Tom Malinowski: “I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel), chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and I thank my friends on…”

“I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel), chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and I thank my friends on the other side for leading on this important resolution. When Boris Nemtsov was gunned down 4 years ago on a bridge just a few hundred feet from the Kremlin, we saw once again what a dangerous place Putin's Russia is for anybody with the courage to speak truth to power. We saw again that while Russia has fierce and formidable security agencies that will track down anyone who dares criticize the Kremlin anywhere in the world, when one of those critics is killed, somehow they can never find the killer. We know that whoever gave the order to kill Boris Nemtsov, one man, Vladimir Putin, is responsible for building a state where those who champion freedom are always punished and those who kill them never are. This resolution says that we will always remember Boris Nemtsov and the truth about what happened to him and who is responsible. It urges the Russian Government to hold accountable the authors of the crime and says that, until that happens, we will sanction them under the Magnitsky Act. It singles out Ramzan Kadyrov, the brutal ruler of Chechnya, and urges the administration to ensure that he can no longer do business anywhere outside Russia.…”