Mr. President, I rise today to recognize a painful milestone. This week marks the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Over the past three years, the world has witnessed the incredible bravery and resolve of the Ukrainian people, as they have stood up to Russia’s unspeakable brutality and destruction. We have seen, and indeed the United States should take great pride in having led, an impressive coalition of nations come together to support Ukraine in this fight to preserve its democracy.

At the same time, an alarming convergence of authoritarian states – Russia, China, Iran, Belarus, and North Korea – have banded together to enable Russia’s illegal war of choice.

As we mark this milestone, we are faced with another frightening set of developments. President Trump has set his sights on negotiations with Vladimir Putin to end the war. Before reaching the negotiating table, however, Mr. Trump has appeared so eager to reach a deal that he has been willing to acquiesce to Russian demands for nothing in return. Even worse, he has deliberately excluded Ukraine and Europe from the discussion.

We have seen this playbook from President Trump before, most recently in Afghanistan. In 2020, eager to achieve a quick deal, Trump negotiated directly with the Taliban and excluded the Afghan Government from the negotiating table. He capitulated to Taliban demands, including the release of over 5,000 Taliban fighters, and blindly agreed to a 1-year withdrawal timeline even as evidence mounted that the Taliban wasn’t holding up the meager demands in the agreement. I fear President Trump has not learned any new negotiating skills in the five years since. The tenets of his approach to Ukraine and Europe appear to be the same. Exclude and criticize America’s allies, capitulate to our enemies, and withdraw support without any assurance of success.    

Earlier this month, Munich was the scene of another capitulation when Vice President Vance and Defense Secretary Hegseth kicked off Trump’s giveaway campaign to President Putin. The historical irony is unmistakable, since Munich is a place that has inauspiciously become a short-hand for the “appeasement” of tyrants. In 1932, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain left his meeting with Adolf Hitler in Munich after surrendering Czechoslovakia in exchange for a peace pledge. When he returned to England, Chamberlain waved about a piece of paper with Hitler’s promises and declared “peace in our time.” In reality, it was the beginning of a capitulation that would lead inexorably to the greatest war in history.

Hopefully, this Administration’s rush to appease Vladimir Putin will not lead to the carnage like that of World War II. But it may well cost Ukraine its sovereignty and independence while also undermining the international order – the very same order that America and her allies created from the ashes of World War II.

Let’s review the bidding so far. To begin, Defense Secretary Hegseth’s speech in Brussels at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group set a shameful tone for the American delegation in Europe. The Ukraine Defense Contact Group, or “UDCG,” was created by the United States under the Biden Administration. It has organized and led the international effort to support Ukraine, which has enabled the Ukrainians to significantly repel the Russian invasion and continue the fight to protect their homeland. The United States has led this effort throughout the war.

I regret that Secretary Hegseth’s first appearance marked the retreat of America’s role as leader of the UDCG. In his remarks, he said, quote, “we must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine’s 2014 borders is an unrealistic objective.” He further stated, quote, “the United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.”  

In essence, Secretary Hegseth conceded away our most important leverage against Russia. His statements, echoed by President Trump and Vice President Vance, have already badly weakened and undermined our negotiating position by gifting the Russians with several unilateral concessions. All of these forfeits were made without any apparent consultation with Ukraine or our NATO allies.

Again, the shortsightedness of Trump, Hegseth, and Vance’s statements are alarming. NATO has been the bulwark against Russian aggression in Europe since 1949. The Alliance has more than doubled its membership since its founding. Central to that enlargement is NATO’s “Open Door Policy,” enshrined in Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which affirms a core NATO tenet that any European nation that demonstrates a willingness to contribute to our collective security and the values and obligations of the NATO Alliance may seek membership. Vladimir Putin does not get to dictate who may or may not become a member of the NATO Alliance, just as his Soviet predecessors could not stop the membership prospects of Poland, or Hungary, or Germany. To preemptively surrender admission to NATO is national security malpractice and only benefits Vladimir Putin.

Finally, Hegseth declared that Europe and NATO are no longer priorities of the Trump Administration. In his words, quote, “we’re here today to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States from being primarily focused on the security of Europe.” Further: “The United States faces consequential threats to our homeland. We must – and we are – focusing on security of our own borders.”

I agree that the security of America’s homeland is our number one national security mission. But I reject Hegseth’s myopic view that the American national security establishment is so fragile and so constrained that it must shift the entirety of its focus to the border security mission, at the expense of other national security imperatives.  Moreover, border protection is a civilian law enforcement mission.  Deploying large numbers of military forces to support Border Patrol is a gross misallocation of forces, and raises numerous legal issues. 

The Trump Administration’s shameful claims have been a shock to Ukraine, NATO, Europe, and the democratic world at large. They have provided great comfort to Putin and autocrats everywhere. In addition to Secretary Hegseth’s speech, Vice President Vance took the stage in Munich and further eroded our status in the world.  He castigated European allies for his perceived grievances with their domestic politics and alleged movements away from “democratic values,” while at the same time remaining silent on the brutal dictators in Russia and Belarus who haven’t had a free or fair election in the course of their tenure.

President Trump gave his tip of the hat to autocracy last week when he attempted to revise history by alleging that Ukraine, not Russia, started the war and that President Zelenskyy was the “dictator” in this equation.  These categorically false statements are either a product of deliberate deceit or historical delusion.  President Trump even directed the acting U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations to vote against a UN resolution condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine. The U.S. instead voted in a block with Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other authoritarian nations, a stunning reversal of decades of American foreign policy. 

This toxic revisionist history has now pervaded his political nominees as well.  Throughout the week, his political appointees have contorted themselves in order to avoid acknowledging the fact that Russia was responsible for starting the war in Ukraine.  This is something straight out of North Korea, where “facts” are the sole purview of the Dear Leader.

We must also note the deafening silence from Republican colleagues. Many Republicans claimed for years to be unapologetic supporters of Ukraine, who were outraged by their perception that President Biden was not sending enough U.S. support to Ukraine. But now, they appear to be standing by silently as facts are erased, as the pipeline of aid to Ukraine peters to a halt, as the Trump Administration disbands federal Task Forces established to seize the assets of Russian oligarchs and guard against foreign election interference and disinformation campaigns.

Silence is complicity. We cannot allow this to continue. If we are going down the path of negotiation with Russia, we must act to strengthen the negotiating hand.

Ironically, Russia is in a very weak negotiating position.  Let us briefly review Vladimir Putin’s situation.  Over the course of three years, Ukraine has inflicted a staggering cost on Russia.  Putin has lost 200,000 soldiers, and many hundreds of thousands more wounded.  He has lost hundreds of billions of dollars of military equipment and weapons.  Indeed, Russia’s weapons and logistical stocks are perilously diminished.  Their closest ally in the war, Iran, is weaker than it has been in decades due to Israeli and U.S. actions.  North Korean soldiers, sent to reinforce flagging Russian forces, are suffering severe casualty rates.  Russia has been ousted from Syria, and its Wagner mercenaries in Africa are struggling to reorganize.  The Russian economy is afloat, but stagnant.

Any shrewd negotiator should recognize that Russia is on the ropes.  Now is not the time to appease Putin.  This is the time to exert maximum pressure to bring him to the negotiating table, hat in hand.

There are three things we must do now:

  1. First, we must continue to pressure Russia economically. This means strengthening existing sanctions, identifying secondary sanctions, and bolstering sanctions enforcement and anti-evasion efforts. Top of the evasion effort should be working with allies to combat the illicit oil trade, including efforts to go on the offensive against the so-called “ghost fleet” of aging tankers Russia employs to facilitate the export of oil and other sanctioned goods.
  2. Second, we must work with our European partners to impound and leverage Russia’s frozen assets.
  3. Finally, we must ensure, in both word and deed, that Ukraine has our support and commitment to working with them to establish a just and lasting peace.

However, instead of taking action to strengthen the negotiating hand on any of these fronts, the Administration has shifted focus to the signing of a deal to exploit Ukraine’s natural resources.  Much remains to be seen about the shape of this agreement.  But we do know it will take years, if not decades, to see substantial returns.  A large number of Ukraine’s rare earth deposits are located in Ukrainian territory that is currently contested or occupied by Russia.  I’m not sure how one is to square this agreement with Secretary Hegseth’s comments about the forfeiture of Ukraine’s sovereign territory.  Furthermore, the deal includes no security guarantees from the United States, which the Ukrainians had rightly insisted upon.  Security guarantees are essential to assure Ukraine that the United States is not simply interested in an enrichment scheme, but is committed to their pursuit of a just and lasting peace.

Indeed, a just and lasting peace must be the final outcome. That is a U.S. national security imperative. One that has, at least until recently, enjoyed robust and vocal bipartisan support. We support Ukraine because we know that the war in Ukraine is not just a regional war; it is the most visible demonstration of the larger existential threat Russia poses to our national security.

We support Ukraine to ensure that Vladimir Putin cannot achieve his goals, which are counter to our own national interests. We must be clear eyed about this: if Putin succeeds in Ukraine, it will be the first piece in his long-stated promise to “recreate the Soviet empire.” If that happens, if we fail to learn from history and to see brutal and craven authoritarians for what they are and the threat they represent, we may again find America’s sons and daughters sent to fight on Europe’s shores.  

I urge my Republican colleagues to speak up and stand with Ukraine, as they have for years. I yield the floor.