As the fight over aid to Ukraine continues in Washington — and in the European Union, where Hungary just blocked a €50bn Ukraine aid package — political veterans in the West are working to remind voters, and their reluctant elected officials, that Russian leader Vladimir Putin is an authoritarian whose annexations in Ukraine violate, and mock, international law.
For Ukraine supporters, portraying Putin as a manifest threat to global democracy is an essential aspect of ensuring that Ukraine support doesn’t evaporate on the sands of domestic divisions in the American political moment. With the House GOP leading the movement to handicap America’s Ukraine support, Republicans in the Senate like Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Mitt Romney (R-UT), and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) continue to align with the Biden administration’s contention that Ukraine aid is both necessary and effective.
[NOTE: Ret. Admiral James Stavridis recently relayed how 90% of Ukraine aid finds its way back to American defense contractors and a recent CNN report estimates “Russia has lost 87% of the ground troops it had before its war on Ukraine, and two thirds of its tanks” — all without American boots on the ground. After Russia issued a warrant for his arrest, Sen. Graham called U.S. assistance to Ukraine “the best money we’ve ever spent.”]
Yet with GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump having characterized his relationship with Putin as friendly and cooperative, Russia hawks — especially on the Republican side — have been working double-time not just to justify the aid as pragmatic, but to make a moral case by painting Putin as a bloodthirsty despot, with Russia’s defeat presented as a necessity for U.S. national security.
On NBC’s Meet the Press last Sunday, Romney was asked to respond to the growing number of Republicans who have said they are opposed to writing what they say is a blank check to Ukraine — and he responded by addressing the money, but also by calling Putin a homicidal thug.
Romney said: “Well, we’re not going to write a blank check. We’re going to evaluate exactly how the money is spent. What we’re going to do is provide Ukraine with the weapons they need to defend themselves against a brutal invasion by Putin, who is a thug and a murderer. So, that’s what we’re going to do.”
Romney warned: “If Putin thinks he can invade his neighbor with impunity,” and the U.S. stops its support of Ukraine, “he’s not going to stop (with Ukraine) and he’s going to go into a NATO nation that’s going to draw NATO and our troops into war with Russia.”
Romney says if the U.S. stops providing Ukraine with the weapons it needs to defend itself from Russia, “Anything other than that would be a huge dereliction of our responsibility to global democracy.”
_(7955246994).jpg){kind=link}