Discussion · Senate
Thom Tillis Republican
“I recently visited Ukraine and saw the damage from Russian attacks on civilian targets like schools and stores. Russia has murdered innocent people and committed terrible crimes there. This war is a fight between freedom and dictatorship, and good and evil. We must support Ukraine.”
“Mr. President, I have the privilege--I have been in the Senate for 12 years, and I have never led a codel, but I decided one last trip that I wanted to take before I left the Senate was to get back over to Ukraine to really understand what is going on, on the ground and maybe what message we should convey to our colleagues here in the Senate and to our--to the administration and to the American people. This is the second time I went to Ukraine. We also had a very, very productive visit with the government leaders in Poland before we traveled over to Kyiv and then to Kharkiv. We were actually the first delegation since the war began that has been able to get out to Kharkiv where the fighting is only about 10 or so miles away from the city’s center. But as we were going on the trip--well, first, when you are in Kyiv, which we spent the first 24 hours, it is an amazing sight to see a country that was illegally invaded that is being bombed on a daily basis still trying to have some semblance of normalcy--and this is in Kyiv. But then when you go to Kharkiv and you see, as you are riding out there, civilian targets: gas stations, convenience stores, schools, and buildings that have all been bombed by the indiscriminate bombing of Russia, it gives you a real sense of the devastation, the heartbreak, and all that is wrong with the decision that Vladimir Putin made to invade a sovereign nation. And I, for one, think that the war--I agree with the people of Ukraine. That invasion started in 2014. As a matter of fact, I remember vividly when I was campaigning in 2014 how critical I was of the Obama administration; in the face of an illegal invasion, the idea was to send them blankets, not to send them the support that they needed to repel a foreign invader. Now fast forward, they are invaded again, and they are doing the same things in the outer reaches of Ukraine that they have been doing in Crimea. They are trying to--they tell kids in Crimea in school that the leaders of Ukraine are Nazis; that they are there for the denazification of Ukraine. I find that rich since the President of Ukraine is Jewish, but that is what Vladimir Putin is telling his folks to tell these kids in school; that they are subhuman; that the people of Ukraine are. You can’t think of them as human beings; you think of them as life forms that they need to eliminate. But later on in the colloquy, I want to talk about what we need to do. But I also want to go back to a trip that I took a couple of years ago, my first time into Kyiv, and the devastation and the stories that I witnessed in an area called Bucha. I did a floor speech after that visit, and I really want the American people to understand what happened there in about the first month of the war shortly after they invaded that February 2022. Vladimir Putin directly allowed mercenaries and military officers to authorize their folks on the ground to indiscriminately kill innocent civilians. There are numerous reports of rape of a daughter, rape of a wife in the presence of the husband, then to have the husband murdered. This is not fake; this is well documented. As a matter of fact, I went to a memorial where I saw those victims’ names on a wall. That is what we are dealing with in Ukraine. That was 4 years ago, and they are continuing that systematic terror of this population. That is what we are dealing with here. We are not dealing with two adversaries or two countries that we have good relationships with and that we are trying to calm a dispute between the two. We are literally talking about, in my opinion--I will let my colleagues speak for themselves--a fight between good and evil, between communism and Western democracy, between freedom and totalitarianism. That is what we are confronted with in Ukraine. I could go on with a number of other examples, but rather than do that now, I would like to defer to my colleague from Utah, Senator Curtis. It was his first time in Ukraine, but some insights and takeaways from you, Senator Curtis, and then we will go to Senator Armstrong”
Mr. President, I have the privilege--I have been in the Senate for 12 years, and I have never led a codel, but I decided one last trip that I wanted to take before I left the Senate was to get back over to Ukraine to really understand what is going on, on the ground and maybe what message we should convey to our colleagues here in the Senate and to our--to the administration and to the American people. This is the second time I went to Ukraine. We also had a very, very productive visit with the government leaders in Poland before we traveled over to Kyiv and then to Kharkiv. We were actually the first delegation since the war began that has been able to get out to Kharkiv where the fighting is only about 10 or so miles away from the city’s center. But as we were going on the trip--well, first, when you are in Kyiv, which we spent the first 24 hours, it is an amazing sight to see a country that was illegally invaded that is being bombed on a daily basis still trying to have some semblance of normalcy--and this is in Kyiv. But then when you go to Kharkiv and you see, as you are riding out there, civilian targets: gas stations, convenience stores, schools, and buildings that have all been bombed by the indiscriminate bombing of Russia, it gives you a real sense of the devastation, the heartbreak, and all that is wrong with the decision that Vladimir Putin made to invade a sovereign nation. And I, for one, think that the war--I agree with the people of Ukraine. That invasion started in 2014. As a matter of fact, I remember vividly when I was campaigning in 2014 how critical I was of the Obama administration; in the face of an illegal invasion, the idea was to send them blankets, not to send them the support that they needed to repel a foreign invader. Now fast forward, they are invaded again, and they are doing the same things in the outer reaches of Ukraine that they have been doing in Crimea. They are trying to--they tell kids in Crimea in school that the leaders of Ukraine are Nazis; that they are there for the denazification of Ukraine. I find that rich since the President of Ukraine is Jewish, but that is what Vladimir Putin is telling his folks to tell these kids in school; that they are subhuman; that the people of Ukraine are. You can’t think of them as human beings; you think of them as life forms that they need to eliminate. But later on in the colloquy, I want to talk about what we need to do. But I also want to go back to a trip that I took a couple of years ago, my first time into Kyiv, and the devastation and the stories that I witnessed in an area called Bucha. I did a floor speech after that visit, and I really want the American people to understand what happened there in about the first month of the war shortly after they invaded that February 2022. Vladimir Putin directly allowed mercenaries and military officers to authorize their folks on the ground to indiscriminately kill innocent civilians. There are numerous reports of rape of a daughter, rape of a wife in the presence of the husband, then to have the husband murdered. This is not fake; this is well documented. As a matter of fact, I went to a memorial where I saw those victims’ names on a wall. That is what we are dealing with in Ukraine. That was 4 years ago, and they are continuing that systematic terror of this population. That is what we are dealing with here. We are not dealing with two adversaries or two countries that we have good relationships with and that we are trying to calm a dispute between the two. We are literally talking about, in my opinion--I will let my colleagues speak for themselves--a fight between good and evil, between communism and Western democracy, between freedom and totalitarianism. That is what we are confronted with in Ukraine. I could go on with a number of other examples, but rather than do that now, I would like to defer to my colleague from Utah, Senator Curtis. It was his first time in Ukraine, but some insights and takeaways from you, Senator Curtis, and then we will go to Senator Armstrong