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Vladimir Kara-Murza is a pro-democracy opposition leader in Russia — and my friend. He was arrested in April of last year for “discrediting the armed forces” of Russia. His arrest was apparently triggered by a visit he made to Arizona the previous month during which he simply told the truth. “The entire world sees what [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s regime is doing to Ukraine,” Kara-Murza told members of Arizona’s state legislature. “It bombs civilian areas, hospitals and schools.” In the months that followed his arrest, the Kremlin piled on. He was also charged with using the funds of an “undesirable organization” — the Washington, D.C. -based NGO “Free Russia Foundation” — to convene a conference in support of Russian political prisoners in Moscow in October 2021. Simultaneously, he was accused of “high treason” because he testified before the Helsinki Commission and the NATO Parliamentary assembly, and for allegedly “consulting foreign special services” for $30,000 a month. On Monday, Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in a “strict regime” prison colony. This is likely the longest sentence ever meted out for political activity in post-Soviet Russia, where the maximum term for murder is 15 years and the punishment for rape is the same. His sentence combines penalties for all these “crimes”: seven years for the first, three for the second, and 15 years (apparently “reduced” from eighteen) for the third. This punishment is much harsher than the ones to which the regime’s vengeance has lately subjected members of the opposition. The two other leading opponents of the Kremlin, Alexei Navalny and Ilya Yashin, were sentenced to nine years and eight-and-a-half years respectively. Heightened repression is always a sign of fear. Could Kara-Murza’s punishment have had something to do with the fact that Navalny was sentenced a year ago and Yashin last December, when the war in Ukraine may not have looked to the Kremlin as much of an endless bloody slog as it appears today? And also when its prosecution of the war, while dealing with harsh Western sanctions, was not as much fraught with the possibility of popular discontent over gradual impoverishment and casualties in the hundreds of thousands? It seems that the reason the sentence is so harsh is to scare civil society and preclude any chance of organized resistance. Even in the post-Stalin Soviet Union, the authorities generally avoided charging dissidents with crimes like “high treason,” most often espionage. (The 1977 case of the Jewish refusenik Anatoly Sharansky was an exception.) As Kara-Murza, whom the Kremlin almost certainly tried to poison twice before, pointed out to the kangaroo court this week, his sentence harkens back not just to Soviet times but to the 1930s Stalinist purges of “enemies of the people.” Kara-Murza is a Cambridge-trained historian, and he was right. Putin’s regime is descending into Stalinism. Sustained by indiscriminate ruthlessness, such regimes do not “evolve”— witness North Korea or Cuba. They can only be destroyed either by an invasion, like Pol Pot’s Cambodia or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, or exploded from within by a miraculous leader like Mikhail Gorbachev. Neither outcome is likely in Russia so long as Putin lives. And so the struggle is very personal now between the two Vladimirs, Putin and Kara-Murza, even biological: Only Putin’s death can free my friend Vladimir. Putin is 70, Kara-Murza is 41. But the effective age gap will narrow steadily as Kara-Murza’s jailers will undoubtedly begin grinding him down from day one. Yet Kara-Murza was defiant and hopeful even as his sentence came down. “I know that the day will come when the darkness over our country will be gone,” he said in his final statement before the court. “When the war will be called a war, and the usurper [in the Kremlin] will be called a usurper; when those who have ignited this war will be called criminals instead of those who tried to stop it... And then our people will open their eyes and shudder at the sight of the horrific crimes committed in their names.” Even in the post-Stalin Soviet Union, the authorities generally avoided charging dissidents with crimes like “high treason,” most often espionage. (The 1977 case of the Jewish refusenik Anatoly Sharansky was an exception.) As Kara-Murza, whom the Kremlin almost certainly tried to poison twice before, pointed out to the kangaroo court this week, his sentence harkens back not just to Soviet times but to the 1930s Stalinist purges of “enemies of the people.” Kara-Murza is a Cambridge-trained historian, and he was right. Putin’s regime is descending into Stalinism. Sustained by indiscriminate ruthlessness, such regimes do not “evolve”— witness North Korea or Cuba. They can only be destroyed either by an invasion, like Pol Pot’s Cambodia or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, or exploded from within by a miraculous leader like Mikhail Gorbachev. Neither outcome is likely in Russia so long as Putin lives. And so the struggle is very personal now between the two Vladimirs, Putin and Kara-Murza, even biological: Only Putin’s death can free my friend Vladimir. Putin is 70, Kara-Murza is 41. But the effective age gap will narrow steadily as Kara-Murza’s jailers will undoubtedly begin grinding him down from day one. Yet Kara-Murza was defiant and hopeful even as his sentence came down. “I know that the day will come when the darkness over our country will be gone,” he said in his final statement before the court. “When the war will be called a war, and the usurper [in the Kremlin] will be called a usurper; when those who have ignited this war will be called criminals instead of those who tried to stop it... And then our people will open their eyes and shudder at the sight of the horrific crimes committed in their names.”

On Jan. 26, the State Department announced further sanctions against the Wagner Group and a number of Wagner-related entities. The Treasury Department designated Wagner as a transnational criminal organization for an ongoing pattern of serious criminal activity, including mass executions, rape, child abductions, and physical abuse in the Central African Republic, or CAR, and Mali. It also sanctioned Wagner for the violent targeting of women and children, abductions, forced displacements, and attacks on schools, hospitals and religious sites in CAR. In December, Secretary of State Antony Blinken designated Wagner as an Entity of Particular Concern under the International Religious Freedom Act for its indiscriminate targeting and killing of members of minority religious groups in CAR, and the Commerce Department restricted Wagner Group’s access to certain foreign-produced items (primarily but not exclusively weapons and munitions) that use U.S. technology. Wagner was first sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2017 for its involvement in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. These sanctions are a step forward in dealing with the international carnage that Wagner has wrought since its creation in 2014. They have serious limitations, however, because all require a nexus with the United States. While they limit financial transactions with U.S. persons and entities, and U.S. citizens are subject to criminal prosecution for violations of these sanctions, they do not touch upon Wagner’s interaction with the rest of the world. If the Biden administration wants to impose maximum pressure on Wagner, it will designate it as a foreign terrorist organization, or FTO. This would bring into full force America’s material support to terrorism statutes and would put anyone, anywhere in the world, who provides support to Wagner at the same legal risk as someone who provides material support to the Islamic State or al Qaeda. Instead, Wagner has been subject to the same sanctions under a variety of names: as an arm of the Russian military; as a suppressor of religious freedom; and now as a transnational criminal organization. None of these invokes the material support to terrorism statutes, and therefore none significantly hinder Wagner’s foreign operations. Wagner is a terrorist problem, not a criminal problem — a distinction with a difference. Its use of terror against civilians in Syria and Africa is to further the Kremlin’s foreign policy goals as well as for its own material gain. Wagner has secured natural gas resources in Syria and mineral resources in Africa, which helps the Kremlin avoid international sanctions and finance its war in Ukraine. It props up dictators while its terror tactics destabilize large swaths of Africa’s Sahel region by increasing support for local insurgent groups. Sudan’s 2021 military coup, which overthrew a transitional civilian government, was instigated in part to allow Wagner’s gold smuggling to Russia to continue. These are the acts of a terrorist organization, not a criminal gang. One of the lessons of 9/11 is that terrorism must be treated as the global threat it is, not merely as a law enforcement problem. Hezbollah counterfeits U.S. currency and al Qaeda smuggles drugs with the Taliban, but they are designated as FTOs because their terror supports political goals that threaten the security of the United States, its allies and its partners. For the secretary of state to designate an entity as an FTO, it must be foreign and engage in terrorism, and the terrorism must threaten the security of the United States or its nationals. Wagner meets these criteria; since it emulates the Islamic State in its actions, it should be treated in the same manner. The administration may believe that an FTO designation would force it to list Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, or SST, since Wagner is its agent. However, nothing in U.S. law would compel the secretary to make such a designation. We have argued elsewhere that declaring Russia an SST would be counterproductive by severing lines of communication necessary to end the war in Ukraine. The use of material support to terrorism statutes to destroy Wagner’s utility to the Kremlin and end its gold smuggling operations would pressure the Kremlin by removing a valuable asset. This approach is gathering support in Congress. Earlier this year, the Holding Accountable Russian Mercenaries (HARM) Act was introduced in both the House and Senate with bipartisan support. This act would direct the secretary of state to designate Wagner and its affiliates as an FTO, bringing the full power of U.S. law into play against Wagner on a global basis. But we need not wait for the bill’s passage to take action. We encourage the secretary to act under the authorities that already exist so that U.S. sanctions against Wagner will include the most powerful legal tools that allow us to sanction Wagner and its supporters as we have sanctioned al Qaeda.

That a large sum of U.S. funding supports Ukraine’s defense against Russian aggression is well understood. What few people know is that the Pentagon, State Department, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have teamed up to create a comprehensive monitoring process to ensure that funding is used effectively and transparently. The process appears to be working.  On March 1, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) summed up what he saw on an official oversight trip that took him to Poland and Ukraine: “To date, no significant acts of fraud or misuse involving U.S. assistance have occurred.” Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) of the House Armed Services Committee reached a similar conclusion after her own visit to the front. She said, “[When you] actually see the inventory of weapons that we are sending and just how they are getting from Point A to Point B and how we’re tracking them … that, I can assure you, raised my level of confidence. There is a saying, ‘One look is worth 1,000 reports.’”    While the Ukraine mission commands significant bipartisan support, lawmakers want to be confident, ahead of additional funding votes, that the executive branch is being a good steward of taxpayer dollars. At an open House Armed Services Committee hearing on Feb. 28, lawmakers heard from military and civilian officials, including Pentagon Inspector General Robert Storch, about how the department accounts for weapons and related support.   Storch described several elements of the oversight mission that ensure due diligence: approximately 20 ongoing and planned audits; a criminal investigative service unit detecting and preventing fraud; forward deployment of personnel into the region to oversee assistance before weapons cross into Ukraine; and identification of potential oversight obstacles.   Storch and his colleagues regularly report back to lawmakers and executive branch leaders. Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) explained that lawmakers receive monthly classified briefings from the department, in addition to congressionally mandated written reports.   The risk of arms being diverted by Ukrainians was raised by members. Storch explained that based on a combination of inventory reviews, access to tracking data, and in-person site visits by personnel from the Office of Defense Cooperation at the embassy in Kyiv, U.S. officials have seen “no signs of diversion or that the Ukrainians are not following procedures.” The only contentious exchange on the issue occurred when a reported claim of weapons diversion raised by a member during questioning turned out to be sourced to an uncorroborated article published by Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece known for peddling disinformation.   Storch also noted at the hearing the importance of working across federal departments given that assistance for Ukraine includes non-defense spending. To that end, the inspectors general from the Defense Department, State Department and USAID formed an interagency working group that, as of January, was running 64 ongoing and planned oversight projects and had completed 14 others. These projects cover a range of activities, including end-use monitoring of weapons, audits of contracts, and safeguards for direct funding assistance for the Ukrainian government.   Even with these measures in place, key congressional leaders are not complacent. McCaul and his upper chamber counterpart, Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), have pressed the case on oversight of funding that is delivered through non-U.S. government actors such as aid organizations and international financial institutions. A December 2022 letter to the Government Accountability Office from the two lead Republicans overseeing the State Department and USAID outlined requests for information and sharp questions meant to generate greater transparency.   Republican leaders also have helped to correct the record on funding details. Some Republican members opposed to supporting Ukraine have emphasized the statement that the U.S. has “sent over $113 billion in foreign aid to Ukraine.” That claim conjures up an image of unlimited sums being shipped into Kyiv, but it is missing critical context for how assistance for Ukraine works in practice.  The lead Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), has written that “40 percent of U.S. aid for Ukraine, or about $44 billion, is being spent here at home on our defense industrial base and readiness.” Far from being foreign aid handouts, this funding is a critical investment in an overlooked aspect of U.S. national defense and the workers and innovation that support it. And the broader package is far from charity: It is helping a partner to defend its sovereign territory and cripple a key American adversary’s military without putting Americans in combat.  None of this is to say the administration has been immune from critique for its Ukraine policy.  Indeed, both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have pushed the administration to enhance its support for Ukraine. Wicker aptly calls this position “more, better and faster,” referring to the quantity, quality and delivery speed of weapons for Ukraine’s defense.  The oversight process itself also has room to grow. The inspectors general for Defense, State and USAID are making the case for having a greater, regular presence inside Ukraine for auditing purposes given the difficulties of evaluating programs remotely. Reps. Jason Crown (D-Colo.) and Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), both stalwart defenders of support for Ukraine, recently encouraged the administration to enable just that.  Sooner or later, Congress will have its say. On Feb. 28, Assistant Secretary of Defense Celeste Wallander told House appropriators that the administration could not rule out asking Congress for supplemental Ukraine funding in the coming months before the end of the fiscal year. That is, existing funds meant to last through September 2023 may be spent more quickly than anticipated. Congress then would need to act to sustain key Ukraine-related assistance programs.  Ongoing oversight of assistance will not satisfy members of Congress advocating to end all U.S. support for Ukraine. But lawmakers who want to hold Moscow accountable while using taxpayer dollars wisely demonstrate that support for Ukraine and robust oversight can be complementary — and in the United States’ national interest.