[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 46 (Tuesday, March 15, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1186-S1190]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                UKRAINE

  Mr. WICKER. Madam President, I thank the distinguished majority 
leader for working with the distinguished minority leader and with 
Senator Graham for bringing this important legislation to the floor 
tonight.
  It says what many of us have been saying for a long time and which I 
wish the President of the United States, our Commander in Chief, would 
explicitly say tonight or tomorrow: that Vladimir Putin is a serial war 
criminal and that he should be investigated by the war crimes 
authorities internationally, brought to justice, and made to pay not 
only for his genocide and war crimes of the last 2\1/2\ weeks but also 
for Aleppo and Grozny and the tens of thousands--tens of thousands--of 
innocent civilians that he has killed by his desires out of some other 
century to conquer his neighbors.
  I was mentioning 1938 and 1939. When Hitler went into the 
Sudetenland, he told naive Western governments: That will be the end of 
it. If we get that, we will have peace in our time.
  And some leaders of the allies were convinced that that was true.
  Vladimir Putin hasn't even said he is going to stop with Ukraine. So 
who in the world thinks that if he gets away with this, he will stop 
there? I don't believe he will, and here is why: Not only Aleppo, not 
only Grozny, but this is a man who, without question, poisons his 
political opponents. When they leave the country to get medical 
treatment, he causes them to be charged for breaking the terms of their 
parole and puts them in prison. That is his political opponent, Mr. 
Navalny, who had the temerity to be a candidate for President against 
Mr. Putin.
  We are talking about the Vladimir Putin who authorizes the 
assassination of former members of the Russian Government because they 
have the temerity to oppose him. We are talking about the very same 
person in Vladimir Putin who jails persons for years and years who dare 
to oppose him or disagree with him publicly, who invents enormous lies 
and gets some people even in the West to believe it when he broadcasts 
the enormous lies through his monopoly of the media.

[[Page S1187]]

  This man can be stopped in this Ukrainian war, and we are going to 
hear tomorrow morning from a courageous leader who has risen beyond the 
expectations of so many people in the free world, President Zelenskyy, 
and I intend to be there along with my colleagues wishing him the best.
  I think I can say for our delegation that we might have nuances on 
how these things can be done, but we are united on ideas, like getting 
the Polish MiGs somehow into the hands of the Ukrainian fighter pilots 
who can then use them to win the war, the equipment from other NATO 
countries and European countries enhancing Ukraine's air defense, and 
sending more troops to harden the borders and the eastern flank of our 
NATO Allies.
  I would say to the President of the United States: Mr. Biden, you 
have been too risk averse, too late from time to time, from step to 
step on all of the sanctions that we have needed, on the delivery of 
weapons.
  We brought the administration along, but they have been a day late or 
a couple of days late or a week late. It is time for us to show 
international leadership on this. Even today, almost 3 weeks into the 
war, we have not yet dropped the full load of sanctions on Russia. We 
need to do that, and I call on the President and the administration to 
listen to those of us who were just in Eastern Europe.
  History shows that weakness breeds war, instead of pacifying tyrants, 
weakness emboldens tyrants like Vladimir Putin. The good news is that 
with the help of NATO and Western arms, the Ukrainian military has 
defied all expectations. The intelligence reports that we have heard on 
the public media--this is nothing secret--was that in 3 or 4 days the 
Ukrainian military would be overrun by this vast Russian military 
behemoth.
  That has not happened, in fact. These people, defending their 
homeland, defending their country, through the leadership of President 
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have shown courage. They refuse to flee, and they 
have rallied the American people and the entire world in a lesson of 
leadership.
  If President Zelenskyy survives until the morning, I will be cheering 
him from Capitol Hill on his remarks, just as the British Parliament 
did last week. This war is far from over. Suffering and dying refugees 
will continue every day, and I call on President Biden to recognize 
that Vladimir Putin is not simply at war with Ukraine, but they are at 
war with the entire free world, and this is our best opportunity to 
stop him. Our Baltic allies in NATO understand this. They know they can 
be next on Putin's kill list.
  Now is our moment to make sure this is the last time that Putin and 
his band of war criminals invade a sovereign country. We watched it 
happen with the Transnistria. We watched it happen with the Republic of 
Georgia, in South Ossetia, and in Abkhazia. We watched it happen with 
the Donbas and with Crimea.
  It is time to stop Vladimir Putin's expansionism. We should be 
enabling the Ukrainians to defend their own airspace, and we have not 
yet done all we can do. We need to be creative, but we need to take 
calculated risks because the future of the rules-based world order is 
at stake.
  Western deterrence has so far failed, and now Putin is thinking he 
can succeed in shredding the rule book of the post-Cold War 
international order. It is up to us, and it is up to our Commander In 
Chief to restore faith in that order and to protect the free world.
  And I am glad to be joined on the floor with my friend the 
distinguished senior Senator from Connecticut and was honored to join 
him and our other colleagues on the trip this last weekend to Eastern 
Europe.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, I want to thank my really 
distinguished and able colleague and friend from Ohio, Senator Portman, 
and Senator Wicker, and also Senator Klobuchar, who accompanied us on 
this trip and enabled us to be so much more effective because of her 
very perceptive and insightful wisdom on these topics and her 
experience with the issues that we confronted, and a special thanks to 
Senator Portman for so ably organizing us and also to enable us to meet 
with senior members of the Polish Government, our own Ambassador, Mark 
Brzezinski, who is doing such a great job there, along with his team at 
the embassy, the brave men and women of the 82nd Airborne Division and, 
heartbreakingly, the women and children who are fleeing Ukraine with 
nothing more than what they could carry on their backs.
  I want to thank, as well, Senator Schumer for bringing to the floor 
this resolution, and Senator Graham for his leadership. This resolution 
is a very powerful and compelling message to the world that the United 
States will stand strongly with the people of Ukraine against this 
brutal, insidious invasion by Vladimir Putin and Russia.
  And, tomorrow, we will hear from President Zelenskyy, whose 
passionate and powerful plea for action will no doubt elicit more words 
of support. But we need more than words now. We need more than 
declarations of support. We need action--action that will make a 
difference on the battlefield. And let me just say very bluntly and 
simply: The Ukrainian resistance has proved to be more courageous, 
resilient, tough, and effective than Vladimir Putin ever imagined.
  It has become the wonder and admiration of the world. It is not only 
their trained army, it is the men and women who took to the streets and 
the fields using weapons that we have supplied--the Stinger and Javelin 
missiles--to hit Russia's most advanced weapons system, their aircraft, 
as well as their tanks, and take them out.
  If the Ukrainian people have a fair fight on the ground, they will 
win. They will drive Russia out of their precious land. But right now 
there is no fair fight. Right now, in the skies, Putin dominates. He 
has the aircraft, the missiles, to do insidious damage and to wound, 
damage, and destroy the Ukrainian ground forces.
  And he was using that air superiority with consummate recklessness 
while we were in Poland. Just hours before we visited the border 
crossing at Korczowa, 30 of his missiles rained down on a training 
center in Yavoriv, 12 miles away. Let me repeat: 12 miles away from 
that border crossing. The Polish authorities there told us the ground 
shook with the tremor of those bombs hitting a training center just 12 
miles from the Polish border.
  Vladimir Putin was literally playing with fire. One of those missiles 
going astray into Poland could have triggered dramatic escalation, 
nuclear confrontation, and destruction of unknown magnitude.
  Vladimir Putin is recklessly taking this fight westward in Ukraine, 
to the very border, the very doorstep of a NATO ally that we have an 
obligation to defend. And part of our trip was to visit with the 82nd 
Airborne--so impressive, these young men and women, in their 
intelligence, as well as their dedication and bravery. They are holding 
the line. More and more of them are there. And they are also enabling 
support for Ukraine in the kind of arms--Stingers and Javelins--that 
are needed.
  But we must do more than what we are doing now. And in that respect, 
I join my colleagues. We have a common message. I personally appreciate 
what the administration has done in its providing support--those 
Javelin and Stinger missiles, the ammunition, night goggles, drone 
spare parts and more--but we must do more to counter that air 
superiority, the dominance in Putin's missiles and jet fighters.
  I personally believe that we should provide more aircraft, the jet 
fighters that President Zelenskyy has desperately requested. But I also 
think there are tools that we can provide: anti-air batteries to bring 
down the planes and the missiles, defense mechanisms that Vladimir 
Putin cannot call escalatory under any possible definition, and, 
likewise, means of defense that the people of Ukraine desperately need 
and deserve to successfully defend.
  There is no way any of these weapon systems are offensive. They are 
defensive, whether it is planes, Stinger and Javelin missiles, drones--
all of it is to defend their country and do it effectively and have a 
fair fight on the ground against Putin's air dominance.
  We saw, heartrendingly, women and children coming from that bombing 
in Yavoriv at the border crossing. Literally, we visited with them, 
spoke with them, saw and heard the grief and misery, the tragedy and 
trauma that they are enduring.

[[Page S1188]]

  Almost all were women and children because the men have stayed to 
fight, and they brought with them bags of clothing, their pets, stuffed 
animals--all they could carry but no more--facing a future of total 
uncertainty, not knowing when, if at all, they would return, and when, 
if at all, they would see their husbands, brothers, sons who were left 
to fight.
  We must make sure that Ukraine stays in that fight, and we can do it 
if we raise our commitment.
  I appreciate what the administration has done in its skillful use of 
public intelligence, its uniting of our allies, its adroit rallying of 
America, but now is the time to do more, and it must be done urgently. 
The time is now. Days, weeks--not on our side. Time works against us 
the longer we allow Putin to command the skies in the way that he does 
now, the longer innocent people will be slaughtered in their homes, in 
hospital, in maternity wards, and the longer the world will be put at 
risk of another attack on a nuclear facility that could spread 
radioactive contamination throughout the country and even through 
Europe.
  The trauma and terror on the faces of those women and children, the 
tears that we saw, will stay with me forever. I was reminded of my own 
family, my dad who came to this country in 1935 to escape the 
Holocaust. He, too, came with not much more than the shirt on his back. 
He spoke virtually no English. He knew no one. He brought his entire 
family--his immediate family, but he lost much of his other family.
  America has always been a nation of immigrants and refugees, and we 
have always spread our generosity to them, and now, likewise, in 
Connecticut we see the Ukrainian-American community providing clothing 
and blankets, donations, along with the Polish-American community. 
Indeed, throughout the State of Connecticut and throughout the country, 
America's hearts are going out to these refugees in this humanitarian 
crisis. That is what we do in America.
  That is what we saw, in fact, Americans and others doing at the World 
Central Kitchen in the reception area that we visited. My colleagues 
and I served chicken, vegetables, rice, potatoes for a couple more 
hours to these refugees, and we had, I think, a tremendously uplifting 
experience.
  I mention it because, as Senator Portman has said so eloquently, even 
in the midst of this evil, we saw good in that team at the World 
Central Kitchen; in the 82nd Airborne; our men and women in uniform; 
and the Embassy staff who were willing to risk their lives in Kyiv and 
stay in Lviv and finally move from Lviv to Warsaw; our Foreign Service; 
our men and women in uniform; and of course the people of Poland who 
have welcomed these refugees, literally welcomed them into their homes, 
2 million of them, 10 percent or more of the population of Warsaw 
alone--an effort of unprecedented magnitude in recent history.
  And as we returned home, so grateful for the good in those people, it 
was brought on me again to realize that this invasion was a war of 
choice. That evil in Moscow is one man.
  I still believe the Russian people, if they knew what was going on in 
Ukraine, would throw him out. That is not to say that he should be 
assassinated or that he should be attacked.
  I believe that if there were a democratic process with full and fair 
information in Russia, there is no way that Vladimir Putin would 
survive a democracy.
  And so I think we must continue to tighten the economic sanctions to 
bring that pain home to the Russians to make them feel the hurt they 
have inflicted on others and to know that they have a responsibility to 
end this conflict.
  They must do more, as we must do more, and our action must tighten 
and broaden economic sanctions to stop Vladimir Putin from continuing 
to reap the revenue of sales of oil and gas.
  I commend the administration for stopping importation of Russian oil 
and gas to this country, but other Western countries continue to do it 
and other countries around the world, and therefore I am partnering in 
a measure with Senator Blackburn of Tennessee, urging the President to 
work with our allies to halt Russia's ability to sell its oil and gas 
on Western markets, to stop the connection of all Russian banks to the 
SWIFT financial system, which is the means for him to reap that 
revenue.
  If he is cut off from it, his ability to sell that oil and gas and 
reap the revenue and finance, his war machine is broken.
  And a bill--a second measure--introduced today with Senators 
Whitehouse, Graham, and my colleague from Mississippi Senator Wicker, 
provides the President with authority to seize and sell all of the 
superyachts, the jets, mansions, and luxury possessions of Putin's 
criminal kleptocracy as well as his cronies, his family, and others. 
These ill-begotten gains will be used to support Ukrainian freedom 
fighters, rebuild Ukraine, and provide humanitarian assistance to those 
refugees we saw escaping.
  I have no illusions that Putin can be forced right away to the 
negotiating table, but these measures will eventually force him to 
respond.
  We must give the people of Ukraine a fair fight. We must act 
immediately to provide them with the support they need to stop Putin's 
war in the air. Much as Winston Churchill rallied Britain in the Battle 
of Britain to survive and resolve at the beginning of World War II in 
the Battle of Britain to resist Hitler's onslaught from the air, so, 
too, the people of Ukraine are fighting their battle, and we must 
respond with action. Our security is at peril. Our defense is at risk. 
The economic implications are perilous, and the world order is 
threatened.
  This time is a turning point, and we must enable Ukraine to chart its 
own course to remain as a free and sovereign nation and to have a fair 
fight.
  I yield the floor, and I yield back to my colleague from Mississippi.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.
  Mr. WICKER. The Senator from Connecticut is correct to commend the 
massive efforts to prevent the humanitarian suffering in Ukraine and in 
Poland.
  The dozens of nongovernmental organizations, such as the World Food 
Kitchen, the USAID Agency, a part of our Federal Government, the World 
Food Programme, the diplomatic corps, both of the United States and our 
allies, and certainly our American military, the 82nd Airborne.
  But let me conclude by making this profoundly important point: What 
we have heard tonight on both sides of the aisle are bipartisan calls 
for us to do more.
  In this system that we have under our Constitution, we have one 
Commander in Chief at a time, and we have heard from Democrats and 
Republicans tonight on the floor of the U.S. Senate that we need to do 
more. This administration needs to do more. This Commander in Chief can 
do more and needs to do more to help this small country preserve their 
freedom, to win against this war criminal and his unprovoked 
aggression, and to preserve the international order that has governed 
civilized nations for decades and decades.
  I hope the administration is hearing the bipartisan message that we 
bring back from our observations and that we are hearing from our 
constituents.
  I yield back to my dear friend from Ohio.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, first I want to say that I appreciate 
my colleagues being on the floor tonight and their really moving 
statements about the crisis in Ukraine and the atrocities that are 
being committed there.
  And I think what you did tonight is you added a lot of texture and 
perspective to the resolution that just passed this body by a unanimous 
vote. Nobody objected. We are now on record here in this body with a 
strong statement of support for Ukraine and strong opposition to the 
atrocities being committed and our commitment to do more.
  So, again, I appreciated being with you in Poland, and I appreciated 
your coming to the floor tonight.
  I am going to pick up where I had left off and talk a little more 
about what we can do because that is the real question that faces us 
here in the U.S. Senate.
  We talked a lot about military assistance tonight, and we, again, I 
think, had a consensus among us as to what we need to do to help the 
Ukrainians

[[Page S1189]]

protect themselves, particularly from the aerial assault that they are 
under.
  I know we also have another colleague who couldn't be here on the 
floor because of scheduling concerns, as I said earlier, Senator 
Klobuchar, but she will be making a statement for the record that will 
go along with our statements tonight. I look forward to seeing that.
  The four of us got in at about midnight last night, and we come back 
with a heavy heart but also lots of advice for our government as to how 
we can do more.
  On the humanitarian side, the United States has got a key role to 
play as well, not just on military assistance but on ensuring that 
people who are fleeing this conflict and people internally displaced 
have the help they need.
  We support our European partners who have opened their homes, as I 
said earlier, and their borders to Ukrainian refugees. In fact, they 
have provided a 3-year visa, in essence, to Ukrainians in the European 
Union and permission to work, and this is, I think, a strong signal of 
the special relationship that the countries of the EU feel toward 
Ukraine, which I hope someday will be a member of the European Union, 
as do they.
  Congress just passed some immediate help for Ukraine. It was in 
legislation called the Omnibus appropriations bill a few days ago. That 
will help AID here in the United States and other organizations around 
the world be able to help with these refugees and help those Ukrainians 
who are trapped in cities under siege. To me this is the No. 1 priority 
right now.
  Cities like Mariupol--you probably read that people have been without 
food and water for days--for days. There was a child--a girl, 
apparently--who died of dehydration recently, and others are going to 
be finding themselves in an impossible situation, not knowing where 
their next meal may come from. So we need to help them, particularly in 
these cities in the east and the south of the country that are under 
such terrible siege and being surrounded.
  This is an unprecedented humanitarian disaster, and it is being 
caused by Vladimir Putin's attack on Ukraine--Vladimir Putin's war and 
Russia's war. The actions that they have undertaken have created the 
largest movement of refugees in Europe since World War II. That is 
already. By the way, I favor seizing, rather than freezing, the assets 
of Kremlin officials and oligarchs and then providing those proceeds to 
the refugees. Doesn't that make sense?
  So when a billionaire has his assets frozen, it is one thing; but 
when they are seized, as some countries have done--France, Germany--the 
United States needs to step up and do that as well. We should be 
leading on this, not following. That is another thing that we can do to 
help get proceeds to help with the humanitarian efforts.
  But I also have a message tonight to those Russian officials and to 
the Russian commanders on the ground, which is that you have a choice 
to make. You can stop this atrocity. You can refuse the orders to kill 
innocent civilians. You can stop this atrocity that has already taken 
the lives of thousands of civilians--men, women and children, your 
neighbors--your neighbors--some with family connections to Russia, who 
want nothing more than just to live in peace. You can stop this 
atrocity. Disobey the orders. The world is watching, and the war crimes 
are being recorded. You have a choice.
  On sanctions: We talked a little bit about this earlier tonight, but 
we need more and faster sanctions. We need to remove all Russian banks 
from their access to the global financial system. Russia must be 
financially cut off from the rest of the world, or it won't work. We 
have already seen the pain that we can inflict using a portion of our 
sanction authority. We need to do more.
  We need to exert maximum pressure to ensure no money can be sent to 
Russia to fund the war effort. This is one reason it was so important 
that we finally stopped the importation of Russian oil and gas. Why 
would we want to send $40- or $50 million a day, which we were sending 
to Russia to be used for the war machine.
  But we can implement full blocking sanctions on all Russian banks, 
and we can ensure that energy transactions are not exempt from these 
sanctions. That is very important, because right now there are some 
exemptions for energy.
  Russia should not use its oil profits to kill innocent Ukrainians. 
That should be our principle. We should not allow money to flow down 
like water in cracks in the pavement. We should pass legislation to 
ensure that these funds stop--and not by June 24, which is in the 
sanctions that the administration has put forward, but now--blocking 
sanctions now, not for the energy sector transactions on June 24. That 
is too long.
  I think we should move ahead with legislation to cut off most-
favored-nation treatment. This is the permanent trade relationship with 
Russia we granted back in 2012, bringing them into the World Trade 
Organization. Access to the U.S. market is a privilege, not a right. 
And we should not only ensure that we are not giving Russia that 
privilege of access to our markets--lower tariffs of all kinds of 
products, including oil and gas--but also that other countries of the 
world follow suit. That way it would be much more effective.
  But I would like to go beyond most-favored-nation treatment tonight 
and suggest that we also suspend our tax treaty with Russia. Why would 
we want to have a tax treaty that provides tax benefits to Russian 
businesses? Again, our principle there could be no tax breaks for 
invaders. That would make more sense.
  We also need to sanction the Russian energy sector with currency and 
blocking sanctions, as I said, right now--not June 24. I know this is 
more difficult on the Europeans who are more dependent on Russia for 
energy, but there are many steps the United States can take to help 
expand energy production here at home and help our allies abroad.
  I met with someone today who is trying to set up LNG terminals in 
places like Germany and also Ireland and other countries to bring 
liquefied natural gas to Europe. We have plenty of natural gas in this 
country. We are blessed with it. We should use it to help our allies.

  Finally, I would like to advocate for a similar approach to how we 
designated Iranian entities in 2018, when we left the JCPOA. We did not 
issue sanctions or waivers to European companies that continued to do 
business with Iran's economy. We forced those companies to leave Iran's 
market, even at the displeasure of some of those governments. The 
bottom line: It can't be business as usual.
  There is a popular Ukrainian national rallying cry, ``Slava 
Ukraini!'' When translated into English, it means ``Glory to Ukraine.'' 
``Slava Ukraini.''
  There is a response to that rallying cry, which is ``Glory to the 
Heroes.'' ``Heroiam Slava.'' So ``Slava Ukraini'' and in response, 
``Heroiam Slava.''
  And even in these dark times, there are many heroes. While we heard 
firsthand about the worst of humanity represented by the brutal 
bombings of civilian targets, we also saw the best of humanity at work. 
And we saw acts of kindness and generosity: Polish border guards 
helping carry suitcases of mothers who were overwhelmed as they carried 
young children in their arms, fleeing from the only home they have ever 
known; volunteers at the reception center where they provided 
healthcare and lodging and served thousands of meals a day to 
frightened and bewildered families who were waiting to move on to homes 
that generous Poles, Germans, and others in the EU had opened up for 
them.
  In the midst of this atrocity, there are so many heroes to glorify in 
Ukraine. Yes, glory to the heroes: the brave border guards on Snake 
Island; the grandmother bravely walking up to Russian soldiers and 
handing them sunflower seeds, saying: If you don't leave, this is so 
that something beautiful will grow on your grave; the courageous 
President of Ukraine who when asked by western countries if they could 
help him escape, responded simply: ``I need ammunition, not a ride.''
  ``I need ammunition, not a ride.''
  President Zelenskyy's bravery and resilience has been an inspiration 
to Ukrainians and freedom-loving people everywhere. Tomorrow, he will 
be here virtually in a joint session of Congress to talk to all of us, 
and I look forward to it.

[[Page S1190]]

  Glory to the everyday heroes who are caring for the wounded, feeding 
desperate families huddling in basements and subway stations, glory to 
the professional soldiers and citizens alike who have taken up arms and 
are putting their lives on the line to defend their beloved homeland in 
the cause of freedom, against great odds. Glory to the heroes. Heroiam 
Slava. Godspeed to them in their battle for a free and independent 
Ukraine.
  Some may ask--and some of my colleagues here have asked me: Why does 
a Senator from Ohio get involved in Ukraine? Why do you care? Well, 
tens of thousands of Ukrainian Americans call Ohio home, as do hundreds 
of thousands of others who trace their family to that part of the 
world; and it is an honor to represent them and their values.
  I stood together with a thousand fellow Ohioans at a prayer service 
and rallied for Ukraine 2 weeks ago in Parma, OH, just outside of 
Cleveland. We prayed for family and friends in Ukraine who are in 
harm's way. We prayed for the courageous Ukrainian troops and asked for 
God's wisdom and blessing on the duly elected Government of Ukraine 
and, of course, for the protection of President Zelenskyy.
  Ohioans like Andy Futey and Marta Liscynesky are rallying support 
across our State and coordinating efforts to provide humanitarian 
relief to those in need in Ukraine and in neighboring European 
countries. They are heading up through the United Ukrainian 
Organizations of Ohio a fund called the Fund to Aid Ukraine. I 
contributed to it. They do great work.
  Two weeks ago, Sunday, I was honored to speak at an emotional rally 
in Washington, DC, much like the one in Parma, OH, only larger. Again, 
many Ohioans were there. And this past weekend on the border between 
Ukraine and Poland, Ohioans were there volunteering.

  But even if I didn't have a single constituent of Ukrainian descent, 
I would be standing shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine 
because this fight is our fight. This is where, in our generation at 
this time, all freedom-loving people are called to defend what we hold 
dear.
  Eight years ago, Ukrainians made a choice. They stood up to a corrupt 
Russian-backed government. They stood up for freedom, for free markets, 
for peace and prosperity, and for the rule of law. They looked to 
America, and they looked to the EU. They chose freedom over tyranny. 
They chose a democracy over an authoritarian regime. I was there in 
2014, right after the Heavenly Hundred who stood up to the corrupt 
Russian-backed government were killed in what was called the Euromaidan 
or the Revolution of Dignity. I saw firsthand then the commitment the 
people of Ukraine had to freedom and independence, to charting their 
own course.
  Right now, those friends in Ukraine need our help. We cannot let this 
call to action go unanswered. We cannot sit by and watch as innocent 
civilians are brutally killed.
  America and our allies must stand up for freedom, and the world is 
watching. Our friends are watching. Our adversaries are watching. We 
must show them that America stands with Ukraine.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, I want to add one more quotation to 
the very stirring and powerful words that my colleague from Ohio has 
just given us.
  Decades ago, President John F. Kennedy went to Berlin, and in a 
statement of resolve and commitment that mobilized the world, he said 
then, ``I am a Berliner.'' And he spoke for America.
  Today, we are all Ukrainians. Just as he said that he, as an 
American, was a Berliner, today, we are Ukrainian.
  My colleague from Ohio is absolutely right that this fight is ours 
and there are actions we can take--not just words--that will make a 
difference: actions that should not and will not involve American 
troops or an escalatory response, actions that will be in the best 
tradition of the United States, going back to our own Revolution when 
we overcame a more massive British force. We didn't need to defeat 
them; we simply needed to survive. And by surviving, George Washington 
understood that the British would be defeated.
  And so we can enable resilience and resolve of the Ukrainian people 
to defeat the Russians, if we give them what we need, if we give them 
more of what we have been giving them. And today, truly, this bell 
tolls for us; and it is the world's fight, not just the Ukrainians'.
  I thank my friend and fellow Senator from Ohio for leading us on this 
trip, and I hope that our colleagues, a few of them may have heard us 
tonight at this hour--but I hope they will come to the floor and that 
we will continue this conversation because it is a debate that really 
unites all of us across the aisle, as did the resolution which passed 
overwhelmingly.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________