President Joe Biden's administration is ''behind the curve'' when it comes to sanctioning and reacting to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., told Newsmax on Monday.
''I think there's a lot of things that the administration has talked about doing, but hasn't done yet, and their posture in all this has been reactive,'' Thune told Monday's ''Eric Bolling: The Balance.'' ''I mean, they've been kind of behind the curve, so to speak, from the very beginning.''
Thune said the NATO alliance and its member countries such as Germany have now ''stepped it up'' and are now ''on board'' with more severe sanctions.
NATO and Germany ''have stepped it up,'' he said. ''NATO has come to the conclusion that this is a good thing for them to stop this incursion as well, and so, the Germans are now more on board with some of these things.''
The United States increased its sanctions on Russia on Saturday, including removing it from the SWIFT system, effectively driving selected Russian banks out of international financial markets, according to a joint statement from the White House and NATO allies Saturday.
''We said if Putin continued to escalate, we would escalate,'' a senior administration official said on a conference call Monday.
''We said all options are on the table, including the most severe sanctions ever contemplated against Russia. We said that as we implement these costs, we would impose them in an historic and unprecedented show of coordination with countries across the world that wish to defend the core principles that underpin peace and security.''
According to the White House, the sanctions implemented are designed to send the Russian economy ''backward'' as ''long as [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin decides to go forward with his invasion of Ukraine.''
Thune said that more could be done, including getting more small arms to Ukrainians defending their cities against the Russian army.
''There are requests specific request for lethal aid the resistance is requesting, you know, munitions and arms that they can use to fight in the streets if necessary, and we should be providing all of those things to them,'' he said.
''There are some still some crushing sanctions, I think, economically that can be put into place that make this very, very, painful for Putin, but we should do anything and everything we can to assist the resistance.''
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