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FIONA HILL: Based on questions and statements I've heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country. And that perhaps, somehow for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.
The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests. As Republicans and Democrats have agreed for decades, Ukraine is a valued partner of the United States and it plays an important role in our national security.
And as I told the committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimise an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a US adversary, and that Ukraine, not Russia, attacked us in 2016. These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes.
President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a Super Pac. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives. When we are consumed by partisan rancour, we cannot combat these external forces as they seek to divide us against each other, degrade our institutions, and destroy the faith of the American people in our democracy.
