During a House Armed Services Committee hearing held before the congressional recess, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) questioned Military officials about China's influence in Europe and the Middle East.
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00:00gentlemen, South Carolina is recognized. Thank you both for being here and amen
00:04Mr. Chairman and I'm just so grateful to have both of you serving. It's so
00:09reassuring to the American people and as a veteran myself and as the father of
00:14four sons who've served overseas in the military I want to offer condolences to
00:20your team on the loss of the four American service members who recently
00:24passed away with our allies in Lithuania. Staff Sergeant Troy Knutson
00:29Collins, Staff Sergeant Jose Duñez, Staff Sergeant Edvin Franco and Private
00:35First Class Dante Titano. I especially identify I spent many many summers
00:42National Guard training at Fort Stewart and I know the quality and the
00:45competence of the people serving there. Reading about how our European allies
00:51came together to help the recovery efforts is a strong demonstration of the
00:55efforts to stand side by side in times of need and I'm grateful that our NATO
01:00allies are really coming forward and I particularly appreciate Madam Secretary
01:04the president's efforts to encourage our allies to reach the two percent and they
01:09are and but with his encouragement and so it's so encouraging as we try to
01:14achieve peace through strength and indeed to me it's so important because we're in a
01:19conflict we have not chosen and that is dictators with rule of gun invading
01:23democracies with rule of law it began February 24 2022 war criminal Putin invading
01:29Ukraine then on October 7 puppets of Iran invaded Israel it's such a clear
01:36connection of the dots and both of them being backed up by the Chinese Communist
01:41Party and then keeping that in mind with European command what we see I believe is
01:48war criminal Putin is making every effort to resurrect the failed Soviet Union he
01:53really never left with Russian troops in Transnistria of Moldova they were
02:00supposed to leave but they did not and so they occupy part of Moldova additionally we
02:05know they rigged the elections in Belarus then there was the invading invasion of
02:11Georgia and the annexation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and then you had the
02:15the invasion of Ukraine with tens of thousands of people killed in 2014 and 2022 and then
02:22you had the rigging of the national elections October 26 in Georgia where the effort was
02:29made to replace the very courageous president Salomis Varasarili and over and over again
02:36we can see and then we see even more recently the efforts to rig the elections of Romania
02:43but fortunately they were not successful general Cavoli you mentioned in your
02:48presentation that war criminal Putin is on pace to replace all the combat material
02:54that was damaged or lost throughout its invasion of Ukraine what are the
02:59implications that this new supply of munitions and combat vehicles is helping
03:03Russia modernize its military yeah that's exactly what it's doing sir it's it's
03:10helping to modernize their military they have very extensive modernization plans and expansion
03:15plans the Russians about a year and a half ago announced an intention to grow their armed
03:22forces to 1.5 million up from 900,000 a significant increase to establish new commands especially in
03:30the ground forces in northeastern part of Europe that is on the border of NATO with Finland and the
03:36Baltics they're on the path to doing that they're not going very quickly because they're devoting so
03:40much to the effort in Ukraine we'll see how much effort they'll be able to put into it after the
03:45war it depends largely how the war ends but that modernization program is intended to go right
03:51back and challenge NATO on the borders of NATO and indeed to the United States how important it is
03:58is it for us to produce conventional combat vehicles for future combat oh I believe I believe combat
04:07vehicles and tanks maintain an important place on the battlefield and our ability to produce them is
04:13going to have a lot to do with our ability to have a strong army component to our joint force and in
04:19general I'm very encouraged that actually the Ukrainians have done so well in reducing the capabilities of
04:26war criminal Putin when the dictator of Assad of Syria was asking for assistance in November it
04:33wasn't given and he had to flee to Moscow and so the people of Ukraine should be given credit that now
04:39there's a potential liberation for the people of Syria and we already know the unintended consequence
04:45of what war criminal Putin did of having Finland and Sweden join NATO so over and over again it's so
04:51encouraging a key point too is NATO now NATO countries and the EU provide more aid and have provided more
04:58aid than the United States but thank goodness for President Trump that he's there to provide peace through
05:03strength thank you