Rob Portman: “I come to the floor again today to stand with the people of Ukraine. What Russia is doing to Ukraine and its citizens is…”

“I come to the floor again today to stand with the people of Ukraine. What Russia is doing to Ukraine and its citizens is an atrocity. Ukraine is an American ally and an independent and democratic country of 41 million people who simply want to live in peace. The Russian invasion is an illegal, unprovoked, and brutal assault that, over the past 19 days since the full-scale invasion began, has targeted and killed thousands of civilians. Americans have seen this atrocity in realtime with horrific videos online or on our television screens. The videos and photos have sometimes been shocking. Remember the one of the woman who was on a stretcher, pregnant, leaving the maternity hospital that had been bombed by the Russians. We now learned that that woman and her baby have died. Today we learned that more journalists have been killed, including an American journalist, a FOX News cameraperson. I just returned last night from a bipartisan congressional delegation trip to Poland, neighboring Ukraine. I was joined on that trip by Senator Klobuchar, Senator Wicker, and Senator Blumenthal. I see Senator Wicker is here on the floor. Senator Blumenthal is also here. Senator Klobuchar has a conflict. She wanted to be here, but she is going to be submitting her statement for the record to join us tonight. We had a very emotional trip because we talked to a lot of the refugees coming out of Ukraine, talked about the incredible trauma they are going through.…”