Source: United States Senator for Ohio Rob Portman
January 20, 2022 | Portman Difference
In an interview on Fox News’ Your World with Neil Cavuto, Senator Portman discussed the escalating crisis in Ukraine, as President Putin of Russia becomes more emboldened by the day to invade its neighbor. During the interview, Portman underscored the need to support Ukraine and made clear that Russia will face severe consequences if they invade their sovereign neighbor. Over the weekend, Senator Portman traveled to Kyiv, Ukraine, to meet with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss the ongoing threat.
A transcript of his remarks can be found below and a video can be found here.
PORTMAN ON THE ESCALATING SITUATION IN UKRAINE:
“Well, Sandra, nobody knows, but I think it’s much less likely if we do the right things. And one is to stay on message, to have a unified, consistent, very clear message that if he does make this terrible mistake, that the consequences will be devastating. One with regard to sanctions. And the President has talked about that in the past. You’ve talked about it again today as he cleaned up his remarks. It’s important that we make it clear that this is not going to be the normal sanctions that Russia has figured out a way to get around. But it’s going to be something that hits the economy and particularly their energy sector hard and individuals within the country who are responsible for making these decisions.
“Second, the military build up is really important because the Russians need to know that if they try this, then they will have a dear cost to pay. And that will be a Ukrainian military that is far better trained than they were in 2014, has much better equipment and are willing to fight. So my hope is that these things will keep this from happening by providing a deterrence.
“The talks are fine, I know they’re ongoing. But the Russian talks, their goals in these talks are just not realistic at all to say that NATO cannot accept new members, particularly Ukraine, it runs against everything that we know about NATO. They have an open door policy. It’s not our decision. It’s the decision of the people of Ukraine, and it’s the decision of NATO.
“I also will tell you, I’m concerned about keeping countries in the region together and on message. And I worry particularly about Germany and their unwillingness to say publicly that, of course, they would stop this new pipeline, NordStream 2 pipeline, should there be an invasion and also not providing other countries with the ability to provide arms because they are NATO members. We’ve got to be sure that everybody is on board here to avoid the bloodshed, to avoid this terrible mistake from happening.”
PORTMAN ON ACTIONS THE ADMINISTRATION SHOULD BE TAKING:
“Well, I hope what he means by that is that we are making moves in terms of providing an unprecedented amount of military assistance, defensive military assistance to Ukraine. We certainly should be, and the President has just authorized another $200 million, which is good. And then second, that we are doing other things in the region to prepare for this possibility.
“One thing that has been very clear is that the cyber attacks last week were based from Russia and clearly this is part of the Russian hybrid warfare, as they call it. So that’s another area where we can help quite a bit. We have a cyber command. We have the ability to do a lot more in terms of cyber. I hope we’re doing that. We’re pushing for that. And then finally letting the Russians know and Vladimir Putin know that if something should happen we’re going to build up our defenses not just in Ukraine, of course, but in all those countries in the region, including the Baltics and Poland and others.
PORTMAN ON PRESIDENT BIDEN’S ‘SMALL INCURSION’ COMMENT:
“Yeah, that was a big mistake and that’s why I was glad to see today them clean up that language. But there is no such thing as a minor incursion. As President Zelensky of Ukraine said, in a small country a minor incursion is an invasion.”
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