education and mobilization campaigns, and for independent media. Monitoring and countering the efforts by Moscow to delegitimize the new government by disrupting the election in the east and south of the country will also be extremely important.
It will also be necessary to strengthen Ukraine's defence capabilities and to begin the process of helping it diversify its energy resources.
The second priority is to deter further Russian aggression by strengthening NATO and the defence capabilities of front-line states and by bolstering Georgia and Moldova. Sanctions should be intensified by adding new names of Putin's economic and political allies to the list announced last week and ending Russian participation in the G-8 and its process of accession to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Such steps, in addition to their political and security benefits, will also give encouragement to Russia's democrats. One of them wrote to us last week asking us to convey his gratitude to the tougher sanctions that President Obama announced on Thursday. He conceded that in response to the sanctions Putin's repression could get even harsher. I quote, “harassment and maybe even arrests and violence await us. But it is still a great happiness to feel the real support of your country and your people. You can’t imagine how important it is! Because it provides hope: our struggle is not in vain.”
Indeed it isn't, and this raises the third priority, which is that all of us—the United States and its allies, parliamentarians, and members of civil society—must speak with a clearer voice on the issue of democracy and human freedom. For various reasons, including a preoccupation with solving difficult domestic problems, the world’s democracies have not been projecting a vision of what they believe in and stand for morally and politically.
What has happened in Ukraine is an opportunity to regain a sense of democratic purpose. This is not just because we face a more urgent security challenge than we did before Russia annexed Crimea and Putin enunciated his new doctrine. It also has to do with the example set by the Euromaidan, which was a movement for civic renewal and a declaration of dignity. That movement has really just begun, and very difficult tasks lie ahead, but if Ukraine succeeds in its historic quest for democracy, it will make possible something that was talked about in 1989 but never fully realized—a Europe whole and free. If that happens, we will all live in a much safer, a much freer, and a more peaceful world.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.