A Stain on Our Nation's Honor

Floor Speech

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Mr. FOSTER. Mr. Speaker, at the time of Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine held the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

According to the Arms Control Association, this included approximately 1,900 strategic warheads, 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles, and 34 strategic bombers, an arsenal large enough to annihilate every person on Earth.

By 1996, Ukraine had voluntarily given up that nuclear arsenal in exchange for written guarantees of territorial integrity, signed by America, Russia, England, and Europe. These were guarantees that were reconfirmed by Russia under Vladimir Putin in 2009.

When JD Vance and Donald Trump stabbed Ukraine in the back in the Oval Office last Friday by ignorantly repudiating those security agreements and by failing to defend one of only two nations that has ever voluntarily given up its nuclear weapons, it forever raised the risk of an uncontrolled nuclear arms race and a nuclear holocaust. It put a stain on our Nation's honor that will take generations to remove.

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