On the recordMarch 1, 2022
Mr. President, Russia is waging war, the likes we have not seen since World War II. They are waging war on freedom and democracy. Over recent days, the world has watched in horror as Russian troops have invaded and brutally attacked Ukraine and Ukrainians. So far, estimates are that 350 Ukrainians have been killed. We really don't know what the number is, but we do know that countless civilians have been injured, and more than half a million Ukrainians, including women and children, are now refugees. This invasion was not weeks or even months in the making; this has been Moscow's plan for years. Putin has made no secret of his desire to redraw the maps of Europe and to restore the Russian Empire. That is why in 2008, Russia invaded the nation of Georgia. In 2014, it invaded Ukraine, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, taking the Crimea region. So the current invasion of Ukraine is really the second invasion we have seen from Vladimir Putin's Russian Federation since 2014. Putin's appetite has not been satisfied. If anything, these invasions have made him hungrier for power. The people of Ukraine have lived under the shadow of Russian aggression for years, and it has always been a question of when, not if, Russia would finally act. For months, Russia has amassed hundreds of thousands of troops on Ukraine's border, with numbers growing from a few thousand to more than 150,000. Defenders of freedom and democracy everywhere look to the United States for leadership.…





