[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 35 (Tuesday, February 27, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S992-S993]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                Ukraine

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, nearly 20 years ago, Russian President 
Vladimir Putin described the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union 
as the ``greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century,'' 
and, for decades, he has worked incessantly to revive the repressive 
empire built by Stalin, including by redrawing European borders by 
force.
  Back in 2008, he sent the Russian military to bring Georgia, a 
sovereign democracy, to heel. His forces occupy parts of that country 
right up to today.

  Precisely 10 years ago today, Putin launched a military invasion into 
Ukraine to seize Crimea and the Donbas region.
  Of course, today isn't an anniversary of a settled event in the past; 
it is a mile marker in a campaign of subjugation, brutality, and 
conquest that remains very much alive.
  Over the past 10 years, Putin's invasion has grown from an initial 
incursion by ``little green men'' to a massive ground campaign to seize 
all of Ukraine. But as Russian aggression escalated, two things 
remained the same: first, the incredible resolve of the Ukrainian 
people to defend their sovereignty, and second, the tendency of Western 
partners capable of supporting Ukraine's defense to hesitate instead.
  Think about America's own behavior back in 2014. President Obama was 
6 years removed from a promise to ``reset'' relations with Russia and a 
little more than a year removed from

[[Page S993]]

mocking his opponent on the Presidential debate stage for warning of 
the threat posed by Putin. As he put it smugly to our now colleague, 
Senator Romney, ``The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign 
policy back.'' That same year, then-Vice President Biden said our 
colleague from Utah was ``mired in a Cold War mindset.''
  Well, of course, the Obama-Biden administration didn't just scoff at 
realism on Russia; they assiduously avoided it. When Ukraine's pro-
Western democratic leaders faced an incursion by highly trained Russian 
troops, they begged for lethal weapons to defend their sovereign 
territory, but the Obama-Biden administration worried about escalation 
and sent nonlethal supplies like blankets and MREs instead. The next 
year, the West's collective failure to support Ukraine military or 
impose meaningful costs on Russia resulted in cease-fire agreements 
that at best would have frozen the conflict in place had Putin actually 
respected them.
  Even as the next administration moved to provide lethal assistance 
and training for Ukraine and began the process of rebuilding our own 
military strength, too few European allies were taking Russian 
aggression or their own pledges to increase defense spending after 
Putin's 2014 invasion seriously enough.
  Unfortunately, President Biden compounded the problems he had helped 
sow back when he was Vice President--from a disastrous, credibility-
shredding withdrawal from Afghanistan to his constant refusal to steer 
European allies away from reliance on Russia, especially Russian 
energy. It is not a mystery why Putin was not deterred.
  The weakness and indecision that defined the Obama-Biden 
administration's response to Putin's 2014 invasion have actually echoed 
in the Biden-Harris administration's response to his 2022 escalation. 
For months, as Russian forces amassed on Ukraine's borders, and for 
months, as their brutal campaign got underway, the Biden White House 
mostly managed to deter itself from equipping Ukraine at the speed of 
relevance.
  This is not to say that Western allies and partners aren't making 
historic investments in deterring common threats. The free world is 
indeed finally waking up. In the last 2 years, NATO allies have spent 
more than $120 billion on cutting-edge U.S. weapons and capabilities, 
while also making historic investments in their own defense and 
industrial capacity.
  Just think of the lessons Russian aggression is teaching about the 
interconnected nature of the threats we face. Consider how unwaveringly 
our allies in the Indo-Pacific have supported Ukraine's fight, both in 
word and in deed. As Taiwan's Foreign Minister put it over the weekend, 
on the 2-year anniversary of the 2022 escalation--here is what he said: 
Ukraine's resistance was ``showing us what fighting spirit is, and 
passing it on to Taiwan.''
  Take the encouraging news just yesterday that Sweden is now finally 
poised to become the newest member of the transatlantic alliance. I 
visited Stockholm and Helsinki in a show of solidarity last March when 
their Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of joining NATO. There 
is no question that Sweden and Finland joining the most successful 
military alliance in human history will further contribute advanced 
capabilities to our collective security and make the West and America 
safer.

  Across the world, Americans, allies, and partners have drawn sobering 
lessons from the latest chapter of Russian aggression in Ukraine, but 
we have yet to learn some of the same lessons ourselves. It is time to 
recognize how passivity, half-measures, and delay brought the West to 
this particular moment and where they will take us if we don't reject 
them and chart a new course. We should reflect on the mistakes of the 
Obama-Biden administration, its failure to respond forcefully to 
aggression, and we should resolve not to make the same mistakes 
ourselves.
  For 10 years, our adversary has shown us by his actions that Russia's 
appetite for conquest grows with the eating. We can no longer afford to 
pretend otherwise.