“I can tell you firsthand: Russia and Putin are guilty of war crimes and human rights violations.”
On April 9, 2025, The Remembrance Society (TRS) and the American Coalition for Ukraine cosponsored a press conference on April 9, 2025, at the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, DC titled “Vladimir Putin – World’s Number One Terrorist: Implications for U.S. Policy.”
Speaker Mini-Bios and Key Points
Due to word count limitations, The National Interest is unable to give our readers the full breadth of the speakers’ remarks, so I will relay what stood out as their most memorable points:
Kristina Olney, the founding executive director of TRS, gave the opening welcoming remarks, including greetings to the staff of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and others who were present in the audience. She also introduced Congressman Don Ritter, describing him as “the most ardent anticommunist I know.”
The Honorable Don Ritter is the founding chairman and trustee of TRS and a former fourteen-year member of the U.S. House of Representatives representing Pennsylvania. He was the founding co-chairman of the Congressional Task Force on Afghanistan, and some of our readers may recognize his name via his August 30, 2024, article on the third anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Among Ritter’s remarks: “Vladimir Putin [is] bathed in blood … ‘NATO encroachment’ is not why Putin invaded Ukraine. Free peoples on his doorstep is why.”
Ambassador James S. “Jim” Gilmore III is the former U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a former governor of Virginia, and a former Army intelligence officer: “Individual people matter; they’re not just statistics on a page as Joseph Stalin claimed … Russia was defeated in Afghanistan, they can be defeated again.”
David Satter is the TRS vice chairman, trustee, and director of education programs, a journalist, historian, the author of six books on Russia and the Soviet Union, and a documentary film director. In December 2016, he became the first U.S. correspondent to be barred from Russia since the Cold War.
Satter discussed how Putin rose through power via a false flag operation, i.e., the 1999 Russian apartment bombings that killed 300 people that he conveniently blamed on the Chechens—using this as a pretext for starting the Second Chechen War—when in fact it’s overwhelmingly evident that the bombs were planted by the Russian Federal Security Service: “The ‘grey mouse’ suddenly became a national hero. His approval rating rose from 2% to becoming the leading presidential candidate.”
Mykhaylyna Skoryk was deputy mayor of the Bucha City Council from 2022 to 2023, and personally witnessed many of the atrocities committed by Putin’s troops: “116 bodies were exhumed from a mass grave behind St. Andrew’s Orthodox Church when Bucha was liberated. Among the dead were 12 children and a priest from the Moscow Patriarchate. Putin’s aim is a Ukraine without Ukrainians.”
Oleksandra Matviichuk is the director of the Kyiv-based non-profit organization Centre for Civil Liberties, which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 and has documented over 80,000 Russian war crimes. She shared some horrific stories, such as a prisoner who “had her eye removed with a spoon,” but also shared the inspiring story of a Ukrainian child in occupied territory who, in defiance of the teacher’s attempt to force him to sing the Russian national anthem, “instead began singing the Ukrainian national anthem.”
Alex Drueke, a twelve-year U.S. Army veteran (including two tours of duty in Iraq), went to Ukraine to train its soldiers, and ended up being captured, beaten, and tortured by Russian soldiers and held hostage for 105 days: “I was interrogated by the FSB … I have a permanent heart condition at [age] 42 … so I can tell you firsthand: Russia and Putin are guilty of war crimes and human rights violations.”
Drueke added that this is already a world war, by virtue of the involvement of the Cubans, North Koreans, and Chinese.
Rye Barcott, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, is cofounder and CEO of With Honor, a cross-partisan organization committed to fighting polarization in the U.S. Congress with principled veteran leadership.
Barcott noted that there is still bipartisan support for Ukraine’s fight, as evidenced by his close work with Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), who was unable to attend himself but relayed his well-wishes to the sponsors and attendees of the event: “He continues to wear his Ukraine pin today, and he continues to stand strong on this issue.”
Prerecorded video remarks were relayed by Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE)—a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general and co-chair of the House Baltic Caucus—and Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD)—former House majority leader and currently the most senior Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives—further underscoring the bipartisan nature of support for Ukraine.
Event Q&A Session
During the Q&A session, I asked Satter whether or not the lessons of the Winter War of 1939-1940 between the Soviet Union and Finland could be applied to the current conflict. Satter replied:
“I do want to point out one thing about the Winter War, that the tactic of murdering your own people to use that as an excuse to start the war was used in the Winter War by Stalin to justify his attack on Finland by saying that the Finns had attacked the Soviet Union’s units, but that had been done by the Soviet Army itself. The problem here is that this is a real criminal mentality. And yes, they do want to restore the Soviet Union, yes they do want to subjugate Ukraine, but the motivating factor, the animating factor is the drive for power and the self-interest of a small group of criminals at the top. They will not feel secure until they have prevailed. And that’s why we have to make sure that they don’t.”
About the Author: Christian D. Orr
Christian D. Orr was previously a Senior Defense Editor for National Security Journal (NSJ) and 19FortyFive. He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch, The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security, and Simple Flying. Last but not least, he is a Companion of the Order of the Naval Order of the United States (NOUS). If you’d like to pick his brain further, you can ofttimes find him at the Old Virginia Tobacco Company (OVTC) lounge in Manassas, Virginia, partaking of fine stogies and good quality human camaraderie.
Images: Author
