Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Professor Applebaum, first, let me congratulate you on having recently joined Johns Hopkins University as a senior fellow.
Professor, over the past decade we've seen what I call the Schroederization of key members of Europe's old-guard political elites. Politicians and ex-politicians corrupted by Russian billions act for the economic and geopolitical interests of Russia, as in the case of Nord Stream creating western hydrocarbon and economic dependencies.
Now we see an evolving new stage of this verse in Russian hydrocarbon money flows, and the nurturing and financing of enemies within—far right-wing, vast groups in central and western European countries that see liberal democracy in the EU itself as the enemy. It takes the form of significant loans to political parties, such as Le Pen's National Rally and material media support to candidates of Germany's AfD. In fact, in an article in January, you referenced Bundestag member Markus Frohnmaier, who the Kremlin called, in a leaked document, “our own absolutely controlled MP in the Bundestag”. Financing the staging of terrorist attacks in Europe against minorities, as happened in the fire bombing of a Hungarian cultural centre in Ukraine, has been exposed as having been done by Polish white supremacists paid by an AfD staffer in the German Bundestag using Kremlin money.
Recently, you and some of Europe's most important writers and intellectuals published an open letter in the Guardian sounding the alarm against the, and I'll quote it, “arsonists of soul and spirit who...want to make a bonfire of our freedoms”. The letter makes direct reference to May's European elections.
Can you tell us what's at stake in these upcoming elections?