Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that if Russian President Vladimir Putin were allowed to invade Ukraine, he would not stop there.
Menendez told CNN anchor Dana Bash, “Listen, this is beyond Ukraine, although certainly we dramatically support Ukraine. We cannot have a Munich moment again. Putin will not stop with Ukraine if he believes that the West will not respond. We saw what he did in 2008 in Georgia. We saw what he did in 2014 and pursued Crimea. He will not stop. So at the end of the day, this is about defending Ukraine, but also about sending a message, you can’t by force change the boundaries of a country, you can’t by force tell them they cannot look westward.”
Senator James Risch (R-ID), also a guest on the program, backed Menendez’s statement.
“There’s no question about that. If it wasn’t for NATO, the Baltic countries would be gone already, and there would be worse problems on the other side. Bob is absolutely right in that. This isn’t a place where there’s going to be just some action, and it’s going to quit. At some point in time, there’s got to be a line.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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