The following is a transcript of FPRI’s event with Russian dissident and former Duma member Ilya Ponomarev on January 28, 2022.

Carol “Rollie” Flynn:

Good afternoon and thank you for coming today. I’m Rollie Flynn the president of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. We’re very fortunate to have today the opportunity to speak with Ilya Ponomarev, the noted Russian dissident and former Duma member. This event was made possible today by the honorable Curt Weldon, who is also with us here today and will be introducing Mr. Ponomarev. Our moderator today will be our own FPRI trustee and a highly accomplished attorney, businesswoman and entrepreneur, Marina Kats. But before I make the introductions, I’d like to just say a few words about Foreign Policy Research Institute, FPRI.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with us, we’re a nonpartisan think tank based in Philadelphia. But we like to think of ourselves as not only a Philadelphia think tank, but a national and a global think tank because we reach audiences all over the world. Our mission in essence is to educate through our research articles, our events, and we reach a national and an international audience as well as policy makers. We bring you the story behind the story, and we provide civil discourse about the important issues of the day. I’d also like to say a special thank you to our trustees, our members who are with us here today.  We could not do what we do without your support. If you’re not in one of those categories, please consider becoming a member of FPRI by visiting our website.

Without further ado, I’d like to introduce our moderator today, Marina Kats. We will be taking questions both from our audience here in person, as well as from those of you who are on the Zoom. So put those questions on in the Q&A box at the bottom of the screen, and we will take them roughly halfway through the program.

Marina Kats was born and raised in Kiev, Ukraine. After immigrating to Philadelphia in 1979, she enrolled in business school and then law school, while working two jobs. In 1995, she obtained an LLM in trial advocacy, a Masters of Law from Temple University School of Law, an advanced degree held by less than 1% of all attorneys. That year, she also founded her law firm Kats, Jamison & Associates, which has since become one of the most well-respected litigation firms in the region, with offices in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York.

Aside from her family and legal pursuits, she’s also a successful businesswoman, political activist and entrepreneur operating companies focusing on commercial real estate projects and venture capital financial services. She’s a leader in the Philadelphia community. She’s involved in a number of charitable and civic organizations and is an appointed member of the Albert Einstein Hospital’s board of trustees in the Einstein Healthcare Network’s board of overseers, as well as an elected trustee in the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the president of the Russian American Chamber of Commerce. She’s a trustee of Temple University and has been bestowed the title of Dame by the Ecumenical Hospitaller Order of the St. John Knights of Malta. She made history in 2008 as the first Ukrainian born candidate to ever run for the U.S. Congress. I’d like to turn reins over to Marina.

Marina Kats:

Thank you, Rollie. I am humbled by this introduction. Most of all, I’m humbled by the company we’ve got here. Obviously Curt Weldon is a very well-known Congressman. Curt Weldon was in Congress for 20 years. During his time in Congress, he was vice chair of Armed Services Committee. He was vice chair of Homeland Security. He was a co-chair of the Duma-Congress Strategy Group, and he was a co-chair of Rada Congress. I don’t know of anything that he does not know. He is a writer, he is an educator, he is a businessman, and most of all, he’s great American who devoted his life to the causes of promoting our country. I’ve known Curt for many, many years, and I could tell you, he never ceases to amaze me by all that he’s doing and all that he’s involved with.

Originally, I was going to say, “Well, he’s a person that doesn’t need an introduction.” However, obviously I rambled on to introduce him and I am so grateful to him and, from me and from FPRI, I want to extend my deepest gratitude for being able to put this event together. So thank you.

Curt Weldon:

Well, thank you, Marina. It’s a pleasure to be with you. I’ve always been one of your biggest fans since meeting you, and back when I was on the county council in Delaware county, your leadership is well known throughout the region and nationally and internationally, and your perspectives were always important to me as I dealt with both Pennsylvania and foreign policy issues in Washington. It’s also a special honor to be with FPRI. During my 30-year career in public service, I had the occasion to speak at FPRI several times. I knew many members of the board as well as the newest director here who could not make it to this event. FPRI brings together scholars who have backgrounds and experiences and allows us who are no longer involved in government to get the inside perspective on what’s really going on.

This was a special occasion that I was very happy to bring to FPRI, because my new friend Ilya was coming into the region because of his leadership in technology and knowing the situation that currently exists between Ukraine and Russia, all of us in America are extremely concerned that we don’t have an explosive situation erupt over the next several days, or perhaps next several weeks. I’ve known the Ponomarev family for many years [inaudible]… In science and technology and research. He eventually served in the upper house of the Russian parliament, the Federation council, equivalent to our Senate.

Ilya served in a very aggressive leadership position in the Duma, working with the Social Democrats, but was not willing to give up his principles for what the party or even what the leaders wanted in his homeland. He stood up for technology leadership, but he stood up for the right values that we in America respected. I didn’t have the pleasure of serving directly with Ilya during my tenure in congress.

Marina Kats:

I am challenging you and actually encouraging you to give provocative answers. So yesterday there was a phone call between Ukrainian President Zelensky and American President Biden. After the phone call, there was notice in press that Zelensky asked President Biden to tone down the talk about Russia, which was a little bit escalating the conflict, since we are talking about it continuously, “The escalation is eminent. There’ll be a war.” I am not necessarily thinking it might or might not be, but most important, what do you think about it? Do you think the American conversations right now are designed to calm down the situation? Or do you think the conversations themself are now escalating the situation?

Ilya Ponomarev:

First of all, thank you very much. Thank you for a kind introduction. Thanks FPRI for hosting us here. I hope that we’ll make this event memorable and provocative and inspiring. To answer your question, we have such a saying in Russian that’s, “If you want peace, prepare yourself for war.” And that’s a very wise saying actually, the whole cold war actually was dictated of that principle. Really, you need to be ready for the aggression, you need to be ready to defend your country, you need to have strong military, you need to protect your borders, you never should rely on some promises that some neighbors will be nice, you need to brace yourself for whatever may happen to you.

But at the same time, what is happening right now with all those discussions about war, is actually very disturbing and it hurts Ukraine a lot. When you were introducing myself, you were saying that I was a long time in politics, but I was also a long time in business. I’m current doing business in Ukraine, I’m bringing US investment into the country and working with a lot of industrial and technology projects in the country. I would say that right now what I see is that people really are scared and it’s actually a very unique situation, as one year ago, I think that we were really facing this situation when another military clash between Russia and Ukraine could happen. So, we are living in the situation of ongoing war since 2014. Not so many people recognize that we have this war.

And so everyday people are dying in the front lines, so it never stopped. It was going higher, lower, but it’s averaging more than 15,000 people died at that war. That’s longer than World War II by the way. It’s really blood, but never nevertheless, whether there would be another confrontation, one year ago it’s the clash was very much probable. I believe in the psychology of Kremlin and Mr. Putin personally, I think that he was at that time thinking that Ukraine is preparing its own offensive in Eastern Ukraine and that President Zelensky is preparing to take Donbas back, preparing to start the counterattack and was really getting the forces by the Ukrainian border. But at that time, a lot of experts and military experts, security experts, and leaders of Ukraine, they were saying, “Guys, alarm, there is a Russian army getting together. They are preparing to fight right by our borders.” Everybody was keeping silence and the general population was silent as well because nobody believed that that would actually happen.

Right now, the situation is right the opposite, because if we look at the balance of military power by the border, it’s changed over recent four or five months, but pretty much insignificantly. There was a lot of demonstration of force on behalf of Mr. Putin. So, he was moving military regimen, doing it in public, absolutely openly. But whether the numbers of Russian military changed significantly, no they did not. Right now, Ukrainian Intelligence, just recent official number that was reported by Ukrainian Security Council, less than a week ago, they reported 1,09,000 troops in Western Russia, which is compared to 98-99,000 half a year ago. Did it change? Yes, it did change, but the change is within 10%. But at the same time, and all the experts are saying, there will be no military confrontation, there is no reason for Putin to attack, it would be very costly for Russia. Ukrainian military is prepared to meet the enemy. There will be a lot of corpse sent back home. There will be a lot of that.

But as Putin is, in this sense, I know that these comparisons they always sound very boldly, but nevertheless, he’s like Hitler in his early days. When Hitler was taking other countries without significant casualties, that was fine, and the nation was applauding. When the real bloodshed started, the public opinion started to shake. Putin knows those examples from history. He doesn’t want his approvals, which are already not very high because of the pension reform that was happening in Russia two years from now, and stuff like that. He doesn’t want them to fool more. So I don’t think that he’s ready to fight, and the experts are telling about this, and Ukrainian leadership is telling about this. But at the same time, we read a lot of articles in Western media that he’s going to attack tomorrow [inaudible 00:22:43]. The capital started to leave Ukraine, many of my friends, entrepreneurs, they are evacuating their families, they are preparing for plan B, plan C. They are relocating their businesses and that’s all very challenging for the country. So we need to do something about it.

Marina Kats:

Thank you. That was very informative. However, I want to give Curt a chance to also respond. Also, I am in a camp, just that I do not think that the war is eminent. Also, in agreement with you that I think the more rhetoric is going on, the more Putin is going to be painted in the corner and something needed to be done. Also, I want to follow up with Curt with two questions. One is, when Zelensky ran for presidency in Ukraine, one of the platforms that he ran on was that he wanted to get Donetsk and Donbas back to Ukraine. That was his platform. So do you think that’s something that precipitated the escalation? And also, another question I have, since the original buildup was started in April 2021, when there is war game started on the Donetsk-Donbas border, do you think there is something else that happened between that period of April and the period in August, where there is an escalation?

Curt Weldon:

Well, first of all, I want to, again, applaud Ilya. People need to understand that as a member of the Duma, he’s the only single member of the Duma to vote against Putin, when he sought approval to invade Ukraine the first time. The only one. What an historic decision that was. What a lifesaving, what an immense amount of courage you had Ilya to stand up against Putin and say, “No.”

Ilya Ponomarev:

I was just doing my job.

Curt Weldon:

You did your job, but you know the heat you took for that so much though, that he was forced out of his Homeland and now lives in Ukraine. The one thing that I’ve learned about all of my years in studying the former Soviet Union, going in there when it was the Soviet Union as a part of a State Department program, was the Russian mindset and the Russian people are masters at chess. They understand the game very well. You know what I’m talking about, Ilya. In fact, the leader of the World Chess Federation for years has always been a Russian. As much as the west would like to say that we’re the champions of chess, more often than not it’s the Russian. Because Russians understand the need to be preemptive, the need to think three, four steps ahead of what’s going to happen.

I’m sure you understand this Ilya because of… And I think that is what we’re seeing in this current kind of effort between Putin and Ukraine, or the perception of a problem between Putin. Putin’s a very smart man and his background is FSB, KGB. So he is always thinking ahead, “What can I do to convince the Americans and the West that they should not allow Ukraine to become a part of NATO? What can I do to recreate the motherland?” I saw that when I was in Congress, and in fact, I went to the administration, I said, “He’s never going to try to do that through NATO or through military means because of NATO.”

So what did he do? He chose to use energy. Energy became the tool to consolidate power in the former Soviet States in the Eastern European countries. We’ve known for the last 20 years, that Putin’s goal since he went in, in the year 2000, when he didn’t get what he wanted from the Americans, when President Bush was the president, when he didn’t get the respect that he thought he deserved, he made a decision with Miller, the CEO of Gazprom to decide to use energy as a tool to bring the power back to what was the Soviet States. Unfortunately, in my opinion, we made some missteps, I think approving the pipeline over there was a misstep on the part of the Americans. Only empowered Putin more, to give him more leverage over Europe, and there are other pipelines that are also in the planning stages or being developed beyond that particular project.

In terms of the effort what Putin has taken in the past, all of his goals are to reestablish Russia as the motherland, the ties to Lukashenko on Belarus, the reaching out in an attempt to deal with Georgia, and Azerbaijan with Aliyev, it’s all around the idea that Putin wants to create this buffer around his nation, much like it was during the Soviet time, but he cannot do it militarily. So I think it’s too early to think that we’re going to see a military confrontation, perhaps I’m wrong. As president Biden has said, “Only time will tell.” But I think we need to understand that we should be taking steps to minimize the possibility of this action, both with intense negotiations, and I understand that’s underway right now by our strategic leadership from the White House and the State Department, but also with our intelligence agencies.

But also understand that we cannot recreate the opportunities that we missed back when I was in the Congress. When I started Duma Congress with Steny Hoyer as my co-chairman, we had a hundred members of the Congress interacting with the Duma. Our goal was to achieve a dialogue because the Russian people have never been our enemies. When 9/11 happened, and I was in Moscow a week after 9/11, we could not see through the fence around our embassy, because there were tens of thousands of handwritten notes, teddy bears. You remember this Ilya, all kinds of memorials, the Russian people were praying for America during our darkest hour. The Russian people have no problem with us, and the American people have no problem with the Russian people, as evidenced by our large diaspora in Philadelphia, with Ukrainians and Russians like you.

What we have, are unfortunately, the case of some of our agency decision makers having, I think, shortsighted decisions that have been made that have increased the thought that a person like Putin, who is a hardliner at heart, that we might be looking to have Ukraine eventually make a move on Russia, which is ridiculous. That’s never going to happen from the days of Kuchma on through Yushchenko and other leaders, all whom I dealt with, they have no desire to take on Russia or embarrass Russia, but we have not done, in my opinion, enough to convince Putin and the Russians that it’s not our goal to embarrass him or to threaten the state of the motherland. What I think we could have done, and in fact, we did a document that I will hold up here, that was completed in 2000 when Bush reached out to Putin and they were basically deciding to have a new relationship called New Time New Beginning, 48 pages, 108 recommendations.

This document was signed, and you can get this on my website, or if you contact FPRI I’ll send it to you. If you’ll notice the signatures on the front page, Joe Biden, Dick Lugar, Carl Evans, and me. On the inside, hundreds of members of the US Congress saying it’s time for a change, including Bernie Sanders and Mike Pence. Can you imagine, from Bernie Sanders to Mike Pence, we wanted to make a change. On the Russian side, the Duma anonymously passed it. The Federation Council, The Academy of Sciences, the Ukraine Rada, we had separate documents for each country. So, what we have to look at historically is why did we not take advantage of that opportunity? I believe, and I’d like Ilya to follow on from his perspective, that we embarrassed Putin early on when he became president in 2001 and caused him to move toward this direction of recreating this effort because of his fear that he wasn’t going to get the respect, that we might make a move.

I think that is the root cause of why we’re here. Now we have to look at how do we deescalate this and how do we get our country to come to an agreement with Putin that that would be a bad move, which I think he’s willing to listen to, but also respect the leadership of Ukraine and not do anything that the Ukrainians feel would cause us to preemptively cause a problem between the two countries on the border. Ilya, do you agree with me about Putin when he first went in, was he expecting more?

Marina Kats:

Actually, I wanted you to follow up on what Curt said, and I also have one more wrinkle to this question. When Putin decided to go into Crimea, why do you think if he really wanted to bring Ukraine back into Russia’s fold, why did he stop? Why did he not continue going and that problem would’ve been solved in 2014, I guess?

Ilya Ponomarev:

Thank you very much for your brilliant questions, which I think that you are accurate with 95% of what you said, but there is the remaining five.

Marina Kats:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ilya Ponomarev:

And that remaining five is about Putin’s mentality and his motivation. Is he smart? Yes, he is. But he is the kind of guy who always trades strategy for tactics. He is the type of guy who does not recognize any win-win strategy. He just does not believe they exist. He believes in zero sum game. He believes that if he wins, somebody loses. If somebody wins, he loses. That’s his take on life. That’s very unfortunate, but that’s the case. Respect, yes, he definitely wants some respect because being a low-level yard boy from St. Petersburg suburbs, he was growing in a semi mobster environment, regularly beaten by his neighbors. The question of respect, yes, psychologically it is important for him. But the question, “What is respect and how to earn it?”

I believe when he came to power, and that’s also very important to understand about Putin, that he didn’t come to power as a usual politician who was struggling his way up to the very top, like debating others, and through certain struggles. He inherited the power. He was given the power. As we know now, he was even protesting from getting this power, because that’s a very well-known story. When Boris Berezovsky came to Putin when he was chairman of FSB, and saying that, “You are chosen by Mr. Yeltsin to become his successor.” Putin said, “Can I become chairman of Gazprom instead? Please guys, I will make you rich. Put somebody else to be the president.” And now who will be the president. He turned the whole government into large Gazprom, at the end of the day.

But when he was coming to power, he was coming with the idea of not just characterization with the West, but with being part of the West. At the end of the day, his task, what he was assigned with by Yeltsin’s family and Russian oligarchs, was to provide legitimacy for the privatization that happened in Russia in ’90s, to provide them respect that they deserve with their money. And as Putin likes to say, “Money beats evil.” That’s also another of his principles. What was the cornerstone of his foreign policy program? He was running it in year 2000 in his campaign. Joining NATO, joining European Union, joining WTO. There were three pillars of his own campaign. Yeltsin never did that. He never went that far in being pro-Western leader like Putin did in the year 2000.

Then what I would definitely agree with you, I think there were numerous mistakes on behalf of the West to push him away with that. Even in the year 2001, when 9/11 happened, Putin was the first foreign leader to call Bush and to go for assistance and Russia at that time fully opened the skies, they opened transit to central Asia, supported with the military base in Kyrgyzstan for US troops to enter Afghanistan. Putin surrendered military bases in Cuba and in Vietnam. So he has done a lot of things because he was called a national traitor at that time. Now I’m called the national traitor. At that time, he was called national traitor, where a lot of what’s called Russian patriots are now false patriots of course.

But it was not appreciated. It was not followed up at all and he was pushed backwards, backwards, backwards, backwards until in what it was 2007, when he made his Munich speech with the list of complaints against the West, that you guys are enemies. But what he was seeking always, he was seeking to establish certain rules of the game, because he was, yes again, being a former FSB person, and there are no former FSB people. He always is pretty much paranoid. He was thinking somebody’s planning to remove him from his office. Since he does not believe in power of people, but he believes in the power of America and other Western nations, that it’s you guys who want to remove him from the office. I wish that was true, but unfortunately, I don’t see the evidence that that’s true. But he believes it is.

After that, just out of self-preservation, out of feeling of his own security, he’s trying to establish these rules of the games. He thinks that there only rules that potentially could be created. This is some kind of a post-Yalta type rules. That’s where Crimea comes into the picture. Many people think, and that’s where I disagree with you when you’re saying that his goal is to prevent NATO and whatever, it’s like, “Look at the map.” NATO already, by the time he took over Crimea, NATO already was controlling half of the perimeter of the Black Sea. So, when you’re saying to Russian public, “We took Crimea to prevent NATO to open the military base in Crimea.” Why would NATO need a military base in Crimea? That doesn’t make any sense.

If we listen to his complaints how NATO would create the military base in Ukraine, and it would shorten the missile range to Moscow. Look at the map. You can put the same missiles that already exist in NATO members like Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania.

Marina Kats:

Easily.

Ilya Ponomarev:

What does it solve? That’s bullshit. So, he just justifies totally different things to take over Crimea, it needs for his internal power. That’s not about a-

Marina Kats:

But why stop at Crimea?

Ilya Ponomarev:

Why would he need anything else? Again, look at the polls. Many people take Putin as a dictator, he doesn’t think about the popular support, that’s not true. The most recent example that careful observer might look at is just recently he pulled back the legislation on COVID from state Duma because the majority of population was against the new restrictions, lockdowns and whatever. The act that was already there prepared to be voted on and which was already passed, of course immediately he pulled it back because he doesn’t want to do any unpopular actions. Taking over Crimea was popular because majority of Russians do generally believe that it’s unfair that Crimea felt into Ukraine in 1954. War with Ukraine is extremely unpopular. And even those who totally for the annexation of Crimea, the majority is against the war with Ukraine.

Curt Weldon:

Agree.

Marina Kats:

This is actually the second FPRI event today. It was very interesting at the first event; I’m just going to give a shameless plug to FPRI’s earlier event. One of the scholars said, “It’s very interesting that EU is silent as to what’s happening on the border right now.” I’m going to start with Curt with this question. Why do you think EU is not taking sides one way or another, or at least silent?

Curt Weldon:

I think part of the problem was we approved the pipeline for Germany, which basically in my opinion, neutralized Germans [inaudible] the US position. I think there’s kind of a wait and see attitude about US leadership, “What it’s going to be? Is it going to be strong leadership and decisive?” And I’m a friend of Joe Biden’s, but this is not about friendship now. When you’re dealing with any Russian leader, you’re always dealing, as Ronald Reagan would say, you have to deal from position of strength. I don’t know. I mean, I think Europe has mixed emotions about what the administration is talking about and there’s even reports they’re not going to join with us in the most severe sanction. Let’s face it, we could shut Russia’s economy down, and we ended the swift process for that. That would create huge [inaudible]. I don’t think Europe is ready to support that.

Marina Kats:

I understand. I know that Rollie’s there with questions from the audience. So I am, as many of the question I personally have and how interesting this discussion is, we’re going to turn it over to Rollie to ask the audience, questions.

Carol “Rollie” Flynn:

We have a lot of questions.

Marina Kats:

A lot of questions, not a lot of time.

Carol “Rollie” Flynn:

A lot of questions, exactly. Thank you to all of you for the fascinating comments. A question from the audience to Ilya Ponomarev, how would you compare the dissident community today with that of the 1960s and ’70s, their activity, role in society, their influence, their following?

Ilya Ponomarev:

Unfortunately, the current state of Russia  the position is moving to the state it was in 1960s. Just that time it was developing and this time it’s regressing. There is actually no such thing as an organized opposition. It was like, “If you take opposition as like organized political groups, they no longer exist in Russia.” There are certain people who are more or less opposition minded, there is so called system opposition in the parliament in Russia’s [inaudible 00:42:29] government, social economic measures, but do not oppose the general political order that has been imposed by Mr. Putin, but that’s kind of mild opposition. Or as we call Her Majesty opposition. But that previous year 2021 was actually a major turning point. One of our colleagues in the opposition, Mr. Navalny was sent to jail, Mr. Khodorkovsky is isolated in the west. The infrastructure of both Khodorkovsky and Navalny totally deteriorated, and people were either imprisoned or had to leave Russia. So the opposition is totally decapacitated. We, with my friend Garry Kasparov, speaking of chess, and several others, we are running what’s called Free Russia Forum, which is currently the largest.

Marina Kats:

I was part of it actually in Houston. In Austin.

Ilya Ponomarev:

That was in Austin.

Marina Kats:

In Austin. Yeah. Yes. I remember that. It was very interesting moment. Khodorkovsky was there, and Kasparov was there. I remember the moment. Yes.

Ilya Ponomarev:

That’s probably the largest assembly of Russian speaking community across the globe, and in Illinois we are trying to get more people from Russia, and before they were coming, but now because of covid restrictions, it was another blow to the opposition. In general, the state of the opposition is pretty bad.

Marina Kats:

I understand.

Carol “Rollie” Flynn:

Another question. How are the oligarchs and different siloviki members influencing the Kremlin’s current position?

Ilya Ponomarev:

Here what I start to say is that it’s a mistake to take Putin as dictator who just pushes his will through. He is rather being compared to a spider, which sits in the center of a web and pulls the different strings. What actually Putin unfortunately has accomplished over last 21 years, when he was in power, he totally destroyed all the institutions of the Russian and the institution of the presidency. As Mr. Medvedev brilliantly proved, being a president doesn’t mean that you have power in the country. Being Putin means that you have power in the country. That creates a grave threat for the system. Mr. Volodin the current speaker of the house in Russia, speaker of Duma, year and a half, two years ago, he said the phrase for which he was mocked very much that, “No Putin, no Russia.” But I’m very much afraid that he’s actually right at the moment.

That’s a conscious Putin’s approach. He wants to create a situation that without him, all the clans, all the oligarchs, all his cronies, all the security forces, everybody would start fighting for power and that they understand this and that they are afraid of this and that they would prefer to preserve Putin as the function which balances all of them, but not to get into that fight. So he provokes internal tensions, but what it means that when there would be no Putin, that at the end of the day there would be no Putin because he’s mortal and you cannot create doubles forever. He would disappear one day and then the whole web would die. What would happen to Russia after that, to a great nuclear state, nobody knows.

Marina Kats:

And history proves it’s right. How many times did we watch through history when a dictator was tumbled and then the country’s falling apart rather than keeping the country together might be under the regime that some people disagree with.

Ilya Ponomarev:

And that’s what I’m always telling people in Ukraine. Well, when we’re asking you, “So what about Crimea?” Say like, “You will get Crimea literally over Putin’s dead body.” But when it happens, that’s the time, because then the country will start to collapse and that’s the momentum to revert the situation back.

Carol “Rollie” Flynn:

Thank you. Another question. How realistic is Putin’s perception that the US and NATO’s key animating theme is Russian regime change? How much did the Libya, Syria, and the ousting of Viktor Yanukovych really have on Putin’s calculus, in a sense of security? It is in the questioner’s comment, it is not at all clear to me that NATO, the US, or anyone else can seriously threaten his regime, at least not militarily.

Ilya Ponomarev:

I wish somebody would have an objective to remove Putin from his office, but I don’t think that’s true. I have endless examples, which I can talk about, when there were precise actions that could have been taken to weaken his position and which were never taken. I believe that the same situation, we in Ukraine, people in Ukraine always remember a famous George H. W. Bush speech in the home rather, in 1991, so called Chicken Kiev speech. When he said it, one that was like two months I believe before the collapse of the Soviet Union, “No matter what, just don’t split away from the Soviet Union.”

In two months from that, Ukraine announced its independence. I think that that’s exactly what American administration wants at the moment. Russia starting to collapse and people in Washington, they do understand what’s happening with Putin, what I just say answering the previous question, they’re afraid of that. They would rather have weak Putin, but in the office, than to remove him. I think that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of Mr. Putin. He genuinely believes that the west wants him to be removed, but that’s not the case, and West does nothing to remove him.

Carol “Rollie” Flynn:

We have another question from Ambassador Alexander Vershbow. Ilya, thanks for your moral clarity as always. What’s your answer to the question: What does Putin really want to pull back from the threat of new aggression? He knows by now that he won’t get the US and NATO to accept his sweeping demands to roll back the changes in European security since 1991. Will he settle for talks on arms control and confidence-building measures, as the US has proposed?  Is he looking for a compromise on Donbas in the Minsk talks that would give him more leverage over Ukraine?  Something else?

Ilya Ponomarev:

Thank you, Ambassador, for this question. I pretty much hope that you’ll be able to influence the situation somehow to bring more clarity to the table. Because I believe that Putin’s end goal at this very moment is not Ukraine, but Belarus. I do believe that Putin wants to restore USSR because that’s a question of his power inside Russia, but USSR where there is no Soviet and no socialist, but maybe Union of Slavic Sovereign Republics. I don’t know, with the same name. Belarus is the way for him to regain the popularity surge, which he had after the annexation of Crimea. Because when he annexed Crimea, that was taken by many Russians and many Crimeans as the step towers restoration of the Soviet Union. Despite many economists saying that Russians are currently richer than they were during Soviet Union times, the reality is that it’s world bank statistics of the year before previous, that still more than 50% of the Russian population lives worse than it was in the Soviet Union.

If you take the average take in the most rich circles of the society, then the average would be higher, but the reality is that the majority of Russian population is more poor than they would in Soviet Union. That’s why they’re nostalgic about the Soviet Union, and any promises that they will go back at that time, they would meet with applause. I think that’s why Putin consciously has made this very unrealistic pledge with his demands towards NATO and United States. It’s part of his propaganda game inside the country. He says, “You see, we were transparent, we were straightforward, we did tell them what we want, they could have done it, they decided to turn us down, we would act asymmetrically and would protect ourself from NATO advance into our borders by taking over Belarus.” And this even would not be like a war with Belarus, it would be union.

Just look, the military maneuvers in Belarus are happening in February. I don’t think that Belarus would be taken militarily, but nevertheless, that’s what’s happening right now. At the end of February, there would be a referendum on the amendments to Belarus reconstitution, which everybody forgets about, which would change the power of Belarusian presidency and Lukashenko would most likely eventually would move to be the chairman of All-Belarusian People’s Assembly, like a quasi-parliament of the country. That paves the way for Putin to move forward.

Even I’m not sure whether Putin would stay in power until the end of his term, or whether he would resign prematurely to become the leader of the combined state. I think that’s the most realistic way to go, and everything that he does right now is a smoke screen to get to that objective. When I’m talking to people in DC, on this regard, what worries me the most that everybody is saying that Belarus is a gone case already. That they already resigned to the idea that Putin is going to get Belarus. I don’t think it’s a gone case. There are Belarusian people who did not say their words on what’s going to happen, and from the other side Lukashenko, he doesn’t want this as well. These are totally opposing polls, but nevertheless, they would not want such an annexation to happen.

Curt Weldon:

Ilya, I agree with you. I met Lukashenko for dinner in his home, when we were trying to get the OSCE observers back to the elections. I agree with you that the Belarus people had their own mind, and they have not approved and do not approve the relationship that Lukashenko and Putin have been building on. But I have to add this about opportunities missed, I was in the Congress when Putin did reach out and I went to the White House when he offered to establish a bilateral. I told you about this. At the time, the person who was put in charge of Ros technology was Chemezov, Putin’s former boss in the KGB. I went with him in the State Department and the Pentagon when he offered to the US to establish a bilateral that they would consult with us whenever our enemies tried to buy weapons, and it was the US side, the US side, it did not take that action. I explained that to you.

The same thing with our mutual old friend Velikhov at Kurchatov. When he came over and offered to establish a bilateral, that any time that a fuel nuclear material was going to go into Iran, that bilateral would oversee that. A great opportunity for us. I took that to the White House. Velikhov was very respected, in the Nunn Lugar program, he was the most respected Russian, I think you’ll agree on Cooperative Threat Reduction. And we missed.

There are opportunities we’ve missed that we cannot let happen again. Now we’ve got Putin in effect, as I agree with you, out of control. But we cannot let him use Ukraine and think he’s going to get away with an invasion that we’re not going to respond much more aggressively than what I think would be the case. But I am also agreeable with you now, agree with you now. I don’t think he’s going to do that. I think this is a shell game, I think it’s a chess match, and I think he’s building up to get maximum influence because he feels that with this administration, he can get more now than what he got in the past. Do you agree with that?

Ilya Ponomarev:

Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, his end game is to take both Belarus and Ukraine out of the [inaudible]. But the order, firstly Belarus and then Ukraine, because Belarus he thinks could be taken without bloodshed, without significant violence, that that’s an easier target, and that would serve a lot with his popularity.

Curt Weldon:

He has no place to go except for Russia and Putin. Therefore, he’s basically acknowledging that Putin’s moves are acceptable, which he doesn’t want to do. I know the Belarus people, there’s a strong diaspora of Belarus in America. Many of my friends, they’re outraged at this. But we’ve got to show more willingness to have a dialogue with Lukashenko, which I think would help us. Whether he responds immediately or not, just the fact that we’d reach out and have a dialogue and discussion with him, I think would help in the overall situation.

Ilya Ponomarev:

Yeah, if I were West, I would definitely use Ukraine. President Zelensky as a mediator with Lukashenko, because it’s in Ukraine’s best national interest that Belarus not becoming part of Russia, not falls under control of Putin because that’s another thousand kilometers of field-

Carol “Rollie” Flynn:

It’s the longest border.

Ilya Ponomarev:

… of the border and a military threat. That’s why it’s a Ukraine’s key interest to keep Belarus independent, no matter what.

Carol “Rollie” Flynn:

We haven’t said much about nuclear weapons. We have an interesting question. Mr. Ponomarev, so you mentioned energy as being a geopolitical tool for advancing Russia’s foreign policy. To what extent are nuclear weapons relevant to underpinning and or advancing the Russian foreign policy?

Ilya Ponomarev:

Well, I think that the way Kremlin sees it, it’s like a veto power in world affairs, but probably not really more than that, because you cannot use it in a conventional military exercise. I think that Putin’s approach, which was very much shared by approach of Sergey Shoygu, the Minister of Defense, is that during Yeltsin’s time, Russia didn’t care about conventional military, and they needed to be rebuilt. Obviously, it’s way over exaggerated in the West, the degree they were rebuilt, but obviously a significant effort to make them at least operational, which they were not in the ’90s. During Shoygu’s time, such effort was made, and it was showcased in different examples in Georgia. Unfortunately, in Ukraine, with Crimea and very much would be shown in Belarus pretty soon.

That’s why I think that Putin would actually agree to whatever like visible compromises in terms of nuclear arms control. He has a certain… I wouldn’t say it’s like short term agenda, but he would like to have concession on behalf of the West to remove antimissile pilots from port and probably he would be ready to trade Kaliningrad Iskanders for this, which NATO believes is a violation of short range, shorter medium range missile treaty, that most likely can be shift, or if combined Russian, the West can drag into this process China, that also would work for everyone’s benefit. So, I think that at the end of the day here, the interest is aligned because Russia also doesn’t want any other countries to join the nuclear club, et cetera.

Curt Weldon:

Ilya, that’s a point I would ask you to respond to, if I can interject. My concern is that we’re pushing Putin deeper and deeper into a relationship with China. That is not a natural relationship. What are your comments about… You agree with me that the actions of the West are in fact doing that and that you agree that there, whether it’s cyber or offensive cyber-attacks or whatever, that we’re creating a relationship there that we’ve not had seen in the past.

Ilya Ponomarev:

There is another Russian saying is against whom we’re friends, our friends. That’s very much reflects the relationship with China. But to my mind, this relationship is tactical, it’s not strategic, and they would never be strategic. At the end of the day, when the Russians look at themselves in the mirror, including Mr. Putin, they don’t see a Chinese face, but they see European face.

Curt Weldon:

I agree.

Ilya Ponomarev:

And culturally, Putin likes to say that we are the true Europeans, it’s the bloody Europeans who forgot about their ancestry and the culture and the religion and whatever, we are the true Europeans. We stick to the core values of our civilization. At the end of the day, I do believe in the Alliance when Putin would begun of the broader northern union of Judeo-Christian states, the biblical states. So to say, it’s Russia, European Union, United States, Latin America, we are way closer to each other based on our values, fundamental values, than we are with Asia, with all due respect, I have nothing against them, obviously, and we should be peaceful and friendly with them, but still it’s a different set of values.

I represented Siberia for a very long time in the Russian parliament. I know that we in Siberia we know the threat that is coming from China. The demographic disbalance on the border. On the Russian side of the border, Northern side of Russian-Chinese border, like 15 million people. And on the Chinese side, 150 million people. It’s exactly one to ten. So it’s very threatening. But China, at the same time, they’re not aggressive. They know that they would expand technologically, demographically, and I think, again, putting trades tactical advantage to strategic disadvantage, he feeds Chinese with technologists, he feeds Chinese with natural resource. So his strength is that they should not get much in return, because at the same time Russian government is afraid of letting Chinese to invest in Russia because they think they would get too much control, so they’re feeding them with resources. But the backflow is extremely limited.

They also look at Russia with the same attitude, they understand that if, say, United States European Union would make a deal with Russia, Putin and all of his colonels, they would jump on that boat immediately, that they just waiting to make a deal. They are blackmailing the West with the union between Russia and China. That’s why there is no fundamental trust from China towards Russian leaders as well. That’s I think probably is the game Washington is playing, because even minor compromises that could be reached at this very moment, it’s a very powerful signal with Chinese that this process is ongoing and it would weaken this Alliance.

Carol “Rollie” Flynn:

Mr. Ponomarev, this has been absolutely fascinating. At last, we have come to the end of our time. But we are very grateful to you and to Marina and to the honorable Curt Weldon for being with us here today. I would like to say one note to our audience that we understand from a few of you that you had trouble with the sound. We will be posting this video within the next 24 hours and hopefully we can fix some of the sound issues that some of you may have been experiencing and we will try to produce a transcript of this conversation. This important conversation. So we say goodbye to you now, and thank you so much for being with us today. We’re truly grateful. Thank you again to Mr. Ponomarev and Marina Kats and Congressman Weldon.

Marina Kats:

Thank you, Congressman Weldon.

Curt Weldon:

Thank you very much.

Marina Kats:

Thank you Ponomarev. Thank you to FPRI for bringing this program.

Ilya Ponomarev:

And thanks for watching us.