Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is an honour for me as well to appear before the committee. I do want to pay tribute to the steps your government has taken in response to the crisis in Ukraine involving Russia and also your interest in holding this hearing. We appreciate it very much.
The democratic community of the nations, I would argue, has never faced a graver threat since the end of the Cold War, and we might even have to go back as far as the Cuban missile crisis to find something which I think is as much of a threat as we are seeing unfold with Putin's Russia and the invasion and annexation of Crimea. Now it's the threats we see in the eastern parts of Ukraine, but also beyond the borders of Ukraine: the threats that Kurt mentioned with Moldova and Transnistria; the problems that Russia is able to stir up in Latvia with its ethnic Russian population, as well as in Estonia. In the latter two cases we're talking about countries that are members of NATO, that would invoke article 5 should the situation get uglier than what we've seen so far.
I would agree with Kurt when he said that so far Putin has not seen enough disincentive to stop the kind of behaviour in policies and actions that he has engaged in. I would also say it is now a mistake on the part of the west to withhold any further sanctions and make them conditional on Russian troop movements across into Ukraine's eastern and southern borders.
The point should be to pre-empt any possibility that Putin would send forces across the border into further parts of Ukraine, not to react to that step should it happen. So I would argue that the west needs to go forward and as soon as possible with what we call stage three sanctions that would include more individuals close to Putin. It would include state-owned enterprises, Russian banks. Start going after the Russian economy itself. I think anything short of that is unlikely to get Mr. Putin's attention.
Let me offer, if I may, a few thoughts about Putin's Russia, because I think that is central to what we're talking about, and about how to respond to the threat that Putin's Russia poses, and then how we should be helping Ukraine. I'll try to complement what Kurt said because I agree with virtually everything that he had offered.
Vladimir Putin, I would argue, oversees a thoroughly corrupt authoritarian regime and also combines a paradoxical if not dangerous combination of paranoia and insecurity along with arrogance, assertiveness, and self-confidence. We saw this paranoia really come to the fore after the colour revolutions starting in Georgia in 2003, and then in Ukraine in 2004.
Then if we look to events in the Arab world in 2011, Putin once again got rather spooked by these popular movements that were calling for and demanding better governance, transparency, rule of law, dignity, respect for human rights, all of those concepts alien to the system of government that Putin has put in place in Russia.
Fast forward to November 2013 on through to today and we see what has been happening in Ukraine as a further challenge to Putin, not only to his efforts and goals to try to establish an economic union, a Eurasian economic union, but also as a model for Slavic people demanding a more transparent, accountable government based on rule of law. That is a threat not only for the kind of government Putin would like to see in Kiev, but it also could pose a threat to Russia itself should Russians decide, if Ukrainians can do that and demand that, then shouldn't they be demanding the same thing from their own government?
The irony is that Putin has justified his actions in Crimea by saying he's going to the defence of Russian-speaking populations there. In reality, Putin shows no interest or concern for the welfare of Russians inside Russia itself; so he only uses this excuse for politically expedient purposes in order to fabricate a reason for sending Russian forces in. Putin, we have to remember, thinks in zero-sum terms, and what is good for Ukraine or what is good for the west must ipso facto be bad for Russia and bad for him. That's why he tries to block efforts by Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and other countries to westernize and democratize, because he sees those trends and those movements as a threat to what he's trying to establish in Russia itself.
His foreign policy, I would argue, is in many ways an extension of his domestic politics.
Essentially, he tries to justify his way of governing in Russia by perpetuating the absurd notion that the west, particularly the U.S., is a threat to Russia.
If we look at the reality, Russia has the most secure, stable borders with those countries, namely, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, and Poland, that are members of NATO and members of the EU. Therefore, NATO enlargement really does not pose any threat whatsoever in real concrete terms to Russia, though Putin likes to perpetuate the psychology that it does.
Let's also not forget that while I've been talking a lot about Putin, Viktor Yanukovych also deserves a lot of blame for what happened in Ukraine.
I was there in Ukraine for both the January and February 2010 elections. He was elected democratically, but a democratically elected leader is not endowed with permanent legitimacy. I would argue that over the months and years that Yanukovych served, he forfeited that legitimacy through massive corruption on a scale much greater than we had seen in Ukraine in the past, through unconstitutional moves, and then not least by using force against peaceful protestors as early as November 30 and December 1 last year, and then of course with the killing of close to 100 people in February this year.
How should the west respond? I do give credit to the west for imposing sanctions in a rather short period of time. Ratcheting up the sanctions has been helpful. But I also agree with Kurt when he points out that we can't simply be in reactive mode; we actually have to be proactive and try to pre-empt the aggression and assertiveness that we've seen from Putin. That's why I feel it is important to move ahead now with more sanctions, and not simply to wait for Russian forces to trip a wire by crossing into Ukrainian territory.
I would say that the Russian economy is vulnerable to tough hard-hitting sanctions. We've seen the ruble fall and the stock market drop, and we've seen capital flight reach a level beyond all of last year's numbers, estimated at some $70 billion. Russia is much more integrated in the global and western economies than it has been in the past, and therefore, it is much more vulnerable and exposed to tough measures by the west.
I do commend Canada, the United States, and the EU for what they have done, but they need to do a lot more and they need to do it now.
Last, there is of course the issue of helping Ukraine. Aside from the measures that Kurt has identified, I would argue that there are a few issues we need to keep a focus on.
First, we should continue the policy of non-recognition of Russia's annexation of Crimea. We should not simply accept it as a fait accompli and think there is nothing we can do about it. We took this position with Russia's absorption of the Baltic States in the 1940s, and it turned out to be the right position. We should not simply write off Crimea and say that all is lost.
We need to move as quickly as possible with disbursing funds to help Ukraine's poor economic situation. I am heartened to see the fast progress in negotiations between the IMF and Ukraine and also by western governments in providing assistance.
I would say that it's equally important to help Ukraine recover the estimated tens of billions of stolen assets that Yanukovych and his circle took from the country.
It's also important to help Ukraine with energy reforms, and also for the west itself to re-examine its energy dependence on Russia, which I tend to think is exaggerated and can be rather quickly changed.
We should look out for the welfare of the Crimean Tartars and the ethnic Ukrainians in Crimea itself. Essentially we have close to 800,000 people in Crimea who have been disenfranchised as a result of Russia's annexation of Crimea, and their welfare is, I think, something we should keep on our radar screens.
We should insist that May 25 be the date of presidential elections in Ukraine. There are efforts both inside Ukraine by certain political forces and by Russia to postpone these elections so that Russia can argue that there continues to be, in its mind, an illegitimate government in Ukraine. May 25 is the date that has been targeted for elections. That's when elections should be held. We should be doing everything we can to help Ukraine conduct an election that will be deemed free and fair so that they can have a legitimately elected president leading them into the future.
We should also work with independent media in Ukraine and with civil society groups, all of whom have played a really key role in developments in the past few months and even in the past few years. When all hope looked lost, I would argue that civil society in Ukraine really stepped up and showed that it is a very powerful force in the country.
Last, I would say that we need to do everything we can to assist development of real democratic institutions in Ukraine so that the country does not squander yet another opportunity to move in a more positive direction. We saw this after the Orange Revolution of 2004, when the orange forces blew an opportunity to really solidify Ukraine in a more democratic, westernized direction. We have to do everything we can to make sure Ukrainians don't miss yet another opportunity.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, it's remarkable to me that so many Ukrainians churn down the streets in Kiev and elsewhere throughout the country demanding democracy, dignity, rule of law, human rights, a western orientation, not to the exclusion of good ties with Russia. So many people did it again, and in the worst of all weather, after they did it almost a decade ago. That they continue to persevere and demand that for their country is impressive to me. It also makes it incumbent upon all of us in the west to help them as much as we can.
Thank you very much.