-9999
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am here to mark a solemn anniversary. Yesterday marked the fourth anniversary of Vladimir Putin's unprovoked, unjustified, brutal, full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He sought to extinguish a democracy. He sought to erase a whole people's identity, their culture, their way of life, their language. He sought to redraw the map of Europe by force, against all of the norms and accepted rules that have preserved a peace for decades since World War II.
He failed.
Four years later, Ukraine stands proudly, resolutely, bloodied, scarred, but unbroken. Russia is not winning. There is a false narrative, in fact, that Russia is prevailing because it is taking bits and tiny pieces of territory at humongous cost in lives and resources. That false narrative must be dispelled, and I am here to say to my colleagues, to America, to the world: We know Ukraine can win if it has the tools to prevail. It has the will and the determination, unquestionably. It has the courage and the strength. It needs the weapons and the economic sanctions that will enable it to prevail.
Peace is our devout hope, but peace will be achieved only through strength because Vladimir Putin is unserious about peace now and will become serious only by demonstration--unequivocally and unambiguously-- of strength.
I have just come back from a trip to Ukraine, both to Kyiv and to Odessa, meeting the engineers who are repairing the electric generation sources that Putin has bombed--he has bombed all of the nonnuclear sources--children who have been kidnapped and saved and brought back; they are among the 20,000 that Putin has abducted; President Zelenskyy, who remains absolutely firm in his determination to lead the people of Ukraine, to push back the Russians; and in Odessa, the frontline forces on the Black Sea who are not only detecting but destroying the invading drones and missiles; and the faith community there who have remained so absolutely supportive.
The fact is that Putin is bombing not only Ukraine--civilians in their hospitals, homes, and education centers, schoolrooms--he is also bombing American businesses. Of the 600 major corporations with operations in Ukraine, almost half of them--300--have been damaged or destroyed in some way by Putin's bombing, drones, missiles. Putin is attacking Ukraine, but he is also attacking America, and America should be outraged by these attacks on American businesses.
In the meantime, my main takeaway from this trip--my ninth--was the incredible endurance and resilience of the Ukrainian people. But they don't want our applause; they want ammunition. They need weapons. They want weapons, not words. And so I am here to advocate, on this fourth anniversary, that we give them the tools they need to prevail because they are fighting on.
This conflict is the most destructive in Europe since the Second World War. Entire cities have been reduced to rubble. Tens of thousands have been killed. Millions have been displaced. Families sleep under the threat nightly of drone and missile attacks. And they are fighting not only for their homes and their children but for a principle that protects us all. We all have a stake in it. Our national security is at risk here. And the principle is that borders cannot be changed by tanks and terror, sovereignty is not negotiable, and democracy is not disposable through force.
I have traveled to Ukraine--in fact, nine times--and I have met soldiers defending their homeland with extraordinary guts and grit. I have met parents who have lost sons and daughters in Russian bombing. I have met families whose children were kidnapped and taken across the border in a really grotesque campaign of abduction and indoctrination-- war crimes that stain the people of Russia, not just their leader. And the world has demanded accountability, designating Vladimir Putin as a ``war criminal.''
He is not seeking peace. He is seeking domination. He is unserious about the negotiations that are taking place right now. He wages war not only with artillery and armor but with cyber attacks, propaganda, disinformation, energy blackmail, systematic brutality. And he believes that time is his ally. He believes that democracies grow weary and that America will blink. And we must prove him wrong.
The Senate has demonstrated bipartisan resolve before, and it must do so again now. We have proven that when freedom is under assault, this body will rise above partisanship. We need to sustain that unity and make unmistakably clear to Putin and the people of Russia that aggression carries consequences. That means advancing stronger sanctions on Russia's war economy; designating Russia a ``state sponsor of terrorism'' if it fails to return those abducted children; shutting down the Kremlin's shadow fleet transporting oil and gas to the countries that are buying it and fueling Russia's war machine; and, in fact, sanctions and even tariffs targeting those countries, focusing on them because they are truly enabling this slaughterous invasion by Vladimir Putin.
The Russian assets that now are in bank accounts in Europe can be used to finance the purchasers of weapons, Tomahawks, F-16s, interceptors for the Patriot systems, 155s, all of the munitions and weaponry that Ukraine needs to win.
We must be unified in this Chamber and so must America across this great land with other democracies that are under attack through the hybrid warfare that Putin is waging. We have reaffirmed our deep partnership with the Ukrainian people, their Parliament, their President. And as Ukraine conducts the business of democracy while sandbags literally line their hallways, we must be behind them.
Four years of this unjustified invasion, and Ukraine is fighting not only for itself but for all of us--all democracies. Russia remains the most immediate and direct threat to NATO. Supporting Ukraine is not about charity; it is a strategy. Appeasement is not a strategy, nor is hope. Appeasement and reliance only on hope are the way to further conflict, wider war, which we must avoid.
Ukraine has endured these 4 years standing strong for democracy, and they are not only in this fight for themselves; they know that peace going forward is also at stake. Democracy is at risk.
I want to shift to the democracy that is at risk here at home, the democracy that is dependent on free and fair elections, the democracy that we must preserve against efforts to degrade and decimate it.
President Trump has called for a nationalization of American elections. Now, Americans may ask themselves: What is nationalization of elections? Well, you need to look no further than the so-called SAVE America Act, which would create absolutely horrendous burdens for all Americans registering to vote and then, in fact, voting.
It would create burdens for States which have the constitutional responsibility to administer elections. It would require Americans to use their driver's license or other governmental-issued IDs alone in registering to vote.
Now, I support the requirement that voters identify themselves when they go to vote. It is mandated in Connecticut. I do it every time I go to vote, presenting my driver's license.
But the SAVE Act is not about voter identification; it is about voter purges. In effect, it would require States to provide information-- private information that is not available to the public--to the Federal Government, which would then purge voter rolls.
Purging voter rolls is an anathema when it relies on inaccurate ICE information. That is essentially what the SAVE America Act would require. The SAVE America Act requires voters not just to present voter identification; it enables voter purges and federalizes that requirement in a way that is antithetical to all the principles of our Constitution that maintain State responsibility for voting.
I am proposing that we also protect our elections by ensuring that ICE cannot be used at the polls, that ICE agents and officers be barred from the polls. We need to make sure that there is an absence of intimidation and fear when voters approach the poll because, otherwise, they will be discouraged from voting.
ICE has no business in front of voting booths. It has no right or responsibility at the polls. The discouragement of voters is happening in realtime, sending Tulsi Gabbard to Fulton, GA, continuing the false narrative that somehow there was fraud in the Georgia vote, continuing the false narrative that there is voting fraud rampant in the Nation. The statistics and facts prove that contention absolutely wrong. The intimidation of poll workers, the demand for voting information, all of it absolutely unjustified.
President Trump is pushing Republicans in Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a bill that would constitute the most significant restriction on the right to vote in generations. He has devoted a full web page to the bill on the White House website, and ironically, it would make it harder to vote than to buy an assault rifle. Voting by noncitizens, which is the issue the bill claims to address, is already illegal, and it has been proven time and time again: Voter fraud rarely, if ever, occurs.
But while the problem is a fake, the bill would have real effect. It would make the sacred act of voting exponentially more difficult for all Americans. Over 20 million American citizens--1 in 10 voting-age Americans--simply don't have the access to the documentation that this bill would require to vote.
Voting identification in some form ought to be required but not in the way that this bill does it, restrictively and discriminatorily.
Mr. President, 250 years ago, America broke from the chains of monarchy and chose democracy--a government that is supposed to be by and for the people--but as we approach this Nation's birth date, we are challenged as never before to defend democracy, to defend it in Ukraine by supporting the brave freedom fighters there, and by supporting it here by defending and advocating the right of every American to vote in free and fair elections.
Thankfully, we still have our democracy. It is under threat as never before, but as the saying goes, ``Democracy is not a spectator sport.'' We will have it only as long as we can keep it, as Benjamin Franklin said to the person who asked him about it after the Constitutional Convention. We have a republic only as long as we can keep it.
We need to emulate the courage of the people of Ukraine and of our Founding Fathers and to fight back against President Trump's effort to silence us and to potentially threaten our democracy.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source