Liam Conner
Washington – Senator Lindsey Graham said his Republican colleague, Senator Tommy Tuberville, is an “outlier” within the party when it comes to his stance on Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine.
“Senator Tuberville’s analysis really ignores what Putin stands for,” Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, said on “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “He’s an outsider, I think, in the Republican Party. I like him personally.”
Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, said on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast last week that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a “dictator” and “not a constitutional president,” while suggesting that the US should not support him and downplaying Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions in Ukraine.
“He doesn’t want Ukraine, he doesn’t want Europe,” Tuberville said of Putin. “He has enough land of his own. He just wants to make sure he doesn’t have US weapons in Ukraine pointed at Moscow.”
Graham said Tuberville’s comments represent “him and him alone,” not the Republican Party in general.
“If you spend 15 minutes studying Putin and what he wants, he wants to recreate the Russian Empire. He’s not going to stop at Ukraine,” Graham said. “It’s not about NATO, it’s not about American weapons in Ukraine, it’s about a megalomaniac who wants to create the Russian Empire by force of arms. If we don’t stop him, there goes Taiwan.”
The South Carolina Republican emphasized the importance of supporting Ukraine, saying he supports the U.S. training of Ukrainian forces inside Ukraine, which Zelenskyy recently requested. Graham added that “now it’s time to give them the F-16s, let them fly the planes, long-range artillery to hit targets inside Russia.”
“I think this summer Ukraine will regain military momentum,” he said.
Earlier this year, Congress approved a foreign aid package that included support for Ukraine, which had long been delayed due to partisan disputes. On Friday, President Biden publicly apologized to Zelenskyy for the delay in military assistance that allowed Russia to make battlefield gains.
Graham admitted that “we lost momentum” in training the Ukrainians with the delay in the weapons package, but “now we have a chance to restart this war.” And he stressed that Ukraine’s success is in American interests.
“If we help Ukraine now, they can become the best trading partner we ever dreamed of,” Graham said, citing mineral assets in Ukraine. “How Ukraine ends is very important. Let’s help them win a war we cannot afford to lose.”
gshow ao vivo
email uol pro
melhor conteudo
mãe png
cadena 3
tudo sobre
absol
