Political Quotes

“Madam President, I rise in strong support of the accession of Finland and Sweden into the NATO alliance. In May, I visited Helsinki and Stockholm as part of a Senate delegation to encourage the Finnish and Swedish efforts to join the alliance. Our trip, however, started in Ukraine. There, after a long, secret journey under cover of darkness, our contingent of four Senators met with President Zelenskyy for 2 hours. We discussed the military, humanitarian, economic, and security consequences of Russia's unprovoked, brutal war against Ukraine. I asked President Zelenskyy whether he thought Vladimir Putin's attack on his country had had the opposite effect of what he had intended. For example, the Russian- speaking sections of eastern Ukraine are now embracing their Ukrainian identity, and NATO is more united than ever. President Zelenskyy told me that Putin's war of aggression not only had been the opposite of the easy conquest that Putin had expected but also had strengthened the NATO alliance and the European Union. (Mr. HICKENLOOPER assumed the Chair.) Mr. President, one cannot understand how Russia's invasion of Ukraine has upended decades and, in the case of Sweden, centuries of security policy for these countries. For 200 years, Sweden has maintained a policy of neutrality, but, as Swedish Prime Minister Andersson put it to me, ``February 24 changed everything.'' That was the date of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.…”