On the recordJanuary 28, 2015
Mr. President, I want to speak to the Senate about Ukraine and also about Syria. These are two parts of the world that are of particular critical importance to the United States foreign policy today because of what they portend for the future. The fact that our relationship is so rocky with the President of Russia, President Putin, who right up to just a few days after the Olympics suddenly shows his true colors when he invades Crimea, a part of Ukraine, despite all of the agreements when the Soviet Union broke up in the late eighties, early nineties, the agreements that in exchange for moving all of the nuclear weapons out of Ukraine back into Russia, that Russia would forever recognize and respect the sovereignty of Ukraine--well, that went out the window right after the Olympics, and Mr. Putin showed his true colors. He could couch it in all kinds of terms, that there is a Russian naval base that was there, but the fact is the whole world knows what he did, and no one could do anything about it. Then he started to move on the eastern part of Ukraine, and that, of course, is going on as we speak. The so-called rebels aren't really rebels.…





