Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., told Newsmax Tuesday that President Joe Biden’s response to Russia moving troops and armored vehicles into the eastern Ukraine is “the definition of appeasement.”
“This is the definition of appeasement,” Waltz said during “Spicer & Co.” Tuesday. “I was out in Ukraine a couple of months ago, and there was palpable frustration of why the lethal aid wasn't moving, and then the lethal aid they were getting, by the way, was being diverted from Afghanistan, so it was meant for fighting the Taliban, not Russian tanks. The underlying reason is that they were afraid of provoking the Russians, that Washington and the White House didn't want to do anything that was escalatory.”
According to U.S. officials, Putin declared two separatist provinces in Ukraine that support Russia as independent Monday night and started moving troops and military hardware into the area.
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden announced “swift and severe” sanctions against Russia for the invasion of the “sovereign territory” of the Ukraine.
“Yesterday, Vladimir Putin recognized two regions of Ukraine as independent states and he bizarrely asserted that these regions are no longer part of Ukraine and their sovereign territory,” Biden said Tuesday afternoon. “To put it simply, Russia just announced that it is carving out a big chunk of Ukraine.”
Biden said his administration was imposing “swift and severe” sanctions because of Putin’s actions, including stopping the soon to open Nord Stream 2 Pipeline from Russia to Germany, and freezing the assets and accounts of two big Russian banks.
“We’re implementing full blocking sanctions on two large Russian financial institutions: V.E.B. and their military bank,” Biden said. “We’re implementing comprehensive sanctions on Russian sovereign debt. That means we’ve cut off Russia’s government from Western financing. It can no longer raise money from the West and cannot trade in its new debt on our markets or European markets either.”
Waltz said that pausing the operation of the natural gas pipeline will end up doing little to put pressure on Putin but will hurt Americans at the gasoline pump.
“(Biden) shutdown Keystone, he stopped drilling in Alaska, he stopped drilling on federal lands, they're regulating the heck out of oil and gas,” Waltz said. “So meanwhile, by shutting down American energy independence, Putin is richer, Iran is richer, and because of that, they're now bolder. Meanwhile, Putin knows that Germany isn't going to hold tough on these sanctions. They're going to cave because half of their energy needs are met by Russia.”
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