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Floor Speech

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Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I come here to speak briefly about the status of the peace talks led by the United States and President Trump involving both Ukraine and Putin.

First, I want to thank President Trump for--there is one thing that President Trump has been consistent with: He hates war, and he tries to do everything he can to bring peace.

We attempted--he has attempted that across the globe. He is working right now on trying to settle the situation in the Middle East, and we are trying to address the situation in Ukraine.

Now, the response from Ukraine, after President Zelenskyy--let's keep in mind that President Zelenskyy, over the past week, has withstood attacks in Ukraine that have killed more people than are sitting up in the Gallery right now. So that is over the past couple of days, killed roughly twice as many people that are in the Gallery right now. Many of them civilians. I am not even counting any of the losses on the battlefield.

Now, Vladimir Putin says he needs a little bit of time to assess to see. What part of a complete cease-fire is difficult to understand, right? Stop killing people. Ukraine said that they would. They are ready to sign a 30-day cease-fire now.

Why do you think Putin's not ready to sign it right now? They have got to examine what a complete cease-fire means. It is because this liar and this murderer is trying to find ways to get an angle before they agree to any peace agreement.

He would probably like a partial one because then he could lie about his orders to kill people and destroy Ukraine's infrastructure under the auspices of a limited cease-fire. If Vladimir Putin comes back with a proposed limited cease-fire, then you know he is looking to kill and destabilize Ukraine, Moldova, the West Balkans. It will be interesting to see how he weighs in on the vote today in Srpska where their parliament is voting to separate from BiH, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and create a Russian separatist state in BiH.

So my guess is he doesn't want to sign up to a cease-fire because he hasn't moved all the pieces around to make sure that he can still murder as many Ukrainians as possible during the supposed limited cease-fire.

So I would say to the Ukrainian people and President Zelenskyy: Thank you--in spite of the fact that dozens of people have died this week, including civilians, at the hands of decisions made by Putin--thank you for being willing to lay down your guns and try to get to peace there.

But the American people need to know Putin is a liar. He is a murderer. He hates democracy. He is not trying--the reason that he is in Ukraine now is because Ukraine is finally, after about 20 years of wasted time, that is in part because they had Russians and thugs preventing Ukraine from moving forward on the democratic reforms they know they need to do.

Well, over the past 7 or 8 years, they started taking that seriously, and they are starting to make democratic reforms. They are starting to talk about maybe accession into the E.U., and that scares the hell out of Vladimir Putin because the last thing he wants is a successful former satellite of the Soviet Union demonstrating that democracy works and communism never has. That is what he is worried about. That is the provocative act that he used as a predicate to invade Ukraine and kill tens of thousands of people, including hundreds of thousands of his own soldiers. He is afraid of democracy proving to work in a society that was under the yoke of communism for decades.

That is what this is about, folks. This is about good versus evil. This is about totalitarian versus this messy thing we call democracy.

So if Vladimir Putin can't understand what an unconditional cease- fire means, it is because he doesn't want to. It is because he still wants to find a way to murder and undermine democratic reforms and the people of Ukraine being finally free.

So I do want to thank President Trump for taking the initiative, for showing Ukrainians a path. But I also want to make sure that this administration and everybody in America knows that Putin will not rest until his vision of communist fiat throughout this world is realized.

We have to help Ukraine be free. We have to make Putin lose in Ukraine. We have to recognize that North Korea, China, Iran are just chafing at the bit to see Putin succeed there so they can export their brand of terrorism and communism throughout the world.

There is nothing redeemable in Vladimir Putin. He is an evil man responsible for the murders of hundreds of thousands of people, nearly a million in the last 3 years in Ukraine alone. We all need to go in open-eyed and understand that this is the true nature of Vladimir Putin. And he cannot succeed in Ukraine.

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