Russian President Vladimir Putin is reshaping his nation's role in the world with "almost no pushback from NATO or the United States," Sen. Bob Corker, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Thursday.
"If you talk to leaders in the region, what they tell you when they meet with Putin is Putin says, 'Hey, look, I'm getting no pushback, I have no price to pay for what I'm doing,'" the Tennessee Republican told
MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program.
Corker said he was at the
Munich Security Council this month, and he does not think he's ever seen Europe in its current state of depression because of security and economic issues, and refugee issues "where Putin is using refugees as a weapon of war."
And then, there is the question about whether the European Union will stay in place or fall apart, said Corker, combined with the fact that the United States has missed many opportunities to stop Putin.
"You remember in August/September of 2013 we jumped in his lap, didn't we?" said Corker. "When we got them involved in dealing with the chemical weapons, and in many ways what we did, was assure that Assad would stay in power for some time, which is exactly what Putin wished."
Meanwhile, the United States erred in Syria by leaving the opposition to President Bashar al-Assad hanging.
"We've done almost nothing that we said we would do to support them," said Corker "What happened was Putin stepped in," and Secretary of State John Kerry "can't even give him a hard time anymore . . . It's totally in Russia's hands now.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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