Former Sen. Joe Lieberman said on Newsmax Tuesday that he's "grateful" for the actions taken by the Biden administration so far, but he is not sure if the "faith in diplomacy" and the threat of economic sanctions against Russia will be strong enough, as neither has yet worked to stop President Vladimir Putin.
"This is a crisis fabricated totally by Putin," the Connecticut independent, who attended the Munich Security Conference this past weekend, told Newsmax's "National Report. "He claims that he's trying to stop Ukraine from joining NATO, but NATO is a defensive alliance. He knows it doesn't threaten him at all."
NATO, meanwhile, promised Ukraine in 2008 that it would begin to consider its application to join the alliance, and "we delayed it, I think, because we were trying not to upset Putin."
But that didn't work, as Putin went on to claim Crimea and is now either "going to take a chunk or try to take all of Ukraine," Lieberman continued. "It's time for the administration to show that it not only can speak tough, which it has been, but now really it has to get tough with Putin. And that means the strongest economic sanctions as possible."
Lieberman also on Tuesday said he thought Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's comments at the Munich conference, when he demanded that sanctions be enacted before an invasion, were "absolutely correct."
"He gave the most defiant and disruptive speech, but he had every right to do so," said Lieberman. "He essentially accused the West of appeasing Putin, who has been saying for years that he considers Ukraine to be part of Russia," the former senator said. "Of course, he acted on that in 2014, eight years ago, by simply seizing Crimea, which was Ukrainian territory."
President Joe Biden is to speak Tuesday afternoon, and Lieberman said he hopes he imposes "the toughest possible economic sanctions" on Russia with the hopes they will stop Putin from trying to conquer the rest of Ukraine.
Lieberman added that it is not easy to tell why Putin is taking action on Ukraine at this time, but it was clear that after he amassed the troops and equipment at Ukraine's border that he wasn't bluffing.
"Some people say he was waiting for the Olympics in China to end because he's now in a partnership and alliance with the Chinese," he said. "In any case, it's here, it's happened, and he's just going to keep moving on unless [we] and our allies in Europe are tough with him."
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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