Congress’ Next Moves Will Shape America’s Global Influence

Floor Speech

“Over the weekend, Putin claimed electoral victory in a display of his regime’s disdain for the Russian people. With a fresh six-year term in office, he’s on track to pass Joseph Stalin as the longest-ruling despot in modern Russian history.

For the past two years, Putin has sacrificed tens of thousands of his countrymen on the altar of an obscene neo-Soviet fantasy of Stalinist empire building. The human cost of Russia’s war of aggression – to Russians and Ukrainians alike – is truly tragic.

But this weekend’s sham election came at a particularly critical moment in this conflict, and the Kremlin is showing its cards.

Former Russian President Medvedev laid out exactly how Putin intends for his lawless conquest to end. Here is what he said: ‘[The] entire territory [of Ukraine] is the territory of the Russian Federation.’ As he sees it, Ukraine’s ‘complete and unconditional surrender’, full ‘demilitarization’, and reparations payments to Russia would help forge ‘a benevolent consensus’ of peace.

This is from a close ally of Vladimir Putin – the autocrat who said that ‘negotiating with Ukraine just because it’s running out of ammunition’ was ‘ridiculous’.

Russia’s been showing us its intentions for over two years now. But for anyone who still struggles to see what’s going on here, the words of Russia’s leaders leave no room for doubt.

As I’ve said before, Putin and his allies are emboldened precisely because the West is hesitating. Because America is hesitating. They’re spelling out their true intentions because they sense that we might not have the resolve to actually resist them.

Here’s the truth: Russia is playing for keeps. It’s set on subjugating a sovereign democracy – whole-hog.

There is every reason to believe this war ends with a negotiated outcome. Most wars do.

But it is absurd and self-defeating to insist on negotiations without preparing Ukraine to operate from a position of strength. Whether or when Putin ever decides to turn from his bid for total conquest to the negotiating table, it’ll be lethal Western assistance that determines what comes next.

This is why what Congress does next will influence the eventual outcome of this conflict.

What we do will determine whether an Administration that wants to facilitate negotiations has the leverage to produce terms favorable to America and our allies.

Our next move will either reaffirm American global influence… or kneecap both Washington and Kyiv.

Anyone who thinks starving partners of support is good diplomacy or politics need only look at the Biden Administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

If Congress does its job, it’ll be American weapons in Ukrainian hands – and stronger forces and defense industrial capacity here at home – that determine what conclusions the world draws from the first major land war in Europe since 1945…

Whether or not authoritarians conclude that they can continue to redraw maps by force…

Whether or not America’s top strategic competitor concludes that we’re not prepared to defend our interests or equip our friends to defend themselves…

And whether or not the next Commander-in-Chief inherits an unfixable quagmire.

Every day that the national security supplemental spends as a Senate-passed bill and not a law is a day that America’s adversaries smile.

The decisions before Congress – both in annual appropriations as well as the supplemental – are about more than Ukraine… or Israel.

They’re about whether America has the will to defend our interests and uphold our influence.”

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