Thank you for coming here.
Garry Kasparov appeared before this committee a few months ago. I don't know whether he said it publicly, but he certainly said privately to me that the approach of the west and other nations is like everyone playing chess while Putin is playing poker. Until you understand that he's playing poker, you're probably not going to understand how he approaches this.
It makes perfectly good sense in the sense that Russia is nothing other than an organized kleptocracy, with Putin at the centre and spreading out through the oligarchs. To wit your comment that all the NGOs are defunded and therefore there is no alternative voice, indeed, anybody who purports to provide an alternative voice ends up in hospital, or worse.
In light of its being, if you will, a criminal organization, how is it that you can expect your proposals of dialogue and security arrangements, etc., to work unless you have a very robust western reaction to what Mr. Putin is doing?