Political Quotes

“I wanted to speak about the issue of Ukraine. I get a lot of questions, phone calls, emails about it. It has certainly been on the minds of a lot of people across the country. The most common question that I get is: What do we do about it? What can we do? Related to that is the question of: Why does this even matter? I am going to get to that in my conclusion. But on this motion that is now before the Senate, where we are being asked to vote on a package of sanctions and also assistance to Ukraine, I wanted to first outline what it is we can do moving forward in addition to this bill that is before us, but also why this bill that is before us is so important. I think there are a couple of things that we really need to focus on in terms of our reaction to what has happened with regards to Crimea and with Ukraine, in particular, because of the Russian actions that have been taken. First and most important we need to help the Ukrainian people and the interim government in Ukraine to protect its nation's sovereignty but also to protect its transition to democracy--to full democracy. They have elections scheduled in May of this year. For these elections it is going to be critical that they go off smoothly, that they are free and they are fair because that is an important step in their transition to democracy. But we should anticipate that Russia, through Putin, is going to do everything it can to disrupt these elections, to delegitimize these elections.…”