Support for the Sovereignty, Integrity, Democracy, and Economic Stability of Ukraine Act of 2014 - Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

Madam President, I rise today to support the Ukraine assistance package, which will be on the floor for a vote later this evening. I want to thank the leadership of Senator Menendez and all the great work Senator Corker has put into this bill. I was proud to help put it together, along with Senators Johnson, McCain, and many others who were part of our debate in the Foreign Relations Committee.

I come to the floor, as I am sure others have and will over the course of this afternoon, to talk about the vital importance of a big bipartisan vote in favor of this legislation this evening.

Having just come from Ukraine--I was there this last weekend with a number of my colleagues, and it was my second trip to Kiev in the last 3 months--I can tell you they are awaiting a very strong signal of support from the U.S. Congress that will send a message we are going to stand together with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters as they engage in this epic battle for their independence, for their freedom, and for their sovereignty.

I won't belabor the underlying details of the bill, but the three components of the legislation are all equally important to Ukraine. We heard support for all three of these pieces while we were there over this last weekend.

First and foremost, clearly, we have to deliver on our promise of economic aid. There is $1 billion of loan guarantees in this bill, and it is contingent upon the signing of a new agreement with the IMF, but it will also leverage about $15 billion in funds from Europe. This is important because even before this crisis precipitated by the Russian invasion of Crimea, Ukraine's economy was incredibly fragile, and this international crisis has done nothing but to further weaken the country.

Ukrainians have a new government--one they have faith in, one they can believe in--that will finally bring an end to the corruption which has been rife throughout the Ukrainian Government over the past decade. But this new government will be undermined by an economic crisis that will occur, guaranteed, unless the United States steps up and provides this assistance. But we can't do it alone, and so that is why the second component of this bill would allow the United States to agree to a set of IMF reforms that would dramatically increase the amount of funding the IMF has to provide countries in crisis, such as Ukraine.

Every other IMF member has signed on to these reforms except for the United States, and it has been largely due to the intransigence of this body that the United States stands on the sidelines. Some people have categorized the IMF reform component of this bill as superfluous, as a political add-on. That couldn't be further from the truth. When we were meeting with Ukrainian officials in this new government last weekend, they specifically asked that we pass the IMF reforms, because they know the only way they get an assistance package that is in the neighborhood of $20 billion or $30 billion is through the IMF. And the IMF will be much more likely able to provide that if the United States steps up and agrees to these reforms.

Lastly, we need to send a strong, clear message to Russia there are consequences for their actions in Crimea. By giving the President the authorization to move forward on a broad range of sanctions, we will show that Putin was wrong when he calculated that a march into Crimea would come at little to no cost to Russia.

I want to talk for a minute about what this really tells us about the status of Russia in the region and in the world. I am sure my other colleagues will come down to talk about the importance of sanctions and how they may change the calculuses being made in Russia and Moscow today.

I have watched the media portray the events of the last couple of weeks as some sign of Russian strength. To me, this isn't a sign of Russian strength, this is a sign of Russian weakness.

Putin has designs for reestablishing some sense of the old Soviet empire by reasserting control over what Putin calls the near abroad, which are the former Soviet republics and Soviet satellite states. His dream of reestablishing the Soviet empire fell apart the day President Yanukovych fled Kiev.

Ukraine is the crown jewel of the near abroad. As Putin tried to recreate that empire under the guise of something called the customs union, he knew he couldn't do it without the second biggest country in Europe bordering on Russia--Ukraine. His invasion of Crimea was a panicked reaction to this new reality--a Ukraine now oriented toward the European Union.

So today, I think it is important to understand the position Putin is in. He has made a mess for the international community to try to clean up through his invasion of Crimea.

Crimea represents 2 million people in a country of 45 million, and 90 percent of Ukraine has a government in Kiev which just signed an association agreement with the European Union. Russia's economy is going to hemorrhage if he continues the occupation of Crimea through a broad-based set of international sanctions. He has become a pariah in the world community.

I agree with my colleague from Indiana: We shouldn't just be talking about removing Russia from the G8; we should take Russia out of the G8 and make it completely clear to them that they don't have a place at the international table along with countries such as the United States, France, Germany, and England if they behave in this way.

The bill we are debating today will give the President and new government in Kiev tools with which to try to address and perhaps end this crisis. But it is important to remember that this is not about reestablishing the Cold War. The world is oriented along paradigms that have nothing to do with who is with the United States and who is with Russia. This panicked invasion of Crimea, while rightly occupying the headlines on a nightly basis, is a display of Russia's weak position in the region and the world after the failure of their puppet government in Kiev to survive.

Lastly, I will talk about the broader history, both looking in the past but also looking to the future, we may miss when we concentrate on an hour-by-hour basis on the crisis at hand.

Having had the opportunity to visit Kiev a few times in the past several months, I have had the opportunity to learn a little bit about the history of the place and of the people. There is a wonderful cathedral in Kiev called the Church of St. Sophia. It is absolutely stunningly beautiful. It was built by Ukraine's greatest leader, Yaroslav the Wise. He presided over an empire which was at the time called Kievan Rus. Kievan Rus was essentially the hub of trading on the Eurasian continent. It took goods from the east and transported them to the west. It took goods from the Scandinavian countries and transported them down to the Mediterranean. Everything ran through the territory of Kievan Rus. It speaks to Ukraine's past but also to its future.

They have been set up with a false choice within the crisis of the last several months: Join the European Union or stay aligned with Russia. But what we know is that Kiev historically has stood at the crossroads--not just east and west but of east and west and north and south. This is Ukraine's past, but it is also going to be Ukraine's future.

While we try to deal today with a Russia run by a leader whose foreign policy seems dictated by a desire to poke a stick in the eye of the United States, I ultimately think viewing the forest through the trees also means acknowledging that Russia's future ultimately, in a post-Putin era, is about integration with Europe and integration with the West as well. Frankly, this is the direction Russia was heading until Putin took power.

The conversation about how we realize that ultimate paradigm is a conversation for another day. But when Senator McCain and I went to Kiev in December and stood on the stage speaking to a million Ukrainians who had come down to the square to protest the current government, they were there to talk about one concept: dignity. For some it was about Europe, for some it was about corruption, and for some it was about the brutal violence on the square displayed by Yanukovych. For most people, they wanted to restore dignity to their lives, and what dignity really is about in the end is the ability to choose for yourself what your future is. This is why we are here to support Ukraine.

No country--the United States, the Russian Federation, Germany--should dictate to the Ukrainians what their future should be. That is why, in the wake of the invasion, in the wake of years of economic manipulation from Russia, we are going to extend a firm hand to the Ukrainians with an assistance package and a message of economic consequences to Russia.

The world we envision ultimately is one not only where Ukraine gets to go back to its historical routes and draw from east and west but one in which Russia realizes that their economic salvation lies not in setting up some new Cold War but in fully integrating themselves, their economy, and their political institutions not only with countries such as Ukraine, not only with the nations of the EU, but beyond to American shores as well. This is the future.

But that reality will never exist for the young nation of Ukraine unless it survives this moment. And we can send a strong message this evening that this body stands with that future for this young nation of Ukraine by supporting the package before us.

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