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[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                       RUSSIA'S IMPERIAL IDENTITY

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

            COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE

                        U.S. HELSINKI COMMISSION

                     U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                           SEPTEMBER 18, 2024

                               __________

 Printed for the use of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in 
                                 Europe

                              [CSCE118-9]
                              
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]                              

                       Available via www.csce.gov
                       
                                __________

                   U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
56-809                     WASHINGTON : 2024                    
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------                        
                       
            COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE

                        U.S. HELSINKI COMMISSION

             U.S. HOUSE                      U.S. SENATE

                     JOE WILSON, South Carolina Chairman

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee Ranking		BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland Co-
    Member				 Chairman
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama		ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi 
EMANUEL CLEAVER II, Missouri		 Ranking Member
RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona			RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
RICHARD HUDSON, North Carolina		JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
MICHAEL LAWLER, New York		TIM SCOTT, South Carolina
VICTORIA SPARTZ, Indiana		JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
MARC A. VEASEY, Texas			TINA SMITH, Minnesota
					THOM TILLIS, North Carolina
                                     	SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island

                            EXECUTIVE BRANCH
                   Department of State - Erin Barclay
               Department of Defense - Celeste Wallander
                  Department of Commerce - Don Graves
                         
                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

                             COMMISSIONERS

Hon. Steve Cohen, from Ranking Member............................     1

Hon. Sheldon Whitehouse from Texas...............................     9

Hon. Victoria Spartz from Indiana................................    12

                         OTHER MEMBERS PRESENT

Hon. Mike Quigley from Illinois..................................    11

Hon. Jimmy Panetta from California...............................    14

                               WITNESSES

Botakoz Kassymbekova, Assistant Professor in Modern History, 
  University of Basel............................................     3

Timothy Snyder, Richard C. Levin Professor of History, Yale 
  University.....................................................     4

Philip Obaji Jr., Correspondent, The Daily Beast.................     6

Maria Vyushkova, Buryat Activist and Scientist...................     8

 
                       RUSSIA'S IMPERIAL IDENTITY

                              ----------                              

 COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN 
                                    EUROPE,
                          U.S. HELSINKI COMMISSION,
                                  HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
                                     Wednesday, September 18, 2024.

    The hearing was held from 2:34 p.m. to 3:40 p.m., Room 
2358-C, Rayburn House Office Building, Representative Steve 
Cohen [D-TN], Ranking Member, Commission for Security and 
Cooperation in Europe, presiding.

    Committee Members Present: Representative Steve Cohen [D-
TN], Ranking Member; Senator Sheldon Whitehouse [D-RI]; 
Representative Victoria Spartz [R-IN].
    Other Members Present: Representative Mike Quigley [D-IL]; 
Representative Jimmy Panetta [D-CA].
    Witnesses: Botakoz Kassymbekova, Assistant Professor in 
Modern History, University of Basel; Philip Obaji Jr., 
Correspondent, The Daily Beast; Timothy Snyder, Richard C. 
Levin Professor of History, Yale University; Maria Vyushkova, 
Buryat Activist and Scientist.

 OPENING STATEMENT OF STEVE COHEN, RANKING MEMBER, U.S. HOUSE, 
                         FROM TENNESSEE

    Co-Chair Cohen: [Sounds gavel.] The Helsinki Commission is 
called to order. I thank each of you for being here.
    I want to recognize myself for five minutes for opening 
remarks and then we will go into--do you want to make an 
opening statement? No? We will just go on.
    Russia has--we have got some people here from Helsinki I 
would like to recognize first, some Ukrainian parliamentarians. 
Where are you all? If you all would stand up, please.
    I appreciate you coming. Maybe we will meet later but I 
wanted you to be here for this hearing.
    I understand the Cultural Forces of the military from 
Ukraine are also here in Washington. Thank you for attending 
and for your contributions to preserving Ukrainian culture. 
Thank you.
    Russia has been an empire for most of its history. The 
empire of the czars created the Soviet Union and it made way 
for it, but it was only a temporary thing. They were not 
liberators but they were empire builders. Moscow's interests 
dominated the Soviet Union and the republics were valuable for 
what resources the government could extract from them.
    It was Russian culture and the Russian language that 
counted. That was it. It was celebrated, respected, and 
necessary to advance one's career in society. Entire ethnic 
groups in the Soviet Union like the Crimean Tatars in 1944 and 
North Caucasus people, the Chechens, and others, were deported 
to Siberia or other regions far from their native lands, many 
of them not surviving the journey.
    No one was ever really held to account for the crimes under 
Stalin and throughout the Soviet history. Stalin's policy of 
forced collectivization resulted in the Holodomor famine in 
Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 and I believe, if I am correct, this 
manmade famine also touched southern Russia and Kazakhstan, and 
they suffered as well. Five million people totally died of 
starvation during that time across the USSR. The majority were 
in Ukraine.
    This was also a time when Soviet power was going after 
intellectuals, writers, artists, and others. In fact, Stalin's 
reputation in Russia these days has received a boost from 
Putin's patriotic version of history, which he twists to 
justify his regime's crimes.
    Though Russia's political ideologies have changed over 
centuries of empire, the fundamentals are the same--internal 
repression of minority groups and external aggression toward 
countries that refuse to bow to the Kremlin.
    Ukraine has borne the brunt of Russia's imperial rage. 
However, Putin's need for domination persists in its military 
and psychological operations against Russian neighbors and 
discrimination toward any and many colonized nationalities and 
ethnic groups.
    We will also hear today how Russia is operating in Africa 
to spread anti-Western and pro-Russian propaganda while 
committing atrocities against the local populations. The United 
States has its own troubled past of colonization, of course, 
and oppression but, thankfully, we live in a country where we 
can openly acknowledge that, discuss our history, and get 
better, and we get closer to being a more perfect union. We 
still have a ways to go.
    In Russia, there is no attempt to have a more perfect 
union, only a more perfect Putin, and there is no such thing as 
a perfect Putin. He is perfectly reprehensible and disgusting.
    In Russia so many who have suffered go unheard because 
truth is silenced and because the voices of Moscow have usually 
been the loudest of the entire region. That is why it is so 
important to listen to the stories of historically marginalized 
and colonized people. We will hear some of these stories today 
from witnesses.
    We will hear from Dr. Botakoz Kassymbekova, an assistant 
professor of modern history at the University of Basel, south 
Switzerland. Next is Philip Obaji, a correspondent for The 
Daily Beast, followed by Dr. Timothy Snyder, whom I know from 
television. He is a TV star and I always hear him. [Laughter.] 
He also goes to Yale and--or, he teaches at Yale. I do not know 
if he went there or not. Where would you go?
    Mr. Snyder: I went to Brown.
    Co-Chair Cohen: Brown. Okay. Well, that is--the same 
league. [Laughter.] Different pew. Same church, different pew. 
Finally, Dr. Maria Vyushkova. Yes, thank you. Buryat indigenous 
rights and anti-war activist and researcher.
    I am here today because Mr. Wilson, who is the chair, is 
not up to--is under the weather a bit so I am taking his stead, 
and we will recognize whoever wants to go first.
    Dr. --thank you.

   TESTIMONY OF BOTAKOZ KASSYMBEKOVA, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN 
              MODERN HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF BASEL

    Mr. Kassymbekova: Botakoz Kassymbekova.
    Co-Chair Cohen: Yes, I have done it once.
    Mr. Kassymbekova: Thank you. Thank you for the invitation, 
dear ladies and gentlemen, and--
    Co-Chair Cohen: Let me say that you are recognized for five 
minutes and there will be--
    Mr. Kassymbekova: Yes.
    Co-Chair Cohen: --a red light--the yellow light will say 
you have got one minute to go and a red light says you are 
supposed to finish.
    Mr. Kassymbekova: Right. Until recently, colonialism seemed 
to be a thing of the past. We thought that the idea that one 
nation is entitled to dominate and exterminate other nations, 
robbing the ability to decide on their future, was gone. Who 
would have thought that it would be the Russian nation, which 
proclaimed itself the global leader of communism and anti-
colonialism in the 20th century, would lead one of the most 
brutal colonial conquests in the 21st century?
    If it was once possible to argue that it was missionary 
communism against capitalism that led the Russian nation to 
expansionism, this explanation is no longer sufficient. The 
truth is that Russian colonialism has a long history that dates 
five centuries back.
    The Russian nation had 500 years to craft a story of 
exceptionalism, to grab and rob lands, suppress nations, and 
create the largest land empire in the world. The difference 
between Russian colonialism from other European empires, 
however, is that its metropole never democratized or engaged in 
self-critical enlightenment. This means that its colonize knew 
no mercy.
    Communism itself thrived on Russian colonialism. When the 
Russian tsarist empire collapsed after World War I in 1917 and 
its numerous colonized nations like Ukraine, Finland, Latvia, 
Georgia, Estonia, Armenia, Poland, Bessarabia, Belarus, 
Kazakhs, and Buryats, and many others proclaimed independence 
or autonomy, communist Moscow brutally reconquered most of 
them, killing at least 10 million people.
    In the new communist empire, Bolsheviks proclaimed the 
Russian nation to be the superior one. Consider this fact. In 
their national anthems, non-Russian colonized nations had to 
praise and thank the Russian people for the supposedly bright 
life under the communist dictatorship.
    I was one of the children in Soviet Kazakhstan who had to 
sing an anthem with the words "To the great Russian people we 
say big thank you. "I sang it without knowing that 40 percent 
of Kazakhs died in the 1930s because of the salvation inflicted 
on the Kazakh people by Moscow. Moscow stole the cattle of 
Kazakh nomads, knowingly leaving millions to starvation. My 
grandmother's family perished in that hunger and she was 
forcibly taken to a Russian orphanage where 60 percent of 
Kazakh children died.
    There, she was taught to forget her language, and her 
parents, and to praise the Russian nation for communism. As you 
know, in the Ukrainian case 4 million people died and today 
Ukrainian children are taken to Russia. Russian colonialism was 
historically based on the strategy of killing, deporting, and 
terrorizing the local population, Russifying them, and settling 
the territories with the Russian people.
    Consider this quote from a Russian colonial officer about 
the strategies of conquest in the northern Caucasus in the 
1860s. "The expulsion of half of the mountain people and the 
settlement with Russians, these were the war plan. The Russian 
population was not only to be the crowning glory of the 
conquest of the region; it was to become one of the main means 
of conquest."
    This strategy continued into the communist period. The 
Chechens, Crimeans, Tatars, and many others were killed and 
deported from their lands in the 1940s. Terrorized and 
forbidden to learn their languages, they were taught to praise 
the Russian nation instead.
    The Russian people when settling, accepting privileges, and 
listening to Soviet anthems, learned to think that the 
colonized land was theirs. As a result, in 1989 the last 
communist ruler, Mikhail Gorbachev, argued against lending 
independence to non-Russian nations which demanded independence 
because he said, and "The Russian people are that way."
    Although in 1991 communism collapsed, the Russian imperial 
identity did not. For many of us who experienced Russian 
colonialism firsthand, there were four lessons from the 20th 
century.
    First, the collapse of the Soviet Russian empire was a 
victory for humanity. Millions of people received the 
possibility to live in dignity, freedom, and the ability to 
decide their own futures. This would not have been possible 
under the Russian occupation.
    Secondly, although communism failed Russian colonialism did 
not. It was never questioned by Russian intellectuals, liberal 
or illiberal, its leaders, and by the world at large. However, 
we now know that it was not just communism that was 
incompatible with democracy, equality, and peace. In fact, it 
is Russian colonialism that is not.
    Thirdly, in 1991 Moscow argued that without this control 
the colonized nations would present a danger to the world. This 
was a colonial lie and today we know that it is a colonial lie. 
Out of all former Soviet republics, it is the Russian one that 
presents the most danger to the world.
    Finally, Russian colonialism, just as communism, is not 
reformable because it is a system based on ideology. Just like 
communism, it has no future. Unlike communism, it can collapse 
only if actively defeated.
    Thank you.
    Representative Panetta: Thank you, Doctor.
    Professor Snyder, please. Five minutes.

  TESTIMONY OF TIMOTHY SNYDER, RICHARD C. LEVIN PROFESSOR OF 
                    HISTORY, YALE UNIVERSITY

    Mr. Snyder: Okay. [Off mic, technical difficulties]--we are 
talking about a particular historical structure. For the last 
500 years of world history, the empire has been the dominant 
structure. The last hundred years or so have seen a 
contestation of that, of which the Russo-Ukrainian war is 
probably the latest continuation.
    [Off mic, technical difficulties]--a dominant center and 
exploited periphery. This very often corresponds to a dominant 
nation or a dominant group and exploited national minorities. 
[Off mic, technical difficulties]--empires do is to negate. 
They carry out policies, statements, and ideologies of 
negation. They deny--and this is true of history as well as of 
the present war--they deny the reality of other states. Other 
states are not real. An empire is real; other states are not. 
Other nations are not real. The dominant power or the dominant 
center of an empire is real but not other nations.
    According to this very brief summary, the Russian 
Federation of 2024 is very clearly an empire and its ideology 
is very clearly imperial. Russian elites say so themselves 
including in official foreign policy documents.
    Their idea is that empire has not been consigned to the 
past but that empire should continue, that the imperial moment 
goes on. The structure of the Russian Federation as well as the 
structure of how they fought this war is also imperial. The 
center in Moscow and Petersburg exploits a periphery--an Asian 
periphery--for its resources.
    [Off mic, technical difficulties]--minorities, first of 
all, including Buryats and poor people. The occupation has 
treated Ukrainians as an inferior people with no right to 
exist. Therefore, the structure.
    The theory of time is very present in this war. In this 
war, Mr. Putin says that Russia has the right to destroy 
Ukraine because something happened a thousand years ago. I will 
spare you the details but it does not get better if I give you 
the details. It just gets worse and stupider.
    The idea is that Russia is innocent because of something 
that might have happened to a Viking a thousand years ago and, 
therefore, can invade Ukraine. I have now given it more dignity 
than it deserves.
    That is the theory of time, right, because of that Russia 
has history laws that make it illegal to question the official 
version of history, and because of this theory of time anything 
that looks like Ukrainian culture, such as the representation 
we just had, is claimed not to have exist and thus we have 
imperial negation in practice.
    Inside occupied Ukraine the murder of local elites, the 
deportation of children for their Russification on the logic 
that there is no Ukraine anyway, the deliberate destruction of 
publishing houses, archives, and libraries, and I would note 
that historically the bandura playing which you just saw was 
treated as part of Ukrainian culture that did not exist in the 
Soviet Union and bandura players were executed.
    Which leads me to a very specific form of negation. Russia 
in this war is repeating very specific imperial practices of 
the Soviet Union and, indeed, of Nazi Germany while denying 
that those things ever happened, which is part of this larger 
notion of time.
    All right. Therefore, what does that mean for policy? I 
will make five very quick recommendations.
    Number one, myths of empire can only grow when nobody knows 
anything about history which, unfortunately, as a first 
approximation describes us.
    Number two, if we are going to be anti-imperial we also 
have to be reflective.
    As Representative Cohen suggested, if Americans are going 
to talk about anti-imperialism, they better be ready to talk 
about their own imperial past, or else no one in the Global 
South will take us seriously, and people from the Global South 
have to be brought into this conversation or it makes no sense.
    The third thing we need to say is that imperialism directly 
contradicts the basic foundations of the international legal 
order. It is not just some funny idea. It is counter to 
everything we take for granted and that brings us stability.
    Fourth, Americans who are against empire should be in favor 
of the European Union. The European Union is the way that 
European states have found another kind of political 
organization, a way to interact that is post-imperial and anti-
imperial.
    Fifth and, perhaps most important it is important to note 
that empires usually lose their wars. Empires usually lose 
their wars. Since 1945 the bigger country, the empire, has 
usually lost its wars.
    That means that we can expect or it would not be strange if 
Russia would lose its war, and then underneath that it should 
lose its war even if all you care about is Russia because the 
only way that empires in Europe have transitioned into becoming 
rule of law states is by losing their last imperial war.
    Therefore, an analysis of the history of the empire would 
lead you to the conclusion that doing what one can to help 
Russia lose this imperial war would be good not only for the 
people that Russia is oppressing and whose existence they are 
denying but also good for Russia itself.
    Thank you.
    Representative Panetta: Thank you.
    Mr. Obaji, please. Five minutes.

 TESTIMONY OF PHILIP OBAJI JR., CORRESPONDENT, THE DAILY BEAST

    Mr. Obaji: Thank you so much, members of the Commission. It 
is a huge privilege to be with you today and it is also a great 
honor for me to appear with Dr. Kassymbekova, Professor Snyder, 
and Dr. Vyushkova.
    Last year I wrote one of the most powerful stories 
published anywhere, an in-depth investigation on the operations 
of Russian paramilitaries in the Central African Republic 
following the death of Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin who, by 
the way, never said anything good about me.
    The account revealed how so-called Russian military 
instructors operating under the command of the Russian Ministry 
of Defense slaughtered dozens of people to secure access to a 
gold mine in the north of the CAR. That is short for the 
Central African Republic.
    Traveling from my home in Nigeria to Central Africa last 
December was not my first. I had spent years highlighting the 
plight of people maltreated and abused by Russian 
paramilitaries and that has not gone unnoticed by the Russians.
    In 2022 I became a target of the Wagner Group after 
exposing the wrongdoing of their mercenaries operating across 
Africa. Contacts told me that my photo had been circulating on 
chat groups used by locals recruited by Wagner, who have 
apparently denounced me as an obstacle to fighting extremism in 
the CAR and claimed that I am an agent of the West who should 
be arrested or killed.
    I traveled to the regions of the CAR where militias had 
previously attacked outsiders with slingshots, machetes, and 
guns. I was held for hours by rebels who initially accused me 
of attempting to spy on them.
    Days later on the border with Cameroon I was arrested, 
tortured, and detained overnight by Central African forces 
acting on the orders of Russian paramilitaries after soldiers 
saw me interviewing artisanal miners who were attempting to 
flee the country following attacks on their community by 
Russian paramilitaries. Soldiers beat me and confiscated my 
phone and camera.
    No amount of intimidation was going to stop me from 
continuing my investigation. After the soldiers released me I 
crossed into Cameroon, bought new equipment, and returned to 
the CAR to finish the work I had started.
    The attack by Russian paramilitaries on locals in the 
northwestern central African town of Koki in which at least 50 
villagers were killed became an obsession for me, all the more 
because the victims were ordinary people who had done nothing 
wrong.
    I managed to interview 16 witnesses to the attack. They all 
told me the same thing. Russian paramilitaries slaughtered 
their friends, colleagues, family members, and neighbors simply 
because the Russians wanted to secure access to Koki's gold 
mine.
    That was not all. In the middle of December 2023, I 
traveled to Bouar in the northwest of the CAR where I 
interviewed a dozen girls who told me Russian paramilitaries 
led them into a military base on the outskirts of town and then 
drugged and raped them before administering contraceptive shots 
and pills to them. A couple of other girls described to me how 
Russian paramilitaries held them at gunpoint on their farmlands 
and then took turns raping them right in front of their family 
members.
    In Mali, where I recently interviewed women raped and 
abused by Russian paramilitaries, the Wagner Group continues to 
operate in the country on behalf of Vladimir Putin's regime, 
helping government forces in central and northern Mali carry 
out raids and drone strikes that have killed scores of 
civilians including many children.
    Like in the CAR, Russian activities in Mali have 
exacerbated long-running lawlessness, corruption, violence, and 
human rights abuses with total impunity. Russia continues to be 
a primary purveyor of disinformation in Africa, sponsoring over 
80 documented campaigns targeting more than 22 countries.
    The United States has also been targeted. I recently found 
dozens of sponsored articles by pro-Russian media outlets in 
western Central Africa making claims like the largest--saying 
the largest park in the CAR has been mismanaged by Americans 
who have deployed rebels from Joseph Kony's Lord Resistance 
Army in the DRC to the Central African Republic.
    Finally, Russia has promulgated disinformation to undermine 
democracy in at least 19 African countries, contributing to the 
continent's backsliding on this front. From Africa, Russia is 
also targeting American democracy.
    I look forward to your questions and thank you for the 
privilege of testimony today.
    Representative Panetta: Thank you, Mr. Obaji.
    Dr. Vyushkova, please. Five minutes.

  TESTIMONY OF MARIA VYUSHKOVA, BURYAT ACTIVIST AND SCIENTIST

    Ms. Vyushkova: Thank you. It is a great honor to be 
testifying here at this hearing on behalf of Russia's 
indigenous activists.
    My research focuses on the impact of the Russian invasion 
of Ukraine on the indigenous people of Russia's north, far 
east, and Siberia. From the very first days of the 2022 Russian 
invasion of Ukraine, it has been reported that Russia's ethnic 
minorities are overrepresented both in the invasion forces and 
among the Russian side casualties.
    If we look at the top 10 Russia's regions by per capita 
death toll we will see that seven out of 10 are ethnic 
republics, or Okrugs, with the Asian republics of Tuva, 
Buryatia, and Altai at the very top of the list. The indigenous 
ethnic groups living in those regions are very significantly 
overrepresented among the Russian side war casualties with 
Telengits living in Altai showing 11.5 times greater per capita 
death toll compared to Russia's average.
    The small numbered indigenous peoples of the north, 
Siberia, and far east such as Telengits, Udege, Nganasan, and 
Chukchi are hit the hardest, the per capita death toll for 
those ethnic groups being much higher than even for Buryats or 
Tuvans.
    For instance, Nenets living in Nenets Autonomous Okrug, one 
of the most economically prosperous regions of Russia, do not 
benefit at all from the booming extractive industry there. 
Instead, it destroys the environment, threatening their 
traditional way of living. Nenets are very significantly 
overrepresented among the region's war casualties as well as 
among those who were specifically recruited from prisons.
    In September 2002, Vladimir Putin announced partial 
mobilization in Russia. The indigenous rights activist 
organizations such as Free Buryatia Foundation, Free Yakutia 
Foundation, and Batani Indigenous Foundation, received multiple 
reports of disproportional draft of indigenous men.
    Official documents show that Buryatia, my home region, was 
hit disproportionately hard by the mobilization. In Khabarovsk 
Krai and the Republic of Sakha Yakutia, the small-numbered 
indigenous peoples of the north were drafted more often than 
the rest of each region's population.
    In Khabarovsk Krai, the indigenous men were drafted almost 
three times more often than the nonindigenous population. 
According to the Batani Foundation, in one Nanai settlement, 
the authorities attempted to draft 100 percent of the adult 
male population. In the Udege settlement of Gvasiugi, they 
drafted 30 percent of adult men. Thus, whole indigenous 
cultures are at risk of disappearing within the next several 
decades.
    Russian legislation, ostensibly meant to exempt small-
numbered indigenous peoples from mandatory military service, 
totally fails to protect them. The fact that indigenous people 
of Russia's north, far east, and Siberia are overrepresented in 
the Russian invasion army has led to the formation of the 
warlike, bloodthirsty savage stereotype against the indigenous 
people, most notably against the Buryats, Tuvans, and the 
Nenets.
    Apparently, not just the death toll but also the moral 
burden of Russia's aggression against Ukraine was put 
disproportionately on the indigenous people. Unfortunately, 
such prominent public figures as Pope Francis, the head of the 
Catholic Church, started spreading this narrative making the 
indigenous people a potential target for hate crimes, 
especially given that some of us live in Ukraine or in other 
countries abroad.
    There were a number of war crime allegations against the 
Indigenous troops that turned out to be false, most notably 
about the Bucha massacre, which was falsely blamed on the 
ethnic Buryat troops. However, it has been established beyond 
any reasonable doubt that it was the paratroopers from the 
Russian city of Pskov, almost exclusively ethnic Russians, who 
were responsible for the Bucha massacre.
    However, the Buryats in Bucha myth still persists among the 
anti-war Russian public as well as in Ukraine and in the West. 
I think that for the Russian anti-war influencers, their 
motivation is obviously the desire to shift the responsibility 
away from the Russians.
    According to a recent study by Dr. Adam Lenton of Wake 
Forest University, the Russian public opposed to Putin's regime 
and sympathetic to liberal views tends to be significantly more 
xenophobic towards Russia's ethnic minorities than the society 
in general.
    This is a very alarming result, posing a question of 
whether the possible regime change would bring a better future 
for Russia's indigenous peoples.
    In conclusion, let us not forget that there are more than 
240 indigenous political prisoners in Russia. Please spread the 
message that in any future prisoner exchanges with Russia, they 
should not be overlooked. Thank you for your attention.
    Representative Panetta: Thank you, Doctor, and thanks to 
all of the witnesses for that very powerful testimony.
    There is a speaking order. I know the chairman normally 
asks questions. However, I am filling in for the chairman so I 
do not think it is appropriate that I go. Instead, I am going 
to turn it over to Senator Whitehouse for his five minutes of 
questioning based on a timing issue that he has and having to 
leave.
    Therefore, Senator, please. Five minutes.

STATEMENT OF SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, U.S. SENATE, FROM RHODE ISLAND

    Senator Whitehouse: That is very kind of you. Thank you. My 
questions will be for Professor Snyder.
    Thank you for being here, Professor. Good to see you. I 
would like to hear your comments on--something just vibrated 
over here that was not me--how the international dark money 
network supports corrupt oligarchies that produced Putin.
    He is now sort of the oligarch in chief. He either has them 
all in tow or he is had them killed or sent off or intimidated, 
and it looks to me like a colleague of yours, a historian, 
wrote about a clash of civilizations--that our clash of 
civilizations is between this kleptocratic oligarchy and 
representative democracy.
    Is that a context that is worth looking at what led to 
Putin's rise to power? That is the question. More a topic than 
a question.
    Mr. Snyder: No, that is excellent. There is, of course, an 
obvious connection between extractive empires and oligarchs or 
very wealthy people. Control of hydrocarbon resources as in the 
Russian Far East is quite a simple way for a few people, an 
individual, or a clan to become very wealthy.
    It is a simple extractive process. It can be--the territory 
can be controlled by force, and then, as in Russia and other 
hydrocarbon states, you see that one clan or one group--one 
family, as the Russians say--end up controlling all the wealth.
    Therefore, there is in this case a very direct connection 
between the processes described here and the power of Putin or 
whoever might succeed Putin so long as Russia is an extractive 
hydrocarbon regime.
    Of course, you are right that this is an international 
phenomenon and when so ever the wealth might arise if one is 
American or British or responsible for policy in a number of 
other states, one should be very concerned about the fact that 
there are not just loopholes but giant inviting windows through 
which international oligarchs can hold and launder their money.
    This is a subject beyond the borders of my own expertise 
but I think it is very important to note that international 
dark money networks exist because of us and not just because of 
the people that we are calling the bad guys.
    You are right, of course, as well that Putin's succession 
and rise to power involved a kind of parade of oligarchs with 
whom at first he was in some kind of agreement and then he 
showed by example, most prominently in the case of 
Khodorkovsky, who controlled precisely hydrocarbon resources, 
that anyone who was not with him was against him and would be 
treated as a criminal.
    Then there is a final connection, which is maybe the most 
interesting. Putin, as one of the richest men in the world, 
joins the other rich men in the world in having lots of very 
strange ideas about the future, and the very strange ideas that 
oligarchs have, Russian or otherwise, tend to bend us into 
conflicts which we might otherwise avoid.
    It is not healthy to think we are all going to go to Mars. 
It is not healthy to think we are all going to live forever. It 
is not healthy to think there is no Ukraine, which is Putin's 
particular oligarchical fantasy.
    Senator Whitehouse: It is not healthy to think that Russia 
is an imperium awaiting to manifest itself well.
    Well, thank you very much. One of the folks I traveled with 
a lot and learned a good deal from was my colleague in the 
Senate and quite a dear friend, John McCain, I guess I will 
summarize with his famous quote about Russia, which is that it 
is a gas station that is run by a mafia that happens to have an 
army, and I think you have summarized that very well, Professor 
Snyder.
    Therefore, thank you and thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Co-Chair Cohen: Thank you, Senator.
    I think Mr. Quigley has to go somewhere and since I have 
been somewhere I am going to let you go somewhere. [Laughter.]

      STATEMENT OF MIKE QUIGLEY, U.S. HOUSE, FROM ILLINOIS

    Representative Quigley: We are all going somewhere.
    Doctor, help me. Maybe I missed it but your facts, while 
compelling, lead to conclusions that I was waiting for you to 
state, right? At least one of them has to be that this war has 
many advantages for Putin.
    One is he can, as you described, use it as an assault on 
indigenous people but also fight a war of attrition seemingly 
much longer than Ukraine might be able to because he can treat 
people he does not care for like cannon fodder.
    However, would you extrapolate on those and anything else 
that I might be missing about how Putin's choice and how he is 
conducting this war reflects your facts?
    Ms. Vyushkova: Yes. All right. I strongly believe that 
Putin's regime just--Putin is trying to reduce the political 
risks for himself by conducting this war at the expense of the 
vulnerable discriminated groups no one cares about including--
    Representative Quigley: [Off mic]--a lot more pushback if 
there were other groups he was drawing into--
    Ms. Vyushkova: Exactly. Exactly. For instance, such groups 
include migrants, prisoners, convicts recruited from prison, 
homeless people even, and, unfortunately, ethnic minorities are 
one of those discriminated and disadvantaged groups. Therefore, 
it is just politically safer to conduct this war at the expense 
of--disproportionately at the expense of ethnic minorities.
    However, I do not think that it is a deliberate ethnic 
cleansing policy, so to speak. Therefore, it is just the result 
of the indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities being a 
discriminated group so it is just politically safer for the 
local authorities, for instance, to draft the indigenous men 
three times more often in Khabarovsk Krai, for instance, and 
actually 80 percent of the indigenous men from Khabarovsk Krai 
who ended up fighting in this war 80 percent of them were 
drafted against their will actually and only 20 percent went 
there voluntarily.
    However, unfortunately, ethnic minorities especially the 
small numbered Indigenous nations of the north and far east are 
so discriminated against, and their social status is so 
significantly lower than their Russian counterparts that it is 
totally politically safe to do whatever they want like draft 
100 percent of adult men from a Nanai settlement.
    Representative Quigley: If anyone else would like to 
comment on that.
    Mr. Snyder: If I could just come in briefly on the premise.
    Of course, it is right that Putin's ability to treat much 
of his population or the population of occupied Ukraine as he 
wishes is an advantage in some sense. It does not, though, mean 
that his troops are motivated the way that troops on the other 
side are. It is also a disadvantage to be coercive.
    Zelensky and the other side have the advantage that many of 
the people in the army are there because they have some notion 
of why they are there and they are defending their homeland. 
Then just as a factual matter, I would point out that--and 
perhaps you would want to comment on this--but as a factual 
matter, you do eventually start having to draft people from the 
big cities and start having to draft the Russians, which means 
that the longer the war goes on the harder it might become to 
just continue to carry out what you are calling the war of 
attrition because the longer it goes on the more Russians--the 
more middle-class people, the more city people--you do have to 
bring into the army and they are getting to that point now.
    Mr. Kassymbekova: Yes. I would like to add that there is a 
huge national awakening among the non-Russian nations within 
the Russian Federation. They are nations--21 nations. They have 
their own parliament. They have their own constitutions. They 
are not ethnic minorities.
    There is a huge awakening also because many of them have 
left Russia. They went to places like Kazakhstan where they 
say, oh, we did not know that one can actually live in one's 
own republic with dignity and the ability to exercise one's 
culture and learn one's language.
    Therefore, the political geography is changing now. There 
are very strong voices for the independence of these nations 
and we need to look at them, and they are not only ethnic 
minorities. There are real nations within the Russian current 
empire.
    Representative Quigley: Thank you.
    Co-Chair Cohen: Do you yield? Mr. Quigley yields.
    Ms. Spartz, you are recognized for five minutes.

     STATEMENT OF VICTORIA SPARTZ, U.S. HOUSE, FROM INDIANA

    As we know, ethnic cleansing, oppression, and racist 
policies of superiority have been in Russia for centuries, you 
know. However, my question for Dr. Vyushkova, do you think the 
ethnic people, like, realize that--you know, that they have 
been oppressed?
    I mean, do you see on the ground they have an understanding 
that they have been screwed in resources and money which 
oligarchs have taken from them? They live pretty miserably 
poor. Is there that understanding on the ground?
    Ms. Vyushkova: Yes, I think there is and actually the 
revival of ethnic activism and indigenous rights, activism in 
Russia is a very important sign, I believe, and there are a lot 
of decolonial activists and indigenous rights activists and 
ethnic anti-war activists from Russia but most of them, 
obviously, were forced to leave Russia.
    However, this war, of course, changed our understanding of 
our identity. Probably not the majority of our nations but many 
people just realized that this type of imperial aggression 
against Ukraine has very similar roots as how--to how we are 
treated inside Russia, especially the fact that ethnic 
minorities were so much overrepresented among the war 
casualties. Like, they had to--the war death toll was put 
disproportionately hard on their shoulders. This also made 
people realize that, yes, they are actually exploited subjects, 
as Professor Snyder put it.
    I think there are very significant changes but probably 
they are not as fast as we would want them to be.
    Representative Spartz: Right. Right. Well, that ethnic 
cleansing happening right now in Russia it is very racist, and 
policies that they are doing it.
    Ms. Vyushkova: Right. Yes.
    Representative Spartz: They think that they are superior. 
They teach their kids they are superior to everyone--[laughs]--
including Ukrainians. You know, that is been taught, 
unfortunately, for generations, sadly, you know, even though 
they--a lot of them live a pretty bad life.
    Just my question is to Mr. Obaji. [Laughs.] You know, I can 
say other names better than yours but I will do my best. I 
think what is happening in Africa is disgraceful. It is awful 
what China and Russia are doing right now. I mean, it is just 
really, I mean, destroying the continent, taking advantage of 
resources, and really enslaving people. I mean, it is sad to 
see for me that the international community is not standing up 
more to see that and, unfortunately, a lot of American 
companies are afraid even now to go to Russia.
    Therefore, you know, China takes resources. Russia, you 
know, is the force there that, you know, with their military 
force now. What they are doing is awful, but have you seen any 
positive moves happening? I think what Afrika Korps are doing 
right now it is brutal, it is awful, and they have been doing 
it for a while.
    However, have you seen any positive things that people 
actually start realizing or some governments, or it is so 
corrupt and so bought and people afraid that it is just really 
in terrible shape? It is awful. Can you share any positive 
things happening in Africa right now that some of those 
governments are waking up?
    Mr. Obaji: Well, positive, if you say in terms of--if your 
question is positive in terms of, you know, Russia being 
present in Africa and whether or not some governments are 
seeing their presence as being positive the answer is yes if 
that is what you mean. Some countries, not all countries.
    Therefore, let me be clear. The Russians are mostly active 
in the Central African Republic, in Mali, in Burkina Faso, and 
in Niger but they have troops on the ground in the Central 
African Republic, in Mali, and recently we had--we saw about 
300 members of the Bear Brigade make it to Burkina Faso.
    The reason why they are able to have a field day in these 
countries is that to start with Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger 
own the military dictatorship and much of the rest of the world 
really has cut ties with these countries, even the sanctions by 
the African Union, sanctions by ECOWAS as the west African 
regional body, and also with the EU, and that has created an 
opening for the Russians to get there.
    In the Central African Republic for some reason, I do not 
even know why the West have completely looked away from that 
country and because that happened the Russians saw an opening 
to get involved.
    However, yes, corruption in these countries, in these 
administrations, have made it a lot easier for the Russians to 
act with impunity, for the Russians to carry out massacres, you 
know, in numbers that no one has ever seen before.
    Representative Spartz: Right. Hopefully, we will have 
better policies.
    As we are talking, Professor Snyder, I know that my time is 
up but, you know, unfortunately, the Soviet Union lost the war 
but did not win the peace because we did not have Jeffersons 
and Washington there to write democratic, you know, 
constitution and write the republics and, unfortunately, most 
of those republics fell back into dictatorship and corruption, 
including--I did not get a chance but maybe some other time. I 
do actually see what has happened in Central Asia but it is 
very important because people have been oppressed there for a 
while, too.
    However, I think my time is--I am running out of time, so I 
have to yield back. However, thank you for being here.
    Co-Chair Cohen: Mr. Panetta?

    STATEMENT OF JIMMY PANETTA, U.S. HOUSE, FROM CALIFORNIA

    Representative Panetta: Thank you, Chair Cohen. I 
appreciate this opportunity to be a part of this hearing at the 
Helsinki Commission--with the Helsinki Commission, so thank you 
very much. Thanks to--[off mic, technical difficulties]--
recently, past couple months. I have been to Ukraine twice, 
including this last weekend. Therefore if I cannot form 
complete sentences, it is because I am exhausted. That is the 
reason.
    However, I have also been to the Sahel, as well, numerous 
times, every August. Austin Scott and I, I go on a bipartisan 
trip to the Sahel every year. Obviously, what we have seen in 
that area and what I saw is that those are countries and areas 
that are clearly being affected by much of what you talked 
about, the desire of Putin to create and maintain an empire.
    Now, when I was in Kyiv in early August I came in through 
Moldova. We drove into--it was unlike the regular congressional 
trips in that we actually got to stay on the ground for five 
nights. Moldova to Odessa, Odessa for a night, and then up to 
Kyiv and then around the surrounding areas.
    Had a fruitful meeting with President Zelensky, and other 
military leaders, and basically allowed to speak to civilians 
and one of my takeaways from that trip was the appreciation of 
the United States' support for Ukraine but in particular the F-
16s, not just from military leaders but the morale boost that 
it provided civilians on the ground how much basically they 
appreciated that. Even though they may not know the extent of 
what it can do, the fact that we were supporting them with that 
particular piece of equipment was very important to the 
civilians.
    Then last weekend I attended the Yalta European Strategy 
Conference. However, beyond that, we actually took a train out 
to Kharkiv and saw the destruction that the Russians imposed 
upon the people of Kharkiv and actually stood on a burnt-out 
gutted, you know, Soviet-style apartment building about 12 
floors. Took the stairs to the top and actually looked into 
Russia and you could see basically where the Russians were 
coming from.
    In two of those trips, obviously, the desires that we heard 
from most people were that they need air defenses and they need 
permissions. Now, when I went to Africa in Sahel, obviously, 
you saw the influence in Wagner and in fact we went to Niger 
and were able to get in and meet with the leadership of Niger, 
and what you are seeing is, obviously, not just in Niger but as 
you said, Mr. Obaji, in Mali, in BF, in CAR, in Libya, is the 
influence of Russia's and the fact that the Russians, 
obviously, starting with Wagner and Prigozhin and then turning 
into Afrika Korps now and literally becoming an offshoot of 
Russia.
    Yet, they are taking advantage of these coups. They are 
taking advantage of the corruption. They are taking advantage 
of the dysfunction, unfortunately, of these governments at this 
point and that is where I believe that we, the United States, 
must still continue to engage with these countries and, as you 
said, not just pull our stakes but actually try to engage 
because I do believe that it is our standards and our ways, I 
think, that are everlasting, not the standards of Russia.
    However, Mr. Snyder--Professor Snyder, if I could, as you 
know next week we are going to see President Zelensky come to 
the United States and present a victory plan. Obviously, what 
we are seeing right now is a war of attrition where it is 
basically kind of a war of butchery, to be honest with you, and 
that Putin is just throwing humans at the problem, throwing 
these Russians that they are going in and taken advantage of by 
paying them an exorbitant amount of money, at least for them, 
to be on these front lines.
    When you look at this so-called plan, Professor, if you 
were to advise Zelensky in dealing with Putin what would your 
victory plan entail?
    Mr. Snyder: Well, I am an American talking to Americans and 
I am going to keep it in those terms.
    First, if I could just note there is a very important 
connection between the Russian empire and the way the United 
States has thought about the Russo-Ukrainian war. From the very 
beginning, we have tended to treat Russia as a real country 
because we are aware of its big history, big literature, and 
big past.
    Many of us learned about it in school and many of us 
imbibed the Russian imperial narrative according to which the 
peoples that we have been speaking about today were secondary, 
irrelevant, troublemakers, and nationalists to somehow be 
dismissed, and I think that was deep under our skin and had a 
lot to do with the misjudgments that Americans made in general 
in February 2022 when we took for granted as a society and as a 
polity that Ukraine would break within a few days when Russia 
invaded.
    I think we are still in the process of de-imperializing or 
decolonizing our own minds vis-a-vis Ukraine. I think we have 
seriously underestimated the potential of the Ukrainian armed 
forces and the potential of Ukrainian society, partly because 
we have taken in imperial assumptions ourselves and it seems to 
me that that should be a part of what we are talking about 
today.
    Therefore, part of being an empire is controlling the 
discourse and to a large degree, the Russians have been able to 
control the strategic discourse, setting up for us new rules in 
a war that have never existed before like, for example, that 
when you invade another country the entire war should take 
place on the territory of the country you have invaded.
    No one has ever said that before because it is completely 
absurd and, yet, somehow it has been accepted in the United 
States as normal that this war should be fought on Ukrainian 
territory. There is no precedence for that kind of idea.
    Another idea that the Russians have that we have accepted 
is that it is normal, for example, when you and I were in Kyiv, 
for ballistic missiles to rain down on the city where we were 
trying to do normal business but it is somehow not normal for 
ballistic missiles from Ukraine to go into Russia.
    Why is that? Why is it normal for one country and not for 
another? It has a great deal to do with imperial thinking, 
which we have accepted. There is something precious, special, 
et cetera, about Russia and somehow it is okay for Ukrainians 
to be victims because they always have been victims.
    We need to investigate, I think, that understructure of 
thinking, which I believe has guided our policy in the wrong 
way.
    As far as empires are concerned, I will return to my--to 
what I said at the end, trying to respond now to your question 
about a victory plan. I believe the Ukrainians are right about 
something that they have been--that they are hard-pressed to 
convince us of and I think what I am saying now is consistent 
with the history of empire.
    The Russians are going to negotiate peace when they believe 
they are losing, and so if anyone is serious about negotiation 
that person should be trying to get the Russians into a 
position where they think they might be losing.
    The Ukrainians get that but they are having a really hard 
time making us understand that pairing. Therefore, when they 
talk about a victory plan or a peace plan what they mean is 
together the West and Ukraine do enough to get Russia to a 
point where it might negotiate sincerely. They are not there 
now.
    Representative Panetta: Outstanding. Thank you. [Applause.]
    If I may just briefly, Doctor--with your indulgence, Mr. 
Chair--Dr. Kassymbekova, I have been to Kazakhstan. I believe 
that Kazakhstan should be granted permanent normal trade 
relations and we should get rid of Jackson-Vanik for 
Kazakhstan. I will say that and I will yield back.
    Co-Chair Cohen: Thank you. I am going to do something that 
I do not think is--it is not normal. I do not think has ever 
done. I am going to ask our guests from Ukraine, our four 
members of parliament from Ukraine, and our cultural folk from 
the military, who I know are here to perform and not to--but do 
you have any questions you would like to ask of any of the 
panelists or statements you would like to make concerning any 
of these issues?
    Stand up if you would like to speak and identify yourself. 
Yes.
    Audience Member: [Off mic.]
    Co-Chair Cohen: Sure, you can--yes, sir. Would you stand 
up? Tell me your name.
    Audience Member: Alexei Stanka, and we are from--[off 
mic]--Ukraine.
    Co-Chair Cohen: Welcome.
    Audience Member: Thank you very much. Thank you for your 
support and for everything that the United States does to 
Ukraine because, of course, we need to win, and it is--the only 
chance for us to live and be alive is to win this war because 
evil will never stop. Putin will never stop. Any, you know, 
thinking about frozen conflict or something like this, the war 
will start in two years, three years, and five years.
    You know, I am representative of the Poltava region, and 
two weeks ago--it was a horrible thing--Russia bombed the 
university in Poltava and more than 60 people died. They were 
students. They were 17, 18, and 19, so kids.
    Co-Chair Cohen: Was that the military school?
    Audience Member: Yes, but they were students.
    Co-Chair Cohen: I got you.
    Audience Member: However, they were students and they were 
not yet soldiers.
    Co-Chair Cohen: I got you.
    Audience Member: About 200 people were injured and 20 
people we could not even find where they are. However, we 
understand that when rockets and bombs are, there is nothing 
left, especially nothing left from people.
    The thing that we really, really need is permission for us 
to hit those military objects on Russian territory, because in 
the Poltava region, we are 100 kilometers to the border with 
Russia and a hundred twenty kilometers to the active war in 
Kharkiv. They put those systems that send ballistic rockets 
near the border, and it is only 100 kilometers. It is one 
minute until the ballistic bomb falls in the Poltava region. In 
Sumy region, it is 20, 30 seconds. Therefore, there is no 
possibility for the people to run in the shelter.
    It was the same situation in Poltava's university. People 
just did not have the ability to run in the shelter because it 
is not enough time. It was only one-and-a-half minutes starting 
from the alarm until the university was already attacked by the 
rockets.
    Therefore, we really need this permission, and we want to 
win. We are doing everything to win, and our best people are 
doing everything for us--to fight and to stand--you know, stand 
with us, help us. Of course, we want to do everything to win.
    Thank you very much and thank you for what your country 
does to us. Thank you. [Applause.]
    Co-Chair Cohen: You are very welcome.
    I was trying to find a report that I saw yesterday, and I 
hope you all have seen it, about the drone attacks on the 
Russian missile security area. They apparently knocked out 300 
or 400 ballistic missiles, and they said it was like an 
earthquake and 2.6 on the Richter scale. Take that, Vladimir. 
[Laughs.]
    You know, I wish I could tell you that we are allowing the 
weapons to be used to go outside of Ukraine and to penetrate 
Russia. I have signed a letter with about 20 or 30 other 
members, most of them Helsinki members and Foreign Relations. 
However, we signed that and I support it, and I hope that it is 
allowed. I certainly understand it.
    Do you have a question, sir?
    Audience Member: Yes.
    Co-Chair Cohen: Sure.
    Audience Member: You know, during--over history Russia 
tried to destroy Ukrainian culture.
    Co-Chair Cohen: Tell me who you are.
    Mikolai Sierga [founder, Cultural Forces]: My name is 
Mikolai. I am the founder of Cultural Forces.
    Cultural Forces will be in Ukraine, which supports the 
morale/psychological state of the soldiers on the front line. 
Before the war, we--[off mic]--artists.
    Co-Chair Cohen: Dr.--Professor Snyder had to go, so--it is 
not because of you. [Laughter.]
    Audience Member: Yes. On the first day of the war, we 
become soldiers. Then after some period of time, we accumulate 
our main weapons: Our poems, our songs, our instruments, and 
right now, in Cultural Forces, we have eight artists, and every 
day we are working on the front line. We have eight groups, 
each group making three, or four concerts per day. Therefore, 
every day we are doing about 25 concerts on the front line. 
Therefore, during the war, we held more than 4,500 concerts in 
front of the troops in the common zones. Right now, we are here 
in the United States to say thanks to the American people for 
your support in sharing our culture, our emotions, our--
reflecting our experience through our culture.
    Russia tried to destroy Ukrainian culture during all of its 
history. In the beginning of the 20th century, they collected 
all--invited all the bandura players--kobza players--to, like, 
festival and killed everybody and burned their instruments. In 
the beginning of this event, we made a little performance 
before you came in and it was bandura player--[inaudible]. 
Therefore, all the bandura players in Ukraine at that time were 
killed because the bandura was an instrument of freedom, an 
instrument of soul. It shows what is--what is Ukrainian soul to 
Ukrainian people, and they want to break the--[speaks in 
Ukrainian as an aside]--
    Audience Member: Chains.
    Audience Member: Break the chains, yes, when they have this 
music. Therefore, Russia killed them.
    Russia killed a lot of young Ukrainian poets and writers. 
How did they do that? They invited everybody of them and said, 
we will give free flats, and free rooms in a big building, 
which is called the Building of S, like S the first word in the 
Ukrainian word "word." [Laughs.] Like--
    Audience Member: Budenikslava.
    Audience Member: Yes, budenikslava. They killed half of all 
the citizens in this building. Another half they put in the 
jails. Therefore, they killed. It called--
    Co-Chair Cohen: Was this the beginning of the 20th century, 
too? Same time?
    Audience Member: Yes, yes, yes. Therefore, all the time 
they are trying to destroy Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian 
artists. Right now, we are Ukrainian artists. We are here. 
Yurii Ivaskevych, opera singer who lost his leg on the front 
line. Sasha Boole, a very famous Ukrainian country singer. Two 
more, like Olga Rukavishnikova, violinist. She lost her eye on 
the front line. We come here to the United States, and we will 
have tour here on the south part of United States.
    My Questions: What we can do to help you to convince 
American people to support Ukraine more, to do not let Russia 
make the new circle of killing Ukrainian artists, Ukrainian 
brains, Ukrainian hearts?
    Co-Chair Cohen: Thank you for what you are doing. Thank you 
for your service and supporting your country in the war. I am 
sorry about the injuries that happens and--but committing 
yourself to continue to support the troops on the front lines, 
and that is admirable. I did not really know about all that so 
I appreciate it.
    I have had a resolution, which I have tried to pass, and 
having declared that Russia is committing genocide now and what 
they have done they have destroyed a lot of artifacts--cultural 
artifacts in Ukraine and I think they have--you know, that is 
part of genocide.
    What you can do to help, I think your touring around is 
important for Americans to see and to hear your stories, and I 
do not know where you are going in the South but that is a good 
place to go because there are a lot of people there that are 
more likely to be affected by the information put out by Trump 
and that world that say that we should be spending our money at 
home on domestic.
    However, that is an excuse. What they really want to do is 
they want to be buddies with Putin. Trump and Putin have got a 
relationship, and it is unfortunate.
    Therefore, we have got an election coming up, and I think 
if they see you I think it is important and good, and explain--
and to understand that if Ukraine goes the Baltics, Poland, 
Europe's next, and then Putin's not going to stop and they need 
to know that and see that, and eventually if it goes to NATO it 
is going to mean American troops on the ground and those folks 
are not going to want to see that either because it is going to 
be some of their sons and daughters.
    Therefore, where are you going in the South? Where is your 
tour?
    Audience Member: I have a tour list.
    Co-Chair Cohen: Do you go to Memphis?
    Audience Member: Let me say, could you help us? You know, 
your song schedule?
    Co-Chair Cohen: Are you scheduled to go to Memphis?
    Audience Member: Yes, I think they are--yes, they are 
planning to go--
    Co-Chair Cohen: Good. Do you know when?
    Audience Member: --to Texas, then go to Alabama, to South 
Carolina, North Carolina, Florida--
    Co-Chair Cohen: When do they go to Memphis?
    Audience Member: Texas. Memphis, one second.
    Audience Member: We will find out for you.
    Co-Chair Cohen: That is my home.
    Audience Member: We will find out.
    Co-Chair Cohen: It is a great music city. Yes. Hopefully, I 
will be there.
    Audience Member: If we do not have it in the schedule, we 
will put it. [Laughter.]
    Co-Chair Cohen: However, I appreciate what you are doing, 
and it is admirable. You know, it is hard for me to fathom. I 
mean, Putin's--it is all about his ego, and it is--and I do not 
know how you change that. Maybe you kidnap his ballerina 
girlfriend. [Laughter.] Otherwise, he is not going to stop. He 
may let her go. [Laughter.]
    Audience Member: Thank you.
    Co-Chair Cohen: Do you have--would you like to ask a 
question, sir, or make a statement?
    Audience Member: We can sing the question. [Laughter.]
    Co-Chair Cohen: [Sings: "Old Man River."] Can you do that? 
[Laughter.]
    Audience Member: [Sings: "America the Beautiful."]
    Co-Chair Cohen: Amber grains.
    Audience Member: We do not remember the ending.
    Audience Member: Sorry. [Laughter.]
    Co-Chair Cohen: You are doing good.
    Audience Member: [Sings: "America the Beautiful."] 
[Applause.]
    Co-Chair Cohen: Bravo. Bravo.
    Audience Member: Thank you.
    Co-Chair Cohen: Thank you very much. I do not think anybody 
can top that, so I want to--[laughter]--I want to thank our 
panelists for being here, our witnesses and for your testimony, 
and everybody, and to the members of parliament, I think you 
have some time to come to my office and we can talk some more, 
and if you all would like to come you are more than welcome, 
too.
    With that, this meeting of the Helsinki Commission is 
concluded. [Sounds gavel.]
    [Whereupon, at 3:40 p.m., the hearing ended.]

                  Additional Submission for the Record

                OPENING STATEMENT OF BENJAMIN L. CARDIN

    Thank you to Mr. Cohen for leading this Helsinki Commission hearing 
on Russian imperialism. Whether it is Vladimir Putin's repressive 
internal governance efforts or his brutal aggression abroad, Russia's 
imperial identity has become increasingly relevant to understanding 
Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
    Unlike other European empires, Russia has never reckoned with its 
violent colonial past. The invasion of Ukraine and other acts of 
aggression and sabotage on the global stage are stark reminders that 
this imperial mindset remains a driving force in Moscow's foreign 
policy. Russia will not be able to transition to a modern European 
State as long as it continues to base its identity on expansionism and 
oppression of minority populations.
    The Russian State boasts incredible diversity, with over a hundred 
indigenous groups. However, Putin's centralization of power has 
stripped away much of the autonomy that Russia's regions and ethnic 
republics are guaranteed under the Russian constitution. It is no 
surprise then, and statistics show this to be true, that Putin is 
disproportionately sending these ethnic minorities to fight and die in 
Russia's war against Ukraine.
    Behind Russia's aggression abroad is a drive to expand Russian 
language, culture, and political domination--much of which is rooted in 
Putin's imagined past of historical Russian greatness.
    The consequences of this Russian colonial mindset are especially 
stark in Ukraine. Russians' patronizing view of Ukrainians as inferior 
``little brothers'' justifies denying Ukrainians their right to exist 
independent of Russia. This rhetoric, coupled with Russia's intentional 
attacks on civilians, has led to the savage war we are now witnessing.
    As Secretary Blinken said in Kyiv last week, ``The bottom line is 
this: We want Ukraine to win.'' I would add not only for Ukraine's 
benefit, but also for the democratic future of Russia and the good of 
the whole region.
    Ukrainian victory will restore peace to a country that has suffered 
from Russia's war for a decade. However, Ukraine's victory over Russia 
is also essential if Russia is ever going to confront its own 
imperialist identity. It would challenge Russia's self-conception as a 
great power entitled to control over its neighbors.
    Only with the hard reality of Russian defeat, will autocratic 
regimes in Moscow and all around the world, see that building empires 
by force will not work.
    I look forward to hearing our witnesses' insights on this subject.

   TESTIMONY OF BOTAKOZ KASSYMBEKOVA, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN MODERN 
                      HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF BASEL

    Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
    Until recently, colonialism seemed to be a thing of the past. The 
idea that one nation can and is entitled to dominate and exterminate 
other nations, robbing their people of life, humanity, and the ability 
to decide their own future, we thought, was obsolete.
    Who would have thought that the Russian nation, which proclaimed 
itself the global leader of communism and anti-colonialism in the 20th 
century, would lead one of the most brutal wars of colonial conquest in 
the 21st century?
    If it was once possible to argue that it was missionary Communism 
that led the Russians to expansionism, this explanation is no longer 
sufficient. Russian expansionism has outlived communism. It is the 
imperial framework of Russian national identity--its self-understanding 
as endowed with a supreme role in world history--that allowed Russian 
imperial identity and practices to outlive communism.
    However, communism also thrived on Russian colonialism. Consider 
this fact: In their national anthems, non-Russian Soviet republics had 
to praise and thank the Russian people for the supposedly bright life 
the Russian people had given them through communist dictatorship.
    I was one of the children in Soviet Kazakhstan who had to sing an 
anthem with the words ``To the Great Russian People we say, big thank 
you'' I sang it without knowing that 40 percent of Kazakhs died in the 
1930's because of starvation inflicted on the Kazakh people by Moscow. 
Moscow stole the cattle of Kazakh nomads, knowingly leaving millions to 
starve. Similar genocidal violence was inflicted on Ukrainians and 
other non-Russian nations. All in the name of communism and Russia's 
special role in building it. My grandmother's family perished in that 
hunger, and she was forcibly taken to a Russian orphanage where 60 
percent of Kazakh children died. There she was taught to forget her 
language and history and to praise the Russian people for communism.
    To understand what is happening in Ukraine today, it is crucial to 
understand the relationship between colonialism and the historical idea 
of the Russian World. Russian colonialism was based on the strategy of 
russifying the land by forcibly russifying the local population. If the 
local people resisted, they were eliminated and brutally repressed. 
Consider this quote from a Russian colonial officer about the 
strategies of conquest in the Caucasus in the 1860's:
    ``The expulsion of the [indigenous mountain people] and the 
settlement of the Western Caucasus with Russians--this was the war plan 
of the last 4 years. The Russian population was not only to be the 
crowning glory of the conquest of the region, but it was also to become 
one of the main means of conquest . . . To achieve this, it was 
necessary to wipe out half the indigenous population in order to force 
the other half to lay down their arms''. At that time, in the 19th 
century, Russian colonial officers marked on maps those areas of the 
Russian Empire where more than fifty percent of the Russian population 
were settled as safe, and those with less than fifty percent as unsafe. 
This policy continued under Russian Communist rule. In 1989, a hundred 
years later, Mikhail Gorbachev told George Bush that Moscow could not 
agree to the independence of non-Russian republics because, and I 
quote, ``Fifty percent of Estonia is Russian, over 50 percent of 
Latvians are now Russian, Lithuanians are the majority in Lithuania''. 
He also spoke of Ukraine and my homeland, Kazakhstan, using the same 
old Russian colonial mathematics while ignoring the violence of these 
numbers. Today, Putin is using the same rhetoric and strategies. For 
example, since 2014, 800,000 Russians have been settled in Crimea in 
order to claim that it is Russian. The same is happening in other 
occupied territories in Ukraine. Russian conquest has always been based 
on violence. When the Russian people carry it out, they propagate that 
they are doing it in the name of the great Russian culture.
    Although in 1991 Soviet Communism weakened the empire, leading to 
the partial collapse of the empire, what did not collapse was the 
Russian imperial identity that was rooted in the idea of a special 
mission and special right to dominate other nations, while demanding 
gratitude and praise.
    For many of us, who experienced Russian colonialism firsthand, 
there are two big lessons from the twentieth and the twenty-first 
centuries. First, the collapse of the Soviet Russian empire was the 
victory of humanity in the 21st century. Millions of people received 
the possibility to live in dignity, freedom, and democracy. This would 
not have been possible under Russian occupation. Second, although 
communism failed, Russian colonialism did not. Russian colonialism 
outlived communism because the idea of Russian supremacy was never 
questioned, either by the Russians themselves or by the world at large. 
However, we now know that it was not just communism that was 
incompatible with democracy, equality, and peace. In fact, it is 
Russian colonialism that is not.

         TESTIMONY BY PROFESSOR TIMOTHY SNYDER, YALE UNIVERSITY

    A main trend in world history these last five hundred years has 
been imperialism, and a main trend these last hundred years has been 
anti-imperialism.
    An empire tends to have a privileged center and an exploited 
periphery, and often a correspondingly dominant national group and 
oppressed minorities or neighbors.
    Empires deny that they share a contemporaneity--time--with other 
states. For imperialists, an imagined glorious past justifies 
territorial expansion, and legal borders are meaningless.
    Imperialism [generally] meant European powers acting beyond Europe. 
For a special period, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union applied 
imperial practices within Europe. This included denying the existence 
of neighboring European nations and states, creating zones of colonial 
domination, and genocide of peoples.
    The contemporary Russian Federation is an imperialist State in all 
of these senses.
    Russia denies that the imperial moment has passed. Its foreign 
policy, and in particular its war of aggression in Ukraine, is meant to 
re-establish the empire as the normal regime type.
    Russia fights its war with a State that is imperially structured. 
Wealthy cities in western Russia prosper thanks to the exploitation of 
hydrocarbon resources in Russian Asia. In the first instance, Russia 
fought the war with Ukrainian citizens forced into combat and with 
Asian and other national minorities from within the Russian Federation. 
In its occupation of Ukraine, Russian policy is to destroy institutions 
of Ukrainian culture, murder cultural and political elites, and deport 
children to Russia for re-education and assimilation.
    The ideological logic of the war is of a legendary past. Vladimir 
Putin has repeatedly cited fables of the ancient origin of Russia and 
of an enduring Russian Ukrainian unity as the justification for the 
Russian invasion. These fables are historically more than dubious. Even 
were they accurate depictions of history, the implicit logic--that 
events of a thousand years ago justify changing borders now by force--
would destroy the international legal order.
    Russia's invasion of Ukraine recalls the special period of European 
colonization--Nazi and Soviet empires--of the 1930's and 1940's. Like 
both Stalin and Hitler with respect to Poland in 1939, and like Hitler 
with respect to Czechoslovakia in 1938, Putin claims that a neighboring 
State has no legal justification, because it is ruled by the wrong 
people, or because it is multicultural.
    At that time, as today, Ukraine was the center of European 
colonization. Both the Stalinist and the Hitlerian projects depended 
upon the conquest of Ukraine, for its fertile black earth, and for its 
other resources. The Stalinist industrialization project of the 1930's 
required the domination of Ukraine, which led to a starvation campaign 
that killed some four million people. Hitler wished to imitate Stalin 
and exploit Ukrainian agriculture, with the difference that Ukraine was 
to feed Germany and Europe. Hitler's aim to colonize Ukraine was the 
single major cause of the Second World War in Europe.
    Putin's revival of these recent European imperial traditions 
overlaps with his portrayal of the Russian past as eternal and 
innocent. Putin denies the centrality of Ukraine to the Second World 
War, seeking to persuade the Western public that the war was fought and 
won by Russians alone. He denies that Soviet policy exploited Ukraine 
and that Ukrainians were starved by the million. The whitewashing of 
both Nazi and Soviet imperial practices is an intrinsic element of 
their repetition by Russia now.
    It follows that American policy should involve the promotion of the 
history of Eastern Europe, especially the recent history of Nazi and 
Soviet colonial exploitation of Ukraine [the subjects of my books 
Bloodlands and Black Earth]. A particular problem is the tendency in 
Germany to ignore the centrality of Ukraine to Hitler's war and to 
incorrectly identify Russia with the Soviet Union.
    Critique of empire, of course, requires a certain amount of self-
reflection and openness to dialog. Americans who raise these subjects 
will have to be able to set an example by referring critically to their 
own history. It should be American policy to help Ukrainians undertake 
a larger international dialog with the ``Global South,'' especially 
with thought leaders from Mexico, Brazil, India, and South Africa.
    Americans should stress, in public pronouncements, that Russian 
[and any] imperialism is antithetical to the existing international 
legal order, which is based upon self-determination and upon the 
general recognition of the legal borders of states. Imperialism is not 
just an idea or a way of talking; it is an active plan to destroy that 
order.
    For the same reason, Americans should understand that the European 
Union is the indirect target of Russian imperialism since the EU 
represents a peaceful route to cooperation among former imperial 
powers. Americans should support the European Union as an alternative 
to imperialism because that is what it is.
    Most importantly, Americans should take heart and draw lessons from 
the arc of imperial history. The collapse of the empire began about a 
hundred years ago, after the First World War. It was accelerated by the 
defeat of the Nazi colonial project in 1945. Since the third quarter of 
the twentieth century, the technological and immunological advantages 
that enabled empire have ceased to obtain. In general, empires have 
lost their wars since 1945. It would therefore be historically normal, 
and unsurprising, for Russia to lose its war in Ukraine.
    Empires should lose their wars. Ukraine should be allowed to win 
this war because of the wrongs done to Ukraine, because of the right to 
self-defense, and because of the global chaos that would follow a 
Russian victory. However, defeat in war is also necessary for empires 
to become other sorts of regimes. The European states now lauded as 
democracies are former empires that lost wars. Losing imperial wars was 
a step in their transition to becoming stable regimes of a very 
different type. Russia's best chance for a better future, historically 
speaking, is defeat in its imperial war.

     TESTIMONY OF PHILIP OBAJI JR., CORRESPONDENT, THE DAILY BEAST

    Last year, I wrote one of the year's most powerful stories 
published anywhere, an in-depth investigation on the operations of 
Russian paramilitaries in the Central African Republic [CAR] following 
the death of Wagner boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin. The account revealed how 
so-called Russian military instructors--operating under the command of 
the Russian Ministry of Defense--slaughtered dozens of people to secure 
access to a gold mine in the north of the CAR.
    Traveling from my home in Nigeria to the CAR last December was not 
my first. I had spent years highlighting the plight of people 
maltreated and abused by Russian paramilitaries and that has not gone 
unnoticed by the Russians. In 2022, I became a target of the Wagner 
Group after exposing the wrongdoing of their mercenaries operating 
across Africa. Contacts told me that my photo had been circulating on 
chat groups used by locals recruited by Wagner, who have apparently 
denounced me as an obstacle ``to fighting extremism'' in CAR and 
claimed I am an agent of the West who should be arrested or killed.
    I traveled to regions of CAR where militias had previously attacked 
outsiders with slingshots, machetes, and guns. I was held for hours by 
rebels who initially accused me of attempting to spy on them. Days 
later, on the border with Cameroon, I was arrested, tortured, and 
detained overnight by CAR forces, acting on the orders of Russian 
paramilitaries, after soldiers saw me interviewing artisanal miners who 
were attempting to flee the country following attacks on their 
community by Russian paramilitaries. Soldiers beat me and confiscated 
my phone and camera.
    No amount of intimidation was going to stop me from continuing my 
investigation. After the soldiers released me, I crossed into Cameroon, 
bought new equipment, and returned to the CAR to finish the work I had 
started.
    The attack by Russian paramilitaries on locals in the northwestern 
CAR town of Koki in which at least 50 villagers were killed became an 
obsession for me, all the more because the victims were ordinary people 
who had done nothing wrong. I managed to interview 16 witnesses to the 
attack. They all told me the same thing: Russian paramilitaries 
slaughtered their friends, colleagues, family members, and neighbors 
simply because the Russians wanted to secure access to Koki's gold 
mine.
    That was not all. In the middle of December 2023, I traveled to 
Bouar in the northwest of the CAR, where I interviewed a dozen girls 
who told me Russian paramilitaries lured them into a military base on 
the outskirts of town and then drugged and raped them before 
administering contraceptive shots and pills to them. A couple of other 
girls described to me how Russian paramilitaries held them at gunpoint 
on their farmlands and took turns raping them right in front of their 
family members.
    In Mali, where I recently interviewed women raped and abused by 
Russian paramilitaries, the Wagner Group continues to operate in the 
country on behalf of Vladimir Putin's regime, helping government forces 
in central and northern Mali carry out raids and drone strikes that 
have killed scores of civilians, including many children.
    Like in the CAR, Russian activities in Mali have exacerbated long-
running lawlessness, corruption, violence, and human rights abuses with 
total impunity. The same could happen in Burkina Faso, where soldiers 
from the Bear Brigade, a Russian private military company, arrived in 
May to support the country's military junta, and could also occur in 
Niger, where dozens of Russian military instructors arrived in April to 
work for the junta, which has cut links with the West.
    Russia continues to be the primary purveyor of disinformation in 
Africa, sponsoring over 80 documented campaigns, targeting more than 22 
countries. The United States is also being targeted.
    I recently found dozens of sponsored articles published by pro-
Russia media outlets in West and Central Africa falsely claiming that 
the Chinko National Park, the largest nature reserve in the CAR, had 
been mismanaged by Americans, who have deployed rebels from Joseph 
Kony's Lord's Resistance Army in the Democratic Republic of Congo to 
the CAR with the aim of disturbing the peace in parts of the country. 
These articles also claim that American cargo planes land in the CAR 
every week to evacuate stolen wild animals and mammals to the U.S., and 
that the airfield in Chinko is also ``used by private American military 
companies to carry out reconnaissance and surveillance activities of 
the national territory and certain neighboring areas of the park, 
including the border areas of the CAR.''
    Russia has promulgated disinformation to undermine democracy in at 
least 19 African countries, contributing to the continent's backsliding 
on this front. From Africa, Russia is also targeting American 
democracy.
    I look forward to your questions and thank you for the privilege of 
testimony today.

      TESTIMONY OF MARIA VYUSHKOVA, BURYAT ACTIVIST AND SCIENTIST

    Russian Imperialism: How the Russian War in Ukraine Destroys the 
Indigenous Nations of Russia's North, Siberia and Russia's Far East.

    1. Disproportionate death toll.

    From the very first days of the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine, 
it has been reported that Russia's ethnic minorities are 
overrepresented both in the invasion forces and among the Russian-side 
casualties.
    Generally speaking, the Kremlin tries to minimize the political 
risks by putting the burden of the war on the most vulnerable and 
discriminated groups such as convicts, migrants, remote rural 
populations, orphans, homeless people, etc. And, apparently, ethnic 
minorities and Indigenous people are one of those vulnerable groups no 
one cares about.
    If we look at the top ten Russia regions by per capita death toll, 
we will see that seven out of ten are the ethnic republics and okrugs, 
with the Asian republics of Tuva, Buryatia, and Altai at the top of the 
list.
    The Indigenous ethnic groups living in those regions are very 
significantly overrepresented among the Russian-side war casualties, 
with the Telengits living in Altai showing 11.5 times higher per capita 
death toll compared to Russia's average.
    Generally speaking, the Small-Numbered Indigenous Peoples of the 
North, Siberia, and the Far East such as Telengits, Udege, Nganasan, 
Chukchi are hit the hardest, the per capita death toll for these ethnic 
groups being much higher than for Buryats or Tuvans.
    In some cases, the Indigenous are also overrepresented among the 
convict casualties drafted from the prisons which might be indicative 
of over-incarceration of the Indigenous population.

    2. Disproportionate draft.

    On September 21, 2022, Vladimir Putin announced the so-called 
``partial mobilization'' in Russia. The Indigenous rights activist 
organizations such as Free Buryatia Foundation, Free Yakutia 
Foundation, Batani Indigenous Foundation received multiple reports of 
disproportionate draft of the Indigenous people from their contacts in 
Russia. However, the statistics on the ``partial mobilization'' are 
much harder to access compared to the confirmed casualties [as the 
obituaries are published more often than any information on someone 
being drafted].
    However, in some cases, the mobilization numbers can be derived 
from the official financial reports. For instance, those numbers 
confirm that Buryatia, my home region, was hit disproportionately hard 
by the mobilization.
    For the Khabarovsk Krai and the Republic of Sakha-Yakutia, the 
local officials have released the numbers showing that the Small-
Numbered Indigenous Peoples of the North were drafted more often than 
the rest of each region's population. For instance, in the Khabarovsk 
Krai, the Indigenous men were drafted almost 3 times more often than 
the non-Indigenous. According to the Batani Foundation, in one Nanai 
settlement, the authorities attempted to draft 100 percent of the adult 
male population; in the Udege settlement of Gvasyugi they drafted 30 
percent of adult men. Thus, the whole Indigenous culture is at risk of 
disappearing within the next several decades due to the 
disproportionate mobilization of the Indigenous men to Russia's war in 
Ukraine.

    3. Shifting the responsibility for the war crimes; xenophobia among 
the anti-Putin public.

    The fact that Indigenous people of Russia's North, Far East, and 
Siberia are overrepresented in the Russian invasion army has led to the 
formation of the ``warlike, bloodthirsty savage'' stereotype against 
the Indigenous people, most notably against the Buryats, Tuvans, and 
the Nenets.
    Apparently, not just the death toll, but also the moral burden of 
Russia's aggression against Ukraine was put disproportionately on the 
Indigenous people. Unfortunately, such prominent public figures as Pope 
Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, fell for this narrative.
    There were a number of war crime allegations against the Indigenous 
troops which turned out to be false, most notably about the Bucha 
massacre which was falsely blamed on the ethnic Buryat troops.
    However, it has been established beyond any reasonable doubt that 
it was the paratroopers from the Russian city of Pskov, almost 
exclusively ethnic Russians, who were responsible for the mass murder 
of civilians in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.
    However, the ``Buryats in Bucha'' myth still persists among the 
anti-war Russian public, as well as in Ukraine and in the West. I think 
that for the Russian anti-war influencers, the motivation is obviously 
the desire to shift the responsibility away from the Russians.
    According to a recent study by Dr. Aam Lenton of Wake Forest 
University, the Russian public opposed to Putin's regime and 
sympathetic to liberal views tends to be significantly more xenophobic 
toward Russia's ethnic minorities. This is a very alarming result 
posing a question of whether the regime change would bring a better 
future to Russia's Indigenous Peoples.

                                 [all]
                                                                     

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