by John McCain
The reader familiar with my public statements will have heard me make these arguments many times. What has any of it meant? All these trips, all these speeches, op-eds, press statements, interviews, professing support for Ukrainians and Georgians and Estonians and Montenegrins, condemning Putin, criticizing my own government? Did it change anything, improve anything? I hope so. But I know for certain it meant something to the people I meant to help because they’ve told me it has. It meant that there were Americans on their side, that we hear them, we acknowledge the justice of their cause, they aren’t forgotten. Keep up the fight, hang on, have hope. Maybe we should do more to help you. We might argue among ourselves about that. But you’re on the right side of history, and we’re on your side. It matters. Scoop Jackson taught me that. Natan Sharansky taught me that. And the countless dissidents, political prisoners, freedom fighters, honest journalists, human rights activists, and defenders of the Western liberal order that I’ve had the privilege to meet have told me it matters.
I got involved in the case of Nadiya Savchenko, a Ukrainian army pilot who had volunteered to fight on the ground in the Donbass, and was captured in June 2014 and given to the Russians. They accused her of murdering two Russian journalists, who had been killed after her capture. She was tried and convicted and sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. She had been brave and defiant throughout her trial, speaking from a barred cage in the courtroom. When the judge pronounced her guilty, she sang a patriotic Ukrainian anthem. While in prison, she was elected to the Ukrainian parliament. Years before, she had served with a detachment of Ukrainians in Iraq to help America. We owed her. Her treatment was protested by the Obama administration, the Europeans, the Red Cross, almost every government and institution that observed the basic norms of conduct in war. I made a few statements on her behalf, and had sent a letter to Secretary Kerry, urging him to raise her case on an upcoming trip to Russia. It was nothing out of the ordinary, really. Just a standard expression of support for another victim of Russian aggression. Putin couldn’t have cared less about any of it. She remained in prison for over two years, until she was included in a Russian prisoner swap with the Ukrainians. She came through Washington not long after and asked to see me. She thanked me profusely, more than I deserved. She was very emotional. All I could think to say was how brave and inspiring she had been in very difficult circumstances, and how proud her country was of her. “I do know a little of what you went through,” I told her, referring to my own experiences as a prisoner of war. With that she began to weep. I had done something, but very little, to help a brave Ukrainian patriot, and it had mattered to her.
• • •
Boris Nemtsov was organizing another rally. The “spring march” was scheduled for Sunday, March 1, 2015, to protest the economic crisis Putin’s policies and corruption had caused, and the casualties and criminality of his war in Eastern Ukraine. Boris had urged chronically quarreling opposition parties to put aside their differences for the day and present a united front of defiance to the regime that oppressed them all. He had mentioned to me that he was working on a report detailing the Russian involvement in the war when I had last seen him a month earlier. He had come to my Washington office in late January with his closest associate and friend, Vladimir Kara-Murza. We had a long conversation about Ukraine. There wasn’t much Boris didn’t know about the situation. He was as well informed about Ukraine as he was about Russia, and as well connected. He was often in Ukraine. He had seen the fighting in the east himself. He met with the families of Russian soldiers who had been killed there. He and the political party he chaired had endorsed the Maidan movement and Ukraine’s integration in Europe. He had vociferously denounced the annexation of Crimea, and was blistering in his condemnation of Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine, and their patron, Vladimir Putin. “This is not our war,” he wrote in a Kiev newspaper, “this is not your war, this is not the war of twenty-year-old paratroopers sent out there. This is Vladimir Putin’s war.”
Boris was well known in the West as Putin’s most outspoken and persistent scourge, to the point that many observers, even admirers, in and out of Russia thought him reckless. He appeared fearless, though I’m certain he had concerns that his antagonism for Putin was a more dangerous enterprise than he pretended. The stinging insults he hurled, the provocative but truthful charges he made, often seemed perfectly devised to expose Putin’s personal corruption and, worse, prick the bubble of Putin’s self-regard. He had been arrested, jailed, harassed, and threatened. He would rarely confess fears for his safety, and then only to his closest friends. But to Russia, to the rest of the world, and to me, he alternated between bravado and resignation. He was funny, irreverent, and full of himself, a big man with a big personality. He was entertaining as hell, self-assured, charming, impudent, and dismissive of the apprehensions and grudges of less sturdy souls. “My mother is worried,” he acknowledged as he deflected another anxious inquiry, “but I’m not worried.”
I think he rationalized he wouldn’t be murdered because it would set a bad precedent for the Kremlin. He had served in senior government positions, a young crusading reformer representing Nizhny Novgorod in the early years of Russia’s democratic transformation, a minister in Yeltsin’s cabinet, and, like Putin, a deputy prime minister. He had been elected several times to both houses of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council and the Duma, and was one of the most prominent opposition leaders in the country, and had many friends in the West. To kill a man with that kind of résumé would be unprecedented even for the gangster regime Putin is running. He had been one of the first prominent critics of Putinism, and the sharpest. He and Vladimir Kara-Murza authored an editorial in 2004 denouncing Putin’s encroachments on Russian democracy and growing despotism. He had been one of the organizers with Garry Kasparov and others of the Dissenters’ March in 2007. He and Vladimir published numerous reports exposing official corruption, and Putin’s personal accumulation of wealth and grandiose lifestyle. One of the most notable was their exposé of corruption plaguing the Sochi Olympics.
I first met Boris in 2011 on one of his periodic trips to Washington. He and other opposition leaders had recently been arrested at a New Year’s Eve protest and jailed for a couple weeks. Joe Lieberman and I had issued a statement condemning the arrests, which evidently received unfavorable attention in Moscow. A Duma committee chairman condemned our condemnation, and betraying a parochial view of the proper relationship between the legislative and executive branches of government, professed confusion that we would concern ourselves with Russian politics, since “Obama . . . [had] pledged not to . . . interfere in a foreign country’s affairs and not to force democracy on anyone.” Boris had asked to see me the next time he came through town. Vladimir came with him.
We hit it off instantly, and it became the first of many meetings with the two defiant democrats. Gregarious, charming, Boris made friends easily, and we became friends, genuine friends. He was especially good company. I usually met with them in Washington, but occasionally I’d see them both at an overseas conference where Russia was a subject of concern, and carve out some time to catch up. I admired both of them a great deal, and trusted them. I relied on their knowledge of Putin’s regime, and their counsel on how the U.S. ought to confront it. Their insights about the impact the Magnitsky sanctions would have on Putin Inc. strengthened my own confidence in their utility. As mentioned, I found Boris’s judgment about what Putin was up to in Ukraine, as well as in the other former republics and satellites of the Soviet Union, astute. Even with Syria, where Putin was setting himself up as an opponent of U.S. intervention, and where he was planning to intervene militarily himself later that same year, Boris understood that the West’s episodic astonishment with Putin’s unexpected adventurism revealed a lack of realism. Nothing Putin does abroad should be unexpected. He always signals his intentions and always follows through unless he encounters resistance that worries him.
Our last conversations wer
e mostly focused on Ukraine, but increasingly on his own safety. By the time I saw him in January 2015, for the last time, I had heard reports from a variety of sources, many of whom had talked to Boris, that the threats against his life had proliferated in recent months, and that he was worried. He didn’t show his concern to me. But I didn’t get the full flourish of Boris’s usual bravado, either, when I begged him—and that was exactly the verb I used—I begged him not to go back to Russia. He had a tired smile, but no fear in his voice, when he said something like, “I will never give up fighting for Russia’s freedom, for the rule of law. What can I do. It’s my country.”
On an unusually warm winter night, February 27, two days before his “spring march,” Boris Nemtsov and his girlfriend of three years walked through Red Square after dinner and across the nearby bridge to his apartment building. A white car pulled up behind them while they were on the bridge, and a gunman or gunmen shot him four times. He died instantly.
Russians who believed in the dream of freedom and equal justice were devastated, as were Boris’s many friends abroad, as was I. The precedent that Boris had hoped wouldn’t be set, had been. A prominent opposition leader and senior government official had been assassinated. Two years later, Vladimir Kara-Murza lay in a Moscow hospital, his organs failing, nearly dead from poison. But he survived, I’m relieved to say, and I’ve seen him quite a few times since that attempt. It was the second time he had been poisoned by, I have no doubt, someone who was directly or indirectly authorized by Vladimir Putin. I’ve begged him, too, to be careful. But what’s he to do? It’s his country.
The International Republican Institute posthumously awarded Boris our Freedom Award. I gave a brief tribute to the man who gave his life for a vision of Russia taking its place in the civilization of free people, governed by laws, not men, where human dignity was above the state. “Putin could never understand Boris,” I explained.
He could never appreciate how someone could be impervious to threats and slander, to the lure of corruption and the oppression of fear. A man like Putin, who all his life has stood on the wrong side of history, of morality, of goodness, can’t comprehend the power of righteousness. He is blind to the supremacy of love. He can’t see that all lies are exposed eventually, hate is overcome by love, illicit power decays, while the truth endures.
The people who killed Boris and the regime that protects them are the enemies of the Russian people. They rob Russia of its wealth, its hopes, its future. They deny the God-given dignity of the people they misrule. They are thieves and murderers and cowards. They fear justice. They fear truth. They fear a society in which ideals and morality are the foundation of law and order.
Boris wasn’t afraid. He knew his enemies. He knew what they were capable of, but he would not be oppressed. He would not be oppressed by unjust laws or by violence and fear. He was a free man, and bravely so. He was accustomed to danger. But he lived for love and justice and truth. He had been threatened repeatedly and demonized by the regime’s propaganda apparatus. Yet when his enemies took his life in the shadow of the Kremlin, they found him walking in the open air, enjoying the evening, unafraid.
Not that long ago, Putin’s English-language propaganda organ, Russia Today, compiled a list of the top ten Russia haters. I was number one. I don’t hate Russia. I want for it the same freedom, justice, and prosperity that Americans have. I hate Putin, though. I make no bones about that. I’ve been accused more than once of taking Putin’s crimes “personally.” And I have. I have indeed. Vladimir Putin is an evil man. There is no better word for him. And he is intent on evil deeds, which include the destruction of the liberal world order, its values and its institutions. The world order that the United States of America led and defended all my lifetime. The world order that has brought more stability, prosperity, and freedom to humankind than has ever existed in history. He is assaulting those institutions from a position of weakness. Russia’s future, its economy and stability, is bleak. And while he has an immense nuclear arsenal and modern armed forces, he’s not using them to attack the West frontally. He employs his military in easier conquests. He is using our own weaknesses and virtues against us, the openness of our society and the increasingly acrimonious political divisions consuming us. He wants to widen those divides and paralyze us from responding to his aggression. He meddled in our election, and he will do it again because it worked, and because he has not been made to stop. He interfered in the last French presidential election. And he successfully helped reelect the president of the Czech Republic, a NATO ally, who opposes NATO and the EU and supports Putin’s invasion and annexation of Crimea. He did it with the same means he used to interfere in our election. And yet, as of this writing, I don’t see Washington prepared and focused to stop his continued assault on the integrity of our democratic processes.
Montenegro, a small, mountainous country on the Adriatic Sea, had been on track to join NATO since 2006, when it dissolved its union with Serbia, and entered the Partnership for Peace. The following year, the Montenegrin government signed an agreement with NATO allowing Alliance forces to transit the country. Montenegro’s application for the Membership Action Plan was granted in 2009, and it began fulfilling the political and military requirements for accession. Disappointingly, Russia’s annexation of Crimea is believed to have slowed Montenegro’s progress as some NATO members worried about Russia’s reaction to adding any new members. But by 2015, it appeared back on track, and a formal invitation was extended in December of that year. The member nations of the Alliance had to vote to ratify Montenegro’s accession, as did the Montenegrin parliament, which would have to overcome the objections of pro-Russian opposition leaders, acting in concert with a furious Russian campaign to prevent ratification. Parliamentary elections were scheduled for October.
We started hearing reports in early 2016 of Russia working with the opposition to prevent ratification, including suspected efforts to subvert the parliamentary elections. I asked staff from the Armed Services Committee to go to Montenegro in July and get briefed by our embassy and by Montenegrin officials on the extent of the Russian interference. They reported back that the Montenegrins were alarmed about more than Russian meddling in their country’s politics. They were worried about a violent attack on Montenegrin democracy.
Putin viewed Montenegro’s pursuit of EU and NATO membership as a threat to Russia’s geopolitical ambitions and an insult. Montenegro had been part of Serbia, Russia’s traditional Slavic ally. And Montenegro had long been a favorite destination for Russian tourists, especially vacationing oligarchs and politicians. As much as 40 percent of the country’s real estate is said to be in Russian hands. Montenegro’s beaches are a popular haunt for heavyset Russians wearing Speedos and accompanied by their “nieces.” More important to Moscow, though, is the country’s strategic location. Russia had once sought to build a naval base there. Montenegro’s membership in NATO would bring the Adriatic Sea within the Alliance’s borders, and it would signal other countries in the Western Balkans, possibly even Serbia itself, that alignment with the West was a real possibility.
Putin had a lot at stake in the question, in terms of his imperial ambitions, nationalist pride, and protecting Putin Inc.’s financial investments in the country. As he is wont to do, he decided on a bold move. He doesn’t need much incentive to choose to take a risk. As we now know, he was meddling in our election at the same time. And he would use some of the same means to disrupt Montenegro’s election that he used here, chiefly cyberattacks and a disinformation war. In Montenegro, he also employed economic pressure, threats to cut off energy exports, bribery, financial support for opposition parties, co-opting the elements of the Serbian Orthodox Church to foment anti-Western sentiments, and protest rallies. As it turned out, Putin was prepared to use something else to bend Montenegro to his will. Violence.
Pro-Russian politicians had demanded a popular referendum on NATO membership, but Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic replied by stating the obvio
us: the October election would serve as a referendum. If he and other pro-NATO members won a majority, then ratification would happen. If the opposition won, it wouldn’t.
On the morning of the election, October 16, Montenegrin authorities arrested twenty Serb nationals who had crossed into Montenegro the night before and charged them with planning a coup d’état. The Montenegrins were tipped off days before by one of the Serbian coup plotters who had gotten cold feet and defected. According to the subsequent indictment, the plotters planned to stage a protest rally in front of the parliament building on the day of the election, while fifty of them dressed as police stormed the building and killed Montenegrin security police posted there. The protesters would flood into the building and declare victory for the opposition. A new government would be formed, and Prime Minister Djukanovic would either be arrested or murdered. In the aftermath of the failed plot, two Russian military intelligence agents in Belgrade who had organized it made their way back to Moscow after hiring an assassin to kill the Montenegrin prime minister.