Political Quotes

“I have asked to be recognized this afternoon to speak to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. As we all know, the current situation is that it is pretty tough right now. Russia has amassed more than 100,000 troops on or close to Ukraine's border and may be planning to launch a full-scale invasion within a matter of days. And this follows, of course, their illegal seizure of the Crimean Peninsula back in 2019 and a hybrid war in the Donbas that has been going on now for over 8 years. As a Senator from Alaska--the State that is clearly most proximate to Russia--we are all too familiar with Russia's aggressive tactics. They routinely fly near our airspace. They sail through our waters. They test our defenses and reactions. In August 2020, a flotilla of Russian warships and military aircraft encroached into our EEZ, our exclusive economic zone, there in the Bering Sea. They repeatedly harassed our fishermen, forcing them to leave their waters from which their very livelihood flows. The fishermen were shocked, I mean, just stunned with what they saw, and they literally left millions of dollars of fisheries' assets out on the line. Provocative actions, and we felt that provocation. They are disturbing. They are alarming. But there are also some perhaps smaller, maybe symbolic actions that can also be a little unsettling.…”