Editor’s Note: The Victor Pinchuk Foundation invited Newt Gingrich, the ex-speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, to speek in Kyiv on May 16 and ex-New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to speak on June 7. Here are some excerpts:
Newt Gingrich
“We have a very deep interest in a safe, free and prosperous Ukraine. It is a function of Ukraine continuing with your anti-corruption campaign. We know the amount of investment you get around the world is, in part, a function of whether you feel safe in investing…Money is very timid. If money feels scared, it runs away. This whole argument over the anti-corruption court is of some importance to us. But we think for your prosperity, for your investors, for your job creation, it’s more important to you.”
“Nothing will help us move Moscow towards stability and the rule of law and an acceptable free society than a successful Ukraine. To the degree your country is prosperous and to the degree you have freedom of expression, the freedom to vote and genuine rule of law, you become the standard by which everyday Russians measure their future. They’re going to say, if Ukraine has all those things, why can’t we? Nothing from the American perspective is more important than finding a way to help Ukraine become really successful.”
Rudolph Giuliani
“There’s no question you have a long-lasting friend and ally in the United States. I know I can speak for President (Donald J.) Trump because he told me to say that to your president, prime minister and anybody else I encounter here…
“Ukraine has an unbelievable future, great natural assets, hard-working people and now you have freedom. What’s holding you back is corruption. It’s got to be rooted out of your society.” One idea for Ukraine is to create “a special anti-corruption group of prosecutors and judges that just concentrate on the corruption and root it out and keep it into existence until corruption is down to a realistic level.”
Russia took over Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula “unfortunately because the U.S. didn’t respond the way it should when they acted. We should have encouraged harsh sanctions at the very beginning…(maybe we could have) reversed it and Russian wouldn’t have gone into the eastern Donbas. I believe that eastern Ukraine has to be returned to Ukraine. That has to be an objective of Western foreign policy” with economic sanctions strengthened against Russia if necessary. “We should never tolerate one country invading another country and taking their territory.” Reunification of Ukraine “should be the goal. We shouldn’t compromise on that goal.”
“We need to increase the amount of business we do together. For example, we have an excess of natural gas. It would be much better for us to be supplying you with natural gas than Russia.”
