National Defence committee  Putin and his friends probably take out $15 billion to $25 billion a year from the state companies. This is probably the biggest theft ongoing by a very small group we have seen. This means that they're completely focused on their own money.

National Defence committee  Lots of things have been done. Ambassador Herbst said it in the beginning. We have had a cut in public expenditures of about one-tenth of GDP. We have seen a cut in payroll taxes by half to now 22%, which means that people are showing their incomes to a much greater extent. We ha

National Defence committee  The police, I don't think, is a very successful reform, unfortunately. The problem here is that the patrol police, which Canada also supported, was run by the first deputy interior minister. It has to be the minister who does it and who's fully vested in it. It has to come from t

National Defence committee  Not quite, but they have been whittled down, and are not where they—

National Defence committee  Yes, this is not one of the successes. What we are seeing now is.... I sit on the board of Ukrainian Railways, a company of 260,000. We are five foreigners out of seven people on the supervisory board. There are, so far, five of the big state companies that have these and three

National Defence committee  Let me respond to your previous question about Donbass. Occupied Donbass today is a real hellhole. Half the population, which was almost five million, has fled, two-thirds to Ukraine and one-third probably to Russia. Essentially all industry is standing still. Donetsk has an el

National Defence committee  If I may continue there, private Russians have about $800 billion hidden abroad. Let's say that one-third of this wealth belongs to Putin and his cronies. It could be more. This money is their soft point. If you take this total amount, it's more than half of Russia's GDP. Today

National Defence committee  The European Union has in its fifth anti-money laundering directive now from this summer decided that all anonymous companies need to be revealed to law enforcement until the end of 2020. The U.K. Parliament has made such a decision also for the U.K. overseas territories. It's th

National Defence committee  I think the economy is going nowhere. It will be stagnant as long as this situation continues. I don't think Putin will choose anything else. Russia has not had real economic growth since 2009. There has been an average growth rate of about a half of a per cent per year. This is

National Defence committee  An old friend of mine, who was the deputy minister for foreign affairs in Russia, has said that Russia has refused to become a junior partner of the United States; therefore, it has become a junior partner of China. Russia is very junior in all regards in relation to China. Think

National Defence committee  Let me add on the economic side, Russia does not have the economic might to do everything it does now. Its military expenditures have increased in real terms from 3.3% of GDP in 2008 to 5.3% of GDP in 2016, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which

National Defence committee  Something that is very effective and where Canada has played a big role is education. Ukraine today has tens of thousands of young Ukrainians with western education, mainly from Poland and followed probably by Germany, but also from Canada and the United States. I think this is

National Defence committee  I would say that what has really been successful has been transparency. Ukraine has introduced e-declarations of all assets of more than $100,000. Officials—so all parliamentarians, all ministers, all ministerial staff—have to declare what they have. They have declared an amazing