Relating to A National Emergency Declared By the President on March 2020

Floor Speech

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Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. President, I join the senior Senator from Illinois' affection for Tom Balanoff. He truly is an icon for labor, not just in Illinois but across the country. Ukraine

Mr. President, I rise today to speak on Ukraine.

With Russian troops firing outside, one Ukrainian woman was rushed outside and down out of the hospital by hospital staff. She was reportedly forced to give birth in a makeshift ICU in the hospital's basement with the sound of shelling surrounding her and with more than 100,000 Russian troops closing in on the area.

Elsewhere in Eastern Ukraine, mothers and their newborns are being hurried from neonatal intensive care units to makeshift bomb shelters, with the blankets swaddling their babies the only armor they have protecting them from the explosions and missiles crisscrossing the skies above them.

And all across Ukraine, little boys and girls are being born in subway car shelters, where some of the first words they hear are the cries of older children asking their own parents: ``Mommy, will we die here?''

This is the everyday, every-moment waking nightmare for those who call Ukraine home right now. This is the new normal for new moms struggling to learn how to breastfeed their newborns; the new reality for new parents who, just last week, were trying to figure out how to afford both diapers and next month's rent, yet who are now just desperate to get their 1-week-old to the 2-week-old mark.

Why is this their new reality? For what? For a brutal and senseless war, a war as unjust as it is unjustifiable, as needless as it was unprovoked; a war whose violence has already torn families apart, yet whose cruelty has failed to fracture the unity of Ukraine itself.

Three decades ago, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States and Russia asked Ukraine to give up their nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees under the Budapest Memorandum. Ukraine did so voluntarily, handing them over instead of keeping them for their own defense because the Ukrainians so desperately sought peace and a democratic rule-based order.

Now, Russia has unilaterally broken that agreement, shattering that peace, and Ukrainians are once more laying down their lives for those same democratic principles.

The contrast is stark. Vladimir Putin is fighting for autocracy, using aggression and irresponsible, unprovoked escalation. Ukraine meanwhile is fighting for freedom.

Vladimir Putin believes himself to be some sort of neoimperialist, actively attacking neighboring democracies in an attempt to restore the Russian Empire.

Well, today, I want to speak to all the Ukrainians who found a home in Illinois and all of them who are strewn across Europe who have been forced to flee their nation in the wake of this violence and to all who are still in Ukraine praying that they will be able to wake up again tomorrow. Let me say this clearly: We are with you. The free world has not been fooled by Vladimir Putin's schemes and lies. We know that he is no hero for Russians or anyone else. He is a violent mobster and a bully, an egomaniac who uses his own power to abuse those with less power, a tyrant who uses the levers in his control to level those who are in his way, someone who uses weapons of war to murder children from afar, who turns toddlers into orphans from hundreds of miles away from the safety of his hallowed halls and heavily fortified mansions.

And yet, even with less power and less money, despite being outnumbered and outgunned, Ukraine has shown an incredible will to fight, putting up the fiercest of resistance against Putin and all that he stands for. That is because cowardice will always falter in the face of courage.

Ukrainians are redefining that word ``courage'' every day that they repel Putin's unprovoked aggression. That is because those fighting for reasons of ego and greed will always stumble in the face of those fighting so that their children can climb out of bomb shelters, so that their third graders can go back to school, so that their families don't need to live every hour, breathe every breath with the kind of fear that Putin thrives on.

And while I wish more than anything that Putin had never started this war and that those tanks had never rolled through their nation's streets, now the world will know the strength that typifies the Ukrainian people. They will know that Kyiv is synonymous with courage. They will know that though buildings in Odessa may crumble, the heart of the Ukrainian people will never waiver.

I am in awe of those men, women, and children. I am in awe of the troops doing everything in their power to protect them. And I am honored that the Illinois National Guard helped train some of those Ukrainian soldiers, with our Guard members advising Ukrainian forces just last year on how to improve their defense capabilities.

They are our brothers and sisters in arms; and their bravery, their resilience, and their determination over this past week has reminded the world that, as a certain retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and son of Ukraine once said in this very Chamber: Right matters.

They have shown us once more that a tyrant's lies will never blot out the courage and the goodness of a people determined to fight with and for one another.

That is just one reason why I support President Biden's request to dedicate at least $6.4 billion in humanitarian and military aid to help those under siege in Ukraine, and it is why I am doing everything in my power to help keep Ukrainians in the United States safe by granting them temporary protected status.

Look, this is no 21st-century Cold War; it is Putin's war. It is a coward's war. Vladimir Putin is no savior. He will bring no glory to the Russian people. All he will bring them is travesty and economic ruin. He is no champion. He is an embarrassment, and the history books will reflect as much.

Twenty-eight years ago, when we asked Ukraine to give up those nuclear weapons, they did so, choosing peace, choosing to end the threat of bloodshed and destruction, choosing democracy. So now, we must stand with them as they so desperately seek peace once more.

They have chosen democracy time and again. Today and all the days that this terrible war wages on, it is time for this democracy to choose them.

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