On Friday morning, Nebraska GOP Senator Ben Sasse stated of Ukraine that the U.S. should “be arming them to the teeth,” and that the United States should provide “tactical, actionable intelligence,” so they can kill “Russian invaders.”
Speaking on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Sasse asserted:
First of all, the intelligence community did a good job of getting intel out faster than they usually do to help deny Putin the pretextual cover for what he was going to do. … Ukraine isn’t a threat to Russia. Putin is a liar. He lies all the time. But he usually gets away with it. And the U.S. intelligence agencies helped thwart it this time. We need to keep that up and we need to get tactical, actionable intelligence to the Ukrainians on the ground so they can kill the Russian invaders.
“We need to be arming them to the teeth,” Sasse continued, as Newsmax reported. “So, President Biden should be coming to the Congress right now asking for an emergency supplemental for defense spending. We’re not going to put boots on the ground in Ukraine. We shouldn’t. We don’t need to. They [the Ukrainians] are willing to fight. But we need to arm them.”
“We need to do more sanctions,” Sasse posited. “We need to do them faster. But fundamentally we need to have targeted sanctions to the 16 oligarchs – the mobster cronies who have enabled Putin’s madness.”
Sasse continued with advice for Western Europe, adding that Germany’s efforts needed to be ramped on energy sanctions.
There should be no Nord Stream 2 ever. But frankly, we need the Brits, who have been great allies in general. We need them to step up and acknowledge that there is a ton of Russian billionaire money bouncing all over London. We ought to perp walk those people out of the country. Their kids ought to be kicked out of their schools that they’re in in London. They should go back and live in Moscow’s hell holes with Putin.
Sasse has been a constant fierce opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin for years. In March 2018, Sasse blasted Putin after his sham reelection. He said:
Vladimir Putin is not a friend. Vladimir Putin is a despot. … This very day, there are dissidents all over the globe struggling against totalitarian regimes in darkness, and to them, America has always said and America still says we see you, we stand with you. We may make long and deliberate decisions about how we engage in the world and about what particular commitments are prudent to exercise at different times with different allies, but we have always spoke unequivocally about the universal dignity of 7.6 billion people. To those who struggle, we have always said we see you, and we stand with you.
Each and every member of this Senate, all 100 of us, was elected in the kind of free and fair election that Vladimir Putin fears, the kind of election that he would not win. Vladimir Putin is a coward. Vladimir Putin is a despot. Just this month, Vladimir Putin tried to assassinate a political dissident and his daughter on NATO soil in the U.K. … We also condemn Vladimir Putin’s sham election. We condemn a Russian despot that aims to make Soviet tyranny great again.