Madam President, this evening, the Ukrainian Ambassador, Oksana Markarova, will be the honored guest of President Biden in the State of the Union Address. Yesterday, we hosted the Ambassador for a meeting with almost 25 Senate colleagues. It was a meeting I won't soon forget. Her country, Ukraine, is facing a barbaric, unprovoked military assault from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. The images and the stories are heartbreaking and infuriating--more than 600,000 Ukrainians fleeing to neighboring countries; brutal destruction, leaving people without homes or power during the winter; and Russian shelling of residential neighborhoods. We are witnessing innocent lives callously taken and uprooted. This is a photo from yesterday's Washington Post. It shows a paramedic in Ukraine desperately trying to save this man's young daughter. She had been a victim of Vladimir Putin's shelling in her country of Ukraine. She did not survive. Why is Putin doing this? Because his own petty grievances and warped nostalgia for the dark days of the Soviet Union have taken control. In his twisted mind, an entire innocent nation of 44 million Ukrainians must be attacked and occupied at any cost. There is another reason he is trying to end Ukraine as we know it. He cannot bear to have a free and independent nation on his border because it shows to the people living in Russia the stark contrast of democracy versus despotic rule. This morning, the Human Rights Council in Geneva met.…
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