On the recordMarch 27, 2014
I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, part of our problem here is with President Putin's definition of what is the Russian Nation in his speech to the Duma. When he says the Russian Nation is divided by borders, he is sending a message that, with respect not just to Crimea but other areas throughout Europe, Russia may be staking a claim. Here is the difficulty. In Crimea, yes, the population today is majority ethnic Russian, but there was a time when, before Joe Stalin moved a wide segment of the Tatars population into Siberia and before the forced collectivization, there was a time when the majority population was very different than it is today. Fifty-six percent of that ethnic group perished. But this is a problem that we also have in Eastern Europe and in eastern and southern Ukraine, because you had some 8 million Ukrainians also perish during Stalin's rule, and ethnic Russians came into that area as a consequence. The thing we need to remember is that it is, in fact, the Russian- speaking population in the east, as well as the Ukrainians speaking in the west, that voted for independence for Ukraine, that voted strongly to have a separate state. And if this issue is allowed to stand without the world responding, the question is: Is that argument then made in Latvia and Estonia? Is that argument then made in Latvia and Estonia? Is that argument made in all of the former Russian states? I do not think in any way this is comparable to Kosovo.…
