Supporting the People of Ukraine

Floor Speech

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Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 956) to support the People of Ukraine.

The Clerk read the title of the resolution.

The text of the resolution is as follows: H. Res. 956

Whereas, on January 21, 1990, more than 300,000 Ukrainians called for unity and independence from the Soviet Union by forming a human chain between the cities of Kyiv and Ivano- Frankivsk;

Whereas, on December 1, 1991, more than 90 percent of Ukrainian citizens voted in a national referendum in support of independence, with majorities in every region;

Whereas, on November 21, 2013, the Euromaidan protests began in favor of signing the European Union-Ukraine Association Agreement, resulting in the Revolution of Dignity and the removal of President Viktor Yanukovych by the Verkhovna Rada;

Whereas, in February and March of 2014, the Russian Federation invaded the peninsula of Crimea, illegally annexed the region, held a sham referendum, and claimed the territory to be a part of Russia;

Whereas, beginning in April 2014, the Russian Federation invaded the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Eastern Ukraine instigating violence, stoking conflict, arming separatists, and spreading disinformation on Ukrainian soil;

Whereas, on July 17, 2014, Russian soldiers or Russian separatist fighters shot down the passenger flight MH17 flying over the Donbas with a Buk surface-to-air missile provided by the Russian Federation, killing all 298 innocent passengers on board;

Whereas, since February 2015, Russia has continued to fail to live up to its agreements under the Minsk agreements and the Russian-backed war in the Donbas has claimed approximately 14,000 lives;

Whereas the Russian military conducted a large-scale buildup in and around Ukraine in March and April 2021 under the guise of military exercises, leaving significant military equipment behind;

Whereas the Russian military initiated its most recent much larger military buildup in October 2021 that culminated in approximately 190,000 forces by the time of Russia's renewed full-scale incursion on February 24, 2022;

Whereas, on February 21, 2022, the State Duma of Russia passed a bill, approved by President Vladimir Putin, to officially recognize the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic and Donetsk People's Republic as independent;

Whereas, on February 21, 2022, Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops into the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic and Donetsk People's Republic after recognizing their independence;

Whereas the decision to recognize the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic and Donetsk People's Republic as independent and order Russian troops into that territory was not only in violation of international law, Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the Minsk agreements, but also tantamount to a declaration of war;

Whereas, on February 24, 2022, Russian forces, enabled by Belarus, launched its unprovoked full-scale renewed invasion of a peaceful, independent country, Ukraine;

Whereas, since 2014, the United States has provided $3,100,000,000 in security assistance to Ukraine, including over $1,000,000,000 over the course of the last year, $200,000,000 of which was approved on December 27, 2021, and $350,000,000 of which was approved on February 26, 2022;

Whereas it is the right of all countries to decide their own future, foreign policy, and security arrangements free from outside interference or coercion;

Whereas the Russian Federation repeatedly lied about their massive buildup of military forces around Ukraine and claimed that reports Russia would invade Ukraine were hysteria;

Whereas, on February 24, 2022, the G7 issued a statement condemning the ``large-scale military aggression by the Russian Federation against the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine'';

Whereas, on February 25, 2022, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization condemned ``in the strongest possible terms Russia's horrifying attack on Ukraine'', called on Russia ``to turn back from the path of violence and aggression'', and reaffirmed an ``iron-clad'' commitment to Article 5;

Whereas the European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Canada joined with the United States, committed to coordinated economic sanctions, including severe restrictions, against Russia's Central Bank and full blocking sanctions against Vladimir Putin;

Whereas United States leadership is integral to nations around the world in condemning and imposing costs on the Russian Federation for its illegal, full-scale, renewed invasion;

Whereas Russian forces have targeted civilians and have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity;

Whereas, in the days since the renewed full-scale invasion began, Russian citizens have taken to the streets in cities and towns across Russia to protest Putin's illegitimate and destructive war waged against a peaceful and sovereign Ukraine; and

Whereas the United States, along with allies in Europe, the Indo-Pacific, and others around the world, has been actively responding to Russia's unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine with critical military, humanitarian, and financial support for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

(1) demands an immediate cease-fire and the full withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukrainian territory;

(2) supports, unequivocally, Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity;

(3) backs the continued use of sanctions, in coordination with United States allies and partners, to fully isolate the Putin regime economically for its unprovoked aggression against Ukraine;

(4) urges the United States and its allies and partners to deliver additional and immediate defensive security assistance to help Ukraine address the armored, airborne, and other threats Ukraine is currently facing from Russian forces;

(5) commits to continuing to support resistance by the Ukrainian people as long as the Russian Federation continues to violate Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity;

(6) promises to continue to provide significant additional aid and humanitarian relief to Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russia's aggression, commends European partners for their efforts to relieve suffering on the ground, and urges the Russian Federation alongside United States allies and partners to guarantee safe passage out of the country;

(7) reaffirms its strong support for the security of United States allies and ironclad commitment to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO);

(8) emphasizes that NATO's relationship with Ukraine is a matter only for Ukraine and the 30 NATO allies;

(9) pledges to support working with Europe and international partners to bolster Europe's energy security and reduce its dependence on Russian energy imports;

(10) underscores the importance of maintaining United States energy independence for the benefit of the American people and United States allies;

(11) reiterates that Crimea and the territories illegally controlled by the illegitimate Russian-controlled governments in Donetsk and Luhansk are sovereign Ukrainian territory;

(12) declares that the war in Ukraine, a democratic country, is the frontline of democracy and freedom versus authoritarianism represented by Putin's Russia;

(13) supports the right of the Russian people to protest, including the current protests against Putin's unprovoked war against Ukraine, and demands the immediate release of all those who have been unjustly detained in Russia for expressing their desire for peace;

(14) comprehends that strongmen, dictators, and authoritarians are watching the world's response to Putin's war against Ukraine and learning lessons for their own aggressive actions domestically and abroad, thereby making a strong and united response important to deter the expansion of territory by the use of military force beyond this crisis;

(15) states unambiguously that it will never recognize or support any illegitimate Russian-controlled leader or government installed through the use of force, and that only the people of Ukraine can choose their leadership through free and fair democratic elections without foreign interference, intervention, or coercion;

(16) commits to ensuring the illegitimate dictator of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, is held accountable for permitting the use of Belarusian territory for, and committing Belarusian forces to, Putin's unprovoked renewed full-scale invasion against Ukraine; and

(17) stands steadfastly, staunchly, proudly, and fervently behind the Ukrainian people in their fight against the authoritarian Putin regime.

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Mr. MEEKS. Res. 956.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of my resolution, which I introduced with Representative Spartz, to demonstrate bipartisan congressional support for the Ukrainian people.

Today, we are witnessing the most devastating escalation of violence on the European Continent in decades. Vladimir Putin has launched an unjustifiable, senseless war on a peaceful, sovereign nation, Ukraine. We are already seeing thousands of casualties, both Ukrainians and Russians, and hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing to the European Union.

As we speak, Putin's army is encircling Ukrainian cities, including the capital of Kyiv. His forces are bombing indiscriminately, ruthlessly killing civilians, and destroying critical infrastructure.

In his despicable and utterly false claims to denazify Ukraine, he has bombed the memorial at Babyn Yar, where, just weeks ago, Representative Spartz and I stood with other Members of Congress at the site where tens of thousands were killed in massacres during the Holocaust. The streets we walked just a few weeks ago are now a battlefield, its citizens now soldiers.

Let us be clear. This is but one person's war. This is caused by one individual by the name of Vladimir Putin. It is his war.

Ukraine, the United States, and our allies have all actively engaged in a historic diplomatic push since before Russia marched their troops into the sovereign territory of Ukraine. Nevertheless, Putin chose the path of an unprovoked war instead.

It is a peaceful Ukraine that is pleading for a cease-fire so that diplomacy and sanity can triumph over bloodshed and madness.

Just this morning, the U.N. General Assembly held an emergency session that voted overwhelmingly against Russia's aggression. This vote reaffirms the values that we stand for and unequivocally demonstrates that the world stands with Ukraine.

In this dark time, the United States has helped usher unprecedented amounts of assistance from the United States, Europe, and our allies and partners from all around the world, from North Africa to North America to the Indo-Pacific, to aid Ukraine in defense of its nation. I believe we must sustain that assistance as long as Ukrainians fight for a democratic future free from Russian oppression.

The defensive security assistance we have provided and continue to provide Ukraine to help fend off its autocratic invader is absolutely critical.

Also, it is of utmost importance that we continue to surge humanitarian aid to Ukraine and the countries in the region accepting the growing influx of refugees. As of yesterday, nearly 700,000 had left their homes, left their country to seek safety, unsure of whether they will ever again see their homes. Estimates project that that number will quickly reach into the millions, as well as those who are displaced but remain in Ukraine.

Our allies in Europe have acted admirably, so they have been accepting those fleeing the destruction. We must do our part to help them as well.

Amidst all the bloodshed, we are seeing astounding courage displayed by President Zelensky, the Ukrainian Government, and, above all, the Ukrainian people. We are also seeing the unity of the transatlantic alliance, more unified than ever in the face of Vladimir Putin's war.

The people of Ukraine must continue to hear a message of loud and clear support from us, the United States Congress. They must see that we see their suffering, that we stand with them in their fight against an authoritarian invader, and that we will continue to usher as much support to their cause as the United States can muster.

Mr. Speaker, this resolution outlines the plan and sheds an indisputable light on the atrocities the Putin regime and the Russian military are committing. It demands an immediate cease-fire and full withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine. It backs additional coordinated economic measures to hold Putin accountable.

It reaffirms our NATO Article 5 commitments, reaffirms Ukrainian sovereignty over Crimea and Donbas. It highlights the unprecedented global multilateral efforts the Biden administration has helped usher.

It states our commitment in the United States Congress to support the Ukrainian people throughout this terrifying ordeal and delivers perhaps the most important message a resolution can deliver right now, that the House of Representatives will never ever recognize any illegitimate government that Putin hopes to install in Ukraine. It is up to the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian people alone to choose their political leadership and their future.

I support this resolution, and I want to offer my sincerest thanks to Representative Spartz, but also to my ranking member. We worked diligently on this resolution, to make sure that this was a bipartisan resolution. I appreciate Ranking Member McCaul for his friendship and the way that we work together now, especially on this resolution.

Democrat and Republican leadership worked collectively also. For working with me, I want to thank them. They have worked with me for what I believe is a very strong message, a unified message, to support the people of Ukraine.

It is also a unified message to Vladimir Putin, whose objective was to divide us. He would have loved to have divided us from our European allies, loved to divide us from NATO, loved to divide us from within.

But with this resolution, it becomes crystal clear: Mr. Putin, you can't win this. We are going to stand against you, and we are going to preserve democracy because that is what is at stake here.

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Mr. MEEKS. Kaptur), the cofounder and co-chair of the Ukraine Caucus, who has worked on this her entire congressional career.

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Mr. MEEKS. Jackson Lee), a dynamic Representative from the great State of Texas.

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding, and I rise enthusiastically to support H. Res. 956 and as well to make mention of H. Res. 943 that was introduced by myself and Steve Cohen on February 25.

Let me salute this resolution that is bipartisan that immediately calls on a ceasefire by Putin. This is Putin's war. H. Res. 943 has been affirmed by its call for the shutting down of our airways to Russian carriers, and that has been done.

But the real point is that we are now standing firmly for democracy and the fight of individual grandmothers and young people and individual Ukrainians with their bare hands and with their weapons that have been given to fight for democracy. But the real question that we are also standing for, and thank you for the United Nations vote, is that Vladimir Putin is a war criminal who is killing children.

Mitka, a parliamentarian that I met at the OSCE of which we were a part of meeting in Lithuania and Vienna, talking to the soldiers that were on the border of Belarus and Lithuania--thank you to those soldiers that are now placed, almost 100,000 U.S. soldiers--is that Putin is killing without cause. He is killing grandmothers. He is killing children. Can we tolerate this bloodshed? No, we will not. And we will stand with this resolution to demand that democracy stands in the region and that we denounce his actions.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H. Res. 956, a resolution condemning the unprovoked aggression and invasion ordered by Vladimir Putin, the authoritarian head of the Russian Federation against the sovereign nation of Ukraine and supporting the right of the people of Ukraine to freely determine their future, including their country's relationship with other nations and international organizations, without interference, intimidation, or coercion by other countries. I thank the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Congressman Meeks of New York, for introducing this bipartisan resolution and urge all Members to support it to show the solidarity of the people of the United States with the people of Ukraine. Mr. Speaker, I support this resolution because it calls upon and commends the Biden Administration to honor and abide by the commitments undertaken by the United States pursuant to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, signed at Washington, District of Columbia, on April 4, 1949, and entered into force on August 24, 1949. The resolution also commits this body to the promotion and protection of democratic values, transparent and accountable government institutions, and support for needed economic structural reforms in Ukraine, including in the fiscal, energy, pension, and banking sectors, among others. The resolution also calls upon and commends the Biden Administration for assembling and working with an international coalition of the world's leading nations to ensure that all nations refuse to recognize the illegal invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation and to ensure that the Russian Federation is held accountable and sustain maximum economic damage from the imposition of sanctions as a consequence of its utter disregard for international law and norms. I am particularly pleased that the Biden Administration has adopted the recommendation advanced in H. Res. 943, a resolution I introduced on February 25, 2002 condemning this unprovoked attack by the Russian Federation, to ban all Russian airlines, including Aeroflot, from entering the airspace of the United States or landing on its soil. The United States is strongly committed to the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Ukraine. The United States strongly supports efforts to assist Ukraine to defend its territory against military aggression by the Russian Federation and by separatist and paramilitary forces. Ukraine was the second-most populous and powerful of the fifteen republics of the former and disintegrated Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the hub of the union's agricultural production, defense industries, and military arsenal. In the three decades since gaining its independence, Ukraine has sought to forge its own path as a sovereign state and sought closer economic, social, and political ties with the free market and democratic nations of the West. Since 2013, the Russian Federation has undertaken a campaign of political, economic, and military aggression against Ukraine, including the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a civilian airliner, by Russian-backed Ukrainian separatists using a Russian-made missile taking the lives of all 298 innocent persons on board. In February 2014, the military of the Russia Federation, without merit or cause, invaded the eastern part of the free and independent country of Ukraine, including the Crimean Peninsula, and backed a separatist insurgency in the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine, where fighting has killed over 14,000 people. The United States, a strategic ally of Ukraine, reacted swiftly to the Russian invasion, condemning the military action in strong and bipartisan fashion, and providing military, humanitarian, and non- military financial assistance to the determined but beleaguered nation of Ukraine, which since 2014 has totaled approximately $1.5 billion. On September 14, 2014, the House of Representatives adopted H. Res. 726, a resolution supporting the right of the people of Ukraine to freely determine their future, including their country's relationship with other nations and international organizations, without interference, intimidation, or coercion by other countries, and committed itself to solidarity with the people of Ukraine. Interference and unprovoked aggressions by the Russia Federation ordered and led by Vladimir Putin continued unabated, including the mobilization and stationing of 150,000 Russian troops surrounding Ukraine and armed forces positioned in Belarus to attack Ukraine from the north, including war planes and offensive missile systems, and the movement of Russian naval vessels in the Black Sea to Ukraine's south, including amphibious assault ships, missile cruisers, and submarines, and the positioning of blood and medical equipment into position on their border. Vladimir Putin sought authorization from the Russian parliament to use military force outside of Russian territory by staging a fraudulent on-camera meeting of his Security Council to grandstand for the Russian public and by recognizing sovereign Ukrainian territory as so-called independent republics in clear violation, again, of international law, all of which was intended to set the stage for further pretexts and further provocations by Russia Federation to make further aggressions against Ukraine by military action. Vladimir Putin rejected every good-faith effort the United States and its allies and partners made to address mutual security concerns through dialogue to avoid needless conflict and avert human suffering. On February 23, 2022, the Russia Federation military, at the direction of Vladimir Putin, began a premeditated brutal assault on the people of Ukraine without provocation, without justification, without necessity, making outlandish, false, and baseless claims that Ukraine was about to invade and launch a war against Russia and that Ukraine was prepared to use chemical weapons, and that Ukraine had committed a genocide. These actions were taken by Vladimir Putin at the very moment that the United Nations Security Council was meeting to stand up for Ukraine's sovereignty to stave off invasion, culminating in missile strikes on historic cities across Ukraine, followed by air raids and the invasion of Russian tanks and troops. Mr. Speaker, through this resolution the United States strongly condemns and opposes the unprovoked invasion and egregious act of aggression against sovereign state of Ukraine by the Russian Federation, the most provocative and destabilizing act of foreign aggression since the 1938 invasion of the Sudetenland by the Third Reich led by Adolph Hitler. I ask all members to join me in voting for H. Res. 956 to support the right of the people of Ukraine to freely determine their future, including their country's relationship with other nations and international organizations, without interference, intimidation, or coercion by other countries.
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Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Speaker, it is now my honor to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished majority leader of the United States House of Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, the camera of history is rolling on all of us today. What is happening today children yet unborn will be studying and looking at what we did, what we stood for, or did not. They will be studying in their history books whether or not when democracy was at stake, when sovereign nations were in peril, whether or not we stood up and stood out to protect freedom, sovereignty of states, independence, or not.

The fact of the matter is, if we don't stand up now, those same children that I am talking about may not be able to live in a democratic society. That is why this is so important.

Putin may think that he is encircling Kyiv now, but this United Nations vote, where 141 nations said they are not going to allow that to happen, is encircling Putin and his thugs. And we will stay there for as long as it takes until freedom rings because that is what this is all about.

I think of today those that I met when I was in Kyiv, those that I had dinner with, those that worked in our U.S. Embassy, those that were driving taxis. As I see the pictures of them walking these streets today in front of Russian tanks, unafraid--I saw a picture of a woman standing and pointing at a Russian soldier, saying they would die there before she gives up. That is what this is all about.

The words that the activist told me while I was in Kyiv, that we are ready to fight, just provide us the support that we need to protect our country and freedom.

Slava Ukraini. Glory to Ukraine and its people.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. McCaul and Congresswoman Spartz for working with me so that we can make a bipartisan message right here on the people's floor.

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Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

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