Freedom and human rights have long been on Washington’s radar screen. During the late 1970s and through the 1980s, U.S. governmental agencies such as the Helsinki Commission, where I worked for many years, the Congress, the White House and the State Department raised the plight of imprisoned Ukrainian Helsinki monitors, the then-banned Ukrainian Catholic Church and other human rights issues. Washington’s official interest has continued since independence, albeit with more of an emphasis on democracy and the rule of law given the considerable improvements with respect to human rights and freedoms in the last three decades. The stark exception, of course, is Russian-occupied Crimea and the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics.”