[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 214 (Thursday, December 18, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8885-S8887]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 2918

  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, my colleague from Virginia was very 
persuasive, I think, in pointing out the threat to national security 
that providing Nvidia's chips to China presents.
  Unfortunately, another area that has the potential to significantly 
undermine our national security is that of the efforts by this 
administration to try and negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine.
  Now, don't get me wrong. I support ending the war in Ukraine. I think 
it would be in America's interests, in Europe's interests, and in 
Ukraine's interests to do that. But to do it in a way that undermines 
Ukraine for the long term--that gives Vladimir Putin access to the 
Ukrainian army, which is the largest army in Europe now and is the most 
technologically advanced--and to do that in a way that would further 
undermine the future security of Ukraine is not in America's interest.
  But, to continue his war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin needs two things. 
He needs money, and he needs weapons.
  Russia has hundreds of billions of dollars in assets that are frozen 
overseas, some of which are subject to U.S. jurisdiction. Moscow is 
fighting hard to regain access to that money because it would help 
sustain its war effort.
  But, as we know, money alone is not going to be enough. Sanctions 
have significantly degraded Russia's defense industry, and to keep 
building weapons, Russia relies on outside supply chains. Much of that 
support now comes from Chinese entities that are providing the 
materials and the technologies that are keeping Russia's war machine 
running.
  So, if President Trump is really serious about ending this war, those 
are the pressure points to put against Vladimir Putin.
  The good news is that the tools we need to apply that pressure 
already exist. The United States can deny Russia access to its frozen 
sovereign assets, and we can disrupt the supply chains that enable 
Russia to keep fighting. The Foreign Relations Committee has already 
reported out two

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bills that have had strong bipartisan support that would address each 
of these.
  One is the REPO Implementation Act, known as REPO 2.0. I think that 
is particularly important because hundreds of billions of Russian 
sovereign assets have been frozen, including about $5 billion here in 
the United States, since the start of Russia's murderous invasion of 
Ukraine.
  To help Ukraine beat back the Russian invasion and to eventually 
rebuild, seizing and repurposing those Russian frozen funds is the 
right place to start. Senators Risch and Whitehouse led the Rebuilding 
Economic Prosperity and Opportunity for Ukrainians Act, known as the 
REPO Act, which I supported, to allow the frozen assets in America to 
support Ukraine's recovery and reconstruction to ensure Russia's 
accountability and ensure a just and lasting peace.
  The partnership has worked again in this session of Congress to put 
in place an even stronger REPO 2.0. This bill, which passed out of 
committee, promotes the regularly scheduled transfers of sizable 
amounts of these underlying assets to Ukraine to build pressure until 
Russia ceases its war of aggression and agrees to terms that compensate 
Ukraine for war damages.
  Now, I think it is particularly important for the United States to 
act because our EU friends have been working on this issue. They have 
had significant objections. Last year, when the first REPO Act was 
introduced, they raised a number of concerns. But this year, our 
European allies are working very hard to get this done in Europe where 
most of the Russian assets are actually being held.
  There is a meeting on this today in Brussels. The question of 
freezing and then seizing and deploying Russian sovereign assets is a 
global security question. It should be decided by people operating in a 
global security environment.
  Now, as I said, the Foreign Relations Committee adopted REPO 2.0 by 
voice vote in October, and I am confident we will pass this legislation 
out of this Congress at some point in the next few months, if not 
today.
  But supporting Ukraine against Russia in this unjust war is important 
to America's national security. One way to help ensure that Ukraine has 
the support they need is to pass the REPO 2.0 Act.
  So, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I now 
ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate 
consideration of Calendar No. 243, S. 2918; further, that the bill be 
considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider 
be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action 
or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, Lady Astor 
was the first woman to serve in the British Parliament, the British 
House of Commons. In 1933, she was asked at a cocktail party: Do you 
know where Hitler was born? And without missing a beat, she responded: 
At Versailles.
  And the point of the response was that harsh reparations from the 
Treaty of Versailles led to German resentment and the rise of the 
demagogue Hitler.
  It had the opposite of the planned effect. The plan was to punish 
Germany. The plan was to make Germany pay for the war that they had 
begun, but in the end, it led to the rise of Hitler.
  I fear many in the Senate, though they are well-intentioned, will 
repeat the same mistake of meting out punishment without considering 
the ramifications. If the authors of this bill are successful, they 
will confiscate Russian sovereign funds and distribute those funds to 
Ukraine.
  One could make a good argument for the fairness of making Russia pay 
for their war of aggression. But first one must consider this currently 
seized money is an integral part of peace negotiations.
  Once this money is seized, an important facet of the peace compromise 
will disappear, and Russia may well be induced to just keep fighting 
this terrible meat grinder of a war.
  What a tragedy if, in haste, the result of punishing Russia is to 
prolong the war.
  Confiscating Russian sovereign assets is essentially an act of 
economic war. Seizing and transferring these assets to Ukraine may make 
people in Washington feel virtuous, but it will not bring peace.
  Confiscating Russia's sovereign assets will reinforce the view of 
hard-liners in Moscow that Russia's war lies not with Ukraine but 
really with the United States and the West.
  There is no justification for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but this 
bill directly undermines President Trump's diplomatic efforts to end 
the killing in Ukraine. In fact, the Trump administration recently 
warned the European Union not to give seized Russian funds to Ukraine. 
Russia's frozen assets could be used as a bargaining chip and are being 
used as a bargaining chip in negotiations.
  But confiscating their sovereign assets and giving them to Ukraine 
will only convince Moscow that there is no negotiated settlement to be 
had with Kyiv. The result will be the further destruction of Ukraine. 
More Ukrainian soldiers and civilians will die, and more cities and 
towns will be turned to rubble.
  Nicholas Mulder is an associate professor at Cornell. He highlights 
the danger of the destabilizing precedent that Western countries would 
set by seizing assets to end a war they are not openly involved in.
  Professor Mulder writes, that such an action would ``broaden coercive 
actions that states could take for disputes to which they are not a 
direct party.''
  Elisabeth Braw, a columnist at Foreign Policy and a senior fellow at 
the Atlantic Council, also highlights the risk of blowback to Western 
companies.
  She states that if Western governments themselves begin confiscating 
assets without due process, they will expose Western companies to the 
caprice of undemocratic regimes.
  In fact, Russia has already threatened to seize $288 billion of 
Western assets that are in Russia. So we take their money; they take 
our money. Where does the cycle end?
  This bill will hand the Russians another tool to fuel resentment 
against us. American leaders speak of a rules-based international 
order, but the theory that the United States can confiscate the assets 
of another country we are not at war with is legally fraud.
  Professor Mulder argues that economic reprisals are the prerogative 
of injured states, not of third parties. Rather than compel respect for 
international law, our actions will demonstrate to our adversaries that 
we are flouting it.
  This bill will be used by the Kremlin to show the world that while 
Washington demands that others follow the rules, we are happy to break 
them when we see fit.
  In a multipolar world, Washington can no longer expect to act with 
impunity, particularly when dealing with a nuclear power. We understood 
the serious dangers that our country faced during the Cold War, but 
three decades of hubris and repeated foreign policy disasters prove 
that Washington's foreign policy establishment is badly broken.
  A good way to start on the road to fixing that broken foreign policy 
is rejecting this disastrous bill which will only delay and possibly 
end the peace negotiations.
  Mr. President, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard
  The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague from 
Kentucky's longstanding efforts to object to sanctions and to any way 
to hold accountable states that commit atrocities like Vladimir Putin, 
but I think he is just wrong on how we end this war.
  The way we end this war is by putting pressure on Vladimir Putin so 
that he is willing to come to the table. He has not been willing to 
come to the table to have serious negotiations.
  And the President's rolling out the red carpet for him in Alaska, 
welcoming him back into the international community, also has not 
brought him to the table.
  So the only thing Vladimir Putin understands--and I agree with my 
colleague about the Russian people. I have been to Russia. The Russian 
people are wonderful. They are being misled by a tyrant who will do 
anything to continue to expand Russia's influence, not only in Europe 
but around the world.
  My colleague, I am sure, hasn't read some of the documents that show 
what

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Russia is doing right now to meddle in the United States to try and 
influence public opinion about the war in Ukraine. So I think he is 
absolutely wrong.
  That is why I am going to continue to ask for a unanimous consent to 
pass the third bill that came out of the Foreign Relations Committee 
because I think that Russia--not Ukraine, not U.S. taxpayers--should 
pay for the destruction it has caused.
  What the REPO 2.0 bill would do would be to make clear that 
aggression carries lasting financial consequences.