this is exactly what the russian government was hoping for. seed misinformation, seed doubt, they have everybody questioning the legitimacy of a presidential candidate, be it president trump or potentially a president clinton, that they would pit one side of our o electorate agains the other, they would pit one party against the other. and that s why i wanted to make such a w strong point at the ve beginning. because there were certainly individuals in many other countries who had harsh words for both of the candidates, had harsh words for many of the candidates during the primaries. we had a lot of people running for president on the republican side. there were many people who were trying pethemselves to game the outcome. as you know in the united kingdom the bookies take bets. you can go to william hill and lay a bet on who you think is going to be the candidate. the russian government were trying to land their own bets. what they wanted to do is give a spread. they wanted to make su
even as we counter their efforts to harm us. right now, russia s security services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election. we are running out of time to stop them. and the cost of this investigation i would ask you please not promote falsehoods that 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. as iti told the committee last month id refuse to be part of effort to legitimatize an alternative narrative and that ukraine, not russia, attacked us in 2016. these fictions are harmful even if they re deployed for purely domestic purposes. president putin and the security servicesan operate like a super pac deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our research and false narratives. whenna we are consumed by partin ranker we cannot combat these
confirmed in bipartisan and congressional reports. it is beyond dispute even if somepu of the underlying detail must remain classified. the impact of the successful 2016 russian campaign remains evident today. our nation is being torn apart, truth is questioned, our highly professional and expert career foreign service is being undermined. u.s. support for ukraine, which continues to face armed aggression, hase been politicized. the russian government s goal is to weaken our country. to diminish america s global role and to new tlalize a perceived u.s.iz threat to russn interests. president putin and the russian security services aim to counter u.s. foreign policy objectives in europe including in ukraine where moscow wishes to reassert political economic dominance. i say this not as an alarmist but realist. i do not think long term conflict with russia are desirable or inevitable. i continue to believe that we feed to seek ways of stabilizing our relationship with moscow
and was that the end of the ukraine portion of the conversation?ra yes. a afterwards you described a follow on conversation you had with ambassador sondland where you asked him, i think, generally what did president trump think of ukraine, is that right? correct. what did ambassador sondland say to you? he said, he doesn t really care about ukraine. did he use slightly more colorful language than that? he did. what did he say that he does care about? he said he cares about big stuff. did he explain what he meant by big stuff? i asked him what kind of big stuff. we have big stuff going on here like a war with russia and he said no, big stuff, like the biden investigation that mr. giuliani is pushing. now, were you familiar with the biden investigation that he referenced at that point? yes, sir.
also experience some discomfort, that they would be beholden to them in some way, create just the kind of chaos we have seen in our politics. i just want to again emphasize we need to be very careful as we discuss allef of these issues n to give them more fodder that they can use against us in 2020. i quite agree. there s an additional benefit and i think you re absolutely right the russians are equal opportunity meddlers, they will not onlyy help one side but ju seek to sow discord in the united states alongdi ethnic, religious, geographic lines, but there s a benefit now, isn t there, for russia to put the blame on ukraine, to cast doubt on whether they intervened in our election and blame it on a u.s. ally as a way of driving a wedge between the u.s. and ukraine? isn t that true? that s absolutely the case. you made the point about u.s. allies. the russians like to put a lot of blame on u.s. allies for