On Senate Floor, Bennet Speaks on U.S. Support for Ukraine
Remarks on the Senate floor on U.S. support for Ukraine — As Delivered.
Thank you, Madam President. I’m sorry that you’re having to stay here so late tonight, but I’m glad you’re in the chair.
I wanted to come down to the floor now that the vote is done just to explain the objection that I made earlier today. I’m not going to do it at elaborate length, but I think it’s important to say that I was deeply disappointed, as were many people, that the deal to keep the government open did not actually have, as part of it, continuing funding for Ukraine, which I think is critically important. I think most people in the Senate believe it’s critically important.
And I objected to proceeding tonight because I thought it was important for us to find a way to send a bipartisan message from this chamber that that’s how we felt.
And as I mentioned to the presiding officer earlier today — to my caucus earlier today — one of the reasons, or maybe the reason, why this is something that’s so important to me is that my mom, who is still alive, was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1938. She was a Polish Jew. I couldn’t imagine a worse place in the world to be born at that time than where my mom was born. And she and her parents and an aunt survived; everybody else was killed. And as everybody in this chamber knows — certainly the presiding officer knows — 16 million people were killed in Ukraine and in Poland by the Nazis and by Stalin. And my mom cannot believe that she has lived long enough to see another land war break out in Europe. That’s what she says to me, “I can’t believe I live to see this.”
And I almost can’t believe it either because we had gotten used to reliance on our international organizations, the rule of law, the idea that democracy had spread, the idea that capitalism had spread, and there were some people when the Berlin Wall fell down in the late 1980s, that were writing books about how this was the kind of the end of history because we had the liberal — small “L” liberal, not big “L” liberal — this small liberal order had prevailed.
And of course, we know now that wasn’t true, you know. And we know now that there is a contest in the world of at least two very different visions of how humans should organize themselves. We believe in democracy, we believe in the rule of law, we believe in freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. Vladimir Putin believes in none of those things. And Xi Jinping believes in none of those things, either.
And it was an amazing experience for me to sit as a member of the Intelligence Committee and watch Putin make one mistake after another as he contemplated invading Ukraine, something a lot of people believed he wouldn’t actually do. I think a lot of Ukrainians thought that he might think a lot of Poles thought that he might; I think a lot of others living in Eastern Europe were worried that he might actually do it. And I said that he made some fundamental mistakes. And he did make some fundamental mistakes.
One was, he believed that his army was a lot stronger than it has been. That doesn’t mean they don’t have serious military capabilities. That doesn’t mean that, you know, he wouldn’t unleash a battlefield of nuclear weapons at the drop of a hat, or chemical weapons at the drop of a hat if he felt like he was losing in a way that threatened his regime or threatened him. I certainly am clear-eyed about that. I know the presiding officer is, and everybody else is.
But his army is a lot more hollowed out than he thought it was. And that’s what happens when you’re a totalitarian living on top of a totalitarian society. No one actually tells you the truth; no one says, “Vladimir Putin, your army has been hollowed out.” You know, “We’ve wasted all that money that you asked us to spend on the army through corruption,” and other kinds of things. And so that was one fundamental mistake.
A second fundamental mistake was his failure to understand what the Ukrainian people’s reaction would be. You know, we didn’t get it — all right. So our intelligence wasn’t right. There were people that were saying that Putin was going to be in Kyiv and 72 hours. There was a feeling that the Zelenskyy’s government would collapse and that the Russians would have a puppet government in Kyiv, and instead what has happened is the Ukrainian people have exhibited more bravery than anybody could have ever asked for. It’s astonishing what they have done. And to me, it’s astonishing what they’ve accomplished. You know, you hear people in the press these days talking about the stalemate on the frontier or on the battleline — the front line — as if that’s somehow a failure on the part of the Ukrainian people. I see that as exactly the opposite. I see that as an unbelievable achievement by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, by the Ukrainian people, by President Zelenskyy, and by the American taxpayers who have supported this work.
And that’s the third thing Vladimir Putin didn’t count on, was that people all over the free world — in democracies all over planet Earth — would be so inspired by the courage of the Ukrainian people, would be so inspired by the bravery of the Ukrainian people, that they would demand of their elected officials that we do more, do more, do more. And that’s what people have said in countries all over the world — that he didn’t count on either.
And that’s been an amazing thing over the last two years after we had a president here who cast a lot of doubt on whether NATO was even something important, or whether the rule of law was something important, or whether the U.S. following through on our commitments, was even something important. And we’ve shown that none of that is true.
And NATO is stronger today than it’s ever been. The transatlantic alliance is stronger today than it has ever been. We have allies from Europe to Asia, who understand what the importance of this fight is. They know that this is not just a fight for Ukraine. They know that Ukrainians are just fighting for Ukraine, although that’s an important fight, that’s an important battle.
They know this is a fight for democracy. This is a fight for the free world.
And there is no way that this fight would have been as successful as it has been without U.S. assistance, without U.S. intelligence.
This is one where the good guys have come together in a way that’s really meaningful and in a way that the tyrants in this world, I think, were not expecting.
And our intelligence community certainly thinks that Xi Jinping is now having to think twice and three times, and four times about whether or not he’s going to invade Taiwan as a result of the success of the Ukrainian people.
President Zelenskyy was here two weeks ago, and he told us that without our support, they would lose. And I told my colleagues today that I was standing there with probably — I wasn’t as close as you were, Madam President — but I was close. I was just several desks away from where he was standing. And I was thinking to myself, this is — it was in the old Senate chamber, you know, where you didn’t need a microphone in the old days, and humans were talking to humans, people showed up to have these debates and have these conversations. And here we were, a hundred humans who are in the Senate, who happened to be in the Senate today.
And here’s this guy, President Zelenskyy, who until three years ago, or so or four years ago maybe, was an actor in his home country, in Ukraine, and who ran for office almost as a lark because there was so much corruption that he felt like he had an obligation as a citizen to run — to run for president, to try to overcome that corruption.
And then something happened that he probably didn’t think was going to happen, which is, Putin invaded Ukraine, and the entire weight of the world dropped on President Zelenskyy’s head — just a human being, one human being. Not the tallest guy I’ve ever seen, not the strongest guy I’ve ever seen. A pretty regular person standing there in his fatigues, and the entire weight of the world is on his shoulders.
And or support of the Ukrainian people because of what they’ve been willing to do not just for Ukraine, but for democracy, has made a huge difference to them and to what President Zelenskyy is trying to accomplish.
And tonight, I did object earlier because I was worried that — I thought it was important for us to make sure we send a clear message that we’re not leaving Washington without figuring out how to fund Ukraine — that we’re going to spend the next 45 days or so making sure that the United States continues to lead in this effort.
No one else in the world can lead here. That’s a lesson I’ve learned from my mom. That’s a lesson I’ve learned from her experience in Warsaw and around Warsaw.
Nobody but the United States can lead; we’re the only folks that can lead. President Zelenskyy said we’re the only folks that we can that can lead. And we cannot allow our political differences here — our political disputes here — to keep us from delivering the aid that Ukraine needs. We can’t do it.
And I think there are probably some people who thought when we left today, that’s what we were doing. I thought it was important for the leadership of the Senate to put out a statement tonight — Senator Schumer and Senator McConnell, and several others on each side of the aisle — underscoring that we are going to spend the next 45 days working together to pass a robust
Ukraine aid package.
And I think that’s vitally important. And I hope in a small way, hopefully, we all had the chance today to think again about how important this is, how important our leadership is, how important our presence here as human beings is.
We’re not going to get another chance at this, I suspect, Madam President. I suspect that we’re gonna have one chance. And that chance is going to be 45 days from now.
And this chamber, just like President Zelenskyy has done, just like the Ukrainian people have done — he said, in fact, that, “We’re giving our lives, all we’re asking you for is your money.” He’s right about that; they are giving their lives.
And I think that if we had entered this war, or watched this war happen, starting two years ago,
and we had not supported the Ukrainian people in the way that we have, the world wouldn’t have supported them, and they wouldn’t have made the extraordinary progress that they’ve made. And who knows how this could end? We don’t know.
It’s important for us to stay in this fight. It’s important to us to continue to lead. It is important for us to learn the lessons of 16 million people who lost their lives in Eastern Europe, in Poland, in Ukraine, believing that they were dying invisible to the rest of the world. And we can’t let that happen again.
Madam President, I’d ask that the statement that Senator Schumer and Senator McConnell signed tonight be placed in the record.