Republican, Democratic Senators Predict Continuing US Support for Ukraine

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The U.S. Congress is considering the White House’s request for $38 billion in additional support for Ukraine in its defense against Russia aggression. Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen and Republican Senator Jim Risch say they believe the aid will be approved in the coming weeks.

The two senators have been strong supporters of aid to Ukraine, part of bipartisan congressional support that, if the latest appropriation bill passes, will deliver more than $100 billion in aid to Ukraine this year.

The senators sat down with VOA Georgian Service’s managing editor Ia Meurmishvili on November 30 to discuss U.S. policy toward Ukraine and Russia, and the likelihood that Congress will continue backing Ukraine in 2023.

Shaheen said the lessons from World War II are still relevant in the context of Ukraine, and the West must stop Russia before it invades other countries in Europe. On providing arms to Ukraine, Risch said the U.S. should not engage in self-deterrence out of concern that Russia might escalate the war. He said Russian President Vladimir Putin should instead be thinking about how to avoid U.S. escalation.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

VOA: NATO reaffirmed its 2008 commitment that Ukraine will one day become a member. Do you think that reaffirmation is advancing Ukraine’s NATO membership? And when do you think Ukraine can join NATO?

Shaheen: Well sadly, Ukraine right now is engaged in a brutal war from Russia’s unprovoked invasion. But I think the aspiration that Ukraine should be able to join NATO is very important. And for the EU, for NATO, for the Western alliance to support them as they are fighting this war against Russia is absolutely critical. Because we can’t allow dictators like Vladimir Putin to think they can upend the international, rules-based order and just take over any country because they might like to. And then, to commit war crimes and atrocities, to bomb civilians, to bomb hospitals and schools. … It’s unthinkable in a civilized society. So, we need to do everything we can to support the Ukrainians.

Risch: I agree with that. I would add that NATO is as strong as I have ever seen NATO, and I think it is getting stronger every day. There is no deterioration. NATO is committed to do what NATO was formed to do. Article 5 means just what it says — an attack on one is an attack on all. We have said clearly to the Russians that we will not give up one inch of NATO ground, whether it’s in the Baltics, in London, or in Los Angeles. We will not give up one inch of NATO ground, and we will all come shoulder to shoulder to defend it.

When it comes to Ukraine joining NATO, Ukraine or any other country is welcome to join NATO so long as they meet the requirements. We feel strongly about that. If Ukraine meets the requirements, and Ukraine wants to join NATO, then Ukraine should be let in. Neither Russia nor any other country should be able to stand up and say, ‘No, you can’t go where you want to go.’ Every country is sovereign and should have that right to enter any kind of alliance they want to for their defense.

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VOA: The Biden administration has requested an additional $38 billion for assistance to Ukraine. Do you think it will be approved before recess?

Shaheen: I do. I think there’s still strong bipartisan and bicameral support for Ukraine. We understand that Ukraine is fighting for democracies around the world, and the role of democracies is on the line here in this war.

Risch: Putin has already lost this war. He set out to occupy that country. It is obvious to the world he will never occupy that country. If you talk with Ukrainians, they will fight in the street with broomsticks if they have to, but the Russians will never occupy that country. So, what’s his exit ramp? I don’t know, but he better find one.

VOA: Do you support the idea of providing Ukraine with the Patriot missiles and the other long-range artillery they have been asking for, which the administration has been hesitant to provide?

Risch: I’ve wanted to ratchet up for some time. The Ukrainians are fighting with one hand tied behind their back. They’ve got a country adjacent to them that has invaded them and is committing all of these atrocities. On top of that, over the recent weeks, [the Russians] have done everything they can to totally eliminate [Ukraine’s] infrastructure for heat and electricity and everything else. We can’t stand by and watch that happen.

You know, some people in the administration — not all of them — say, ‘Oh, you know, we don’t want to escalate.’ That’s nonsense. I want Putin to wake up in the morning worried about what he’s going to do that might cause us to escalate. We have to escalate, or you lose the war. So, I’m all in. I think the Patriots are fine. If it was up to me — even from the beginning — I said we should give them planes. When we fought in Korea, when we fought in Vietnam, the Russians supplied the enemy with jet aircraft and trained the pilots. It’s time to return the favor, as far as I’m concerned.

Shaheen: I think that’s the intent of the U.S. We’re working closely with our allies and with the Ukrainians on what they need and supplying them as soon as we can with the weapons that they need. I think we need to continue to do that.

VOA: The world, especially the West, is beginning to talk about how Ukraine will emerge from this war — that it will be a united, democratic, sovereign country in Europe that will only get stronger from this point on. We don’t know much about how Russia will emerge from it. How do you see Russia after this war?

Shaheen: We had a hearing today in the Foreign Relations Committee with the nominee to be the ambassador to Russia. One of the things we talked about in that hearing is the difficult balance that the new ambassador is going to have in trying to keep an open channel of communication to the leadership in Russia, and at the same time expressing our strong opposition to what Russia is doing in the war in Ukraine, to express the concerns that we have about Russia walking away from the new START nuclear negotiations, about their human rights record, and the American detainees that they have in their prisons. So, it’s going to be a challenge.

I had a chance to speak with Vladimir Kara-Murza, who is an amazing, very courageous human rights activist, as he was planning to go back to Russia. One of the things he said to me when I said, you know, ‘You’re going to be in prison. Why are you doing this?’ He said, ‘Because the Russian people are better than the government of Russia, and we need to make the world see that.’ So, it’s my hope that at some point, the Russian people will have that opportunity for self-governance and to determine their own future.

Risch: First of all, I’ve said all along — when this is over, it’s not over. Russia is going to suffer from this for a long, long time. The world made a mistake when the Iron Curtain came down and Russia was welcomed to the international stage, and everyone started doing business with them. The Europeans really relied on them for energy and that sort of thing. Nobody even conceived that they would start a medieval war in the 21st century. Seven hundred companies from America have pulled out. They’re not going back there. We talk to the Europeans all the time. They’ve had it with Russia. Even if Putin disappeared tomorrow and you brought in a moderate — if there is such a thing in Russia — I still think it would take decades before the Russians can get back any kind of credibility that this isn’t going to happen again.

VOA: Thus far, Congress has been united on the issues of support toward Ukraine, toward the region, NATO and such. There are some concerns that with the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, that [unity] may change.

Risch: Look, there’s 535 members of Congress —100 in the Senate, 435 in the House. We are as diverse a group as you could possibly find. We are a true representation of America top to bottom. As a result of that, there is about every view you could possibly want there. No matter what issue you have, with very few exceptions, you’re always going to have dissent. We were born in dissent. We dissent all the time. Having said that, when things are appropriate, we come together.

On Ukraine, there is strong, strong support in both houses and both parties. Are there a handful of people who are dissidents? Yes. But the media here focuses on those that do dissent. That’s the American way, and that’s the way it should be. People have the right to express an opinion on either side, and then you vote and get behind the vote. I think the media has asked me this question a number of times, and I’ve said over and over again that the dissent on this is de minimis, and it’s way overreported.

Shaheen: We had a bipartisan, bicameral delegation in Halifax [Nova Scotia] a couple of weeks ago, nine of us from the House and Senate. We were all virtually aligned on support for Ukraine and the need to continue that support. And that included prominent members of the House, as well as prominent members of the Senate. So I think Senator Risch is absolutely right.
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Democratic Sen. Warnock Wins Georgia Runoff Against Walker

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Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock defeated Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a Georgia runoff election Tuesday, ensuring Democrats an outright majority in the Senate for the rest of President Joe Biden’s current term and capping an underwhelming midterm cycle for the GOP in the last major vote of the year. 

With Warnock’s second runoff victory in as many years, Democrats will have a 51-49 Senate majority, gaining a seat from the current 50-50 split with John Fetterman’s victory in Pennsylvania. There will be divided government, however, with Republicans having narrowly flipped House control. 

“After a hard-fought campaign — or, should I say, campaigns — it is my honor to utter the four most powerful words ever spoken in a democracy: The people have spoken,” Warnock, 53, told jubilant supporters who packed a downtown Atlanta hotel ballroom. 

“I often say that a vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and for our children,” declared Warnock, a Baptist pastor and his state’s first Black senator. 

“Georgia, you have been praying with your lips and your legs, your hands and your feet, your heads and your hearts. You have put in the hard work, and here we are standing together.” 

In last month’s election, Warnock led Walker by 37,000 votes out of almost 4 million cast but fell short of the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff. The senator appeared to be headed for a wider final margin in Tuesday’s runoff, with Walker, a football legend at the University of Georgia and in the NFL, unable to overcome a bevy of damaging allegations, including claims that he paid for two former girlfriends’ abortions despite supporting a national ban on the procedure. 

“The numbers look like they’re not going to add up,” Walker, an ally and friend of former President Donald Trump, told supporters late Tuesday at the College Football Hall of Fame in downtown Atlanta. “There’s no excuses in life, and I’m not going to make any excuses now because we put up one heck of a fight.” 

Democrats’ Georgia victory solidifies the state’s place as a Deep South battleground two years after Warnock and fellow Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff won 2021 runoffs that gave the party Senate control just months after Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate in 30 years to win Georgia. Voters returned Warnock to the Senate in the same cycle they reelected Republican Gov. Brian Kemp by a comfortable margin and chose an all-GOP slate of statewide constitutional officers. 

Walker’s defeat bookends the GOP’s struggles this year to win with flawed candidates cast from Trump’s mold, a blow to the former president as he builds his third White House bid ahead of 2024. 

Democrats’ new outright majority in the Senate means the party will no longer have to negotiate a power-sharing deal with Republicans and won’t have to rely on Vice President Kamala Harris to break as many tie votes. 

National Democrats celebrated Tuesday, with Biden tweeting a photo of his congratulatory phone call to the senator. “Georgia voters stood up for our democracy, rejected Ultra MAGAism, and … sent a good man back to the Senate,” Biden tweeted, referencing Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. 

About 1.9 million runoff votes were cast in Georgia by mail and during early voting. A robust Election Day turnout added about 1.4 million more, slightly more than the Election Day totals in November and in 2020. 

Total turnout still trailed the 2021 runoff turnout of about 4.5 million. Voting rights groups pointed to changes made by state lawmakers after the 2020 election that shortened the period for runoffs, from nine weeks to four, as a reason for the decline in early and mail voting. 

Warnock emphasized his willingness to work across the aisle and his personal values, buoyed by his status as senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. once preached. 

Walker benefited during the campaign from nearly unmatched name recognition from his football career yet was dogged by questions about his fitness for office. 

A multimillionaire businessman, Walker faced questions about his past, including his exaggerations of his business achievements, academic credentials and philanthropic activities. 

In his personal life, Walker faced new attention on his ex-wife’s previous accounts of domestic violence, including details that he once held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her. He has never denied those specifics and wrote of his violent tendencies in a 2008 memoir that attributed the behavior to mental illness. 

As a candidate, he sometimes mangled policy discussions, attributing the climate crisis to China’s “bad air” overtaking “good air” from the United States and arguing that diabetics could manage their health by “eating right,” a practice that isn’t enough for insulin-dependent diabetic patients. 

On Tuesday, Atlanta voter Tom Callaway praised the Republican Party’s strength in Georgia and said he’d supported Kemp in the opening round of voting. But he said he cast his ballot for Warnock because he didn’t think “Herschel Walker has the credentials to be a senator.” 

“I didn’t believe he had a statement of what he really believed in or had a campaign that made sense,” Callaway said. 

Walker, meanwhile, sought to portray Warnock as a yes-man for Biden. He sometimes made the attack in especially personal terms, accusing Warnock of “being on his knees, begging” at the White House — a searing charge for a Black challenger to level against a Black senator about his relationship with a white president. 

Warnock promoted his Senate accomplishments, touting a provision he sponsored to cap insulin costs for Medicare patients. He hailed deals on infrastructure and maternal health care forged with Republican senators, mentioning those GOP colleagues more than he did Biden or other Washington Democrats. 

Warnock distanced himself from Biden, whose approval ratings have lagged as inflation remains high. After the general election, Biden promised to help Warnock in any way he could, even if it meant staying away from Georgia. Bypassing the president, Warnock decided instead to campaign with former President Barack Obama in the days before the runoff election. 

Walker, meanwhile, avoided campaigning with Trump until the campaign’s final day, when the pair conducted a conference call Monday with supporters. 

Walker joins failed Senate nominees Dr. Mehmet Oz of Pennsylvania, Blake Masters of Arizona, Adam Laxalt of Nevada and Don Bolduc of New Hampshire as Trump loyalists who ultimately lost races that Republicans once thought they would — or at least could — win. 
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Criminal Referrals Coming From January 6 US Capitol Riot Probe

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The U.S. congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol last year is planning to make referrals to the Justice Department recommending criminal prosecutions, panel chairman Bennie Thompson said Tuesday.

Thompson did not disclose whether former President Donald Trump would be one of the targets.

He said the nine-member panel is meeting later Tuesday to discuss specifics of its recommendations as it wraps up its probe of the mayhem that unfolded as about 2,000 Trump supporters stormed into the Capitol Building to try to block certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

“At this point, there’ll be a separate document coming from me” to the Justice Department, Thompson told reporters at the Capitol.

AG will decide whether to bring charges

The decision of whether to bring charges against Trump or any of his advisers rests with Attorney General Merrick Garland. To this day, Trump contends without evidence that he was cheated out of reelection by illegal voting and vote-counting. He has announced another run for the presidency in 2024.

Garland appointed career prosecutor Jack Smith as special counsel to oversee the federal investigation of Trump’s actions leading up to the rampage at the Capitol and whether the former president illegally took highly classified government documents with him to his oceanside retreat in Florida after he left office.

‘We will stop the steal,’ Trump says before the riot

Just before the riot unfolded, Trump told supporters at a rally near the White House, “Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and that’s what this is all about. To use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal.”

He concluded, “We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

More than 950 of the rioters have been charged, and more than 450 have pleaded guilty or have been convicted so far. Some have received prison terms of more than four years.

At nine hearings in recent months, witnesses before the House investigative panel testified how Trump privately, along with public admonitions, pushed then-Vice President Mike Pence to override the state-by-state Electoral College vote count that showed Biden had won.

But Pence refused, and after the rioters were cleared from the Capitol, Congress affirmed in the early hours of January 7, 2021, that Biden had won.

The U.S. does not elect its president by a national popular vote but rather through state-by-state voting, with the most populous states holding the most Electoral College votes and thus the most sway in determining the national outcome.

Biden won the national balloting over Trump by more than 7 million votes.
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Warnock, Walker in Tight Race in Georgia Senate Runoff

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Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock and Republican football legend Herschel Walker were locked in a tight race Tuesday night in their runoff election that will decide the final U.S. Senate seat.

With votes still being counted, Warnock was notching a strong performance in and around the Democratic stronghold of Atlanta, while Walker maintained his advantage in Republican-leaning rural areas.

Democrats are already assured a Senate majority, so the contest will determine whether the party has a 51-49 advantage or a 50-50 edge with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote. Last year, runoff victories by Warnock and fellow Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff gave Democrats control of the chamber for the first two years of President Joe Biden’s term.

In the November election, Warnock led Walker by about 37,000 votes out of almost 4 million but fell shy of a majority, triggering the second round of voting. About 1.9 million runoff votes had been cast by mail and during early voting, an advantage for Democrats whose voters more commonly cast ballots this way. Republicans typically fare better on Election Day itself.

The state was on track for a robust Election Day, with state officials estimating the total number of votes cast to be roughly 1.4 million — slightly more than the November midterm and the 2020 election. But early and mail voting did not reach the same levels as years past, and it was likely the total number of votes cast would be less than the 2021 Senate runoff election.

Voting rights groups point to changes made by state lawmakers after the 2020 election that shortened the period for runoffs, from nine weeks to four, as a major reason for the decline in early and mail voting.

The extended campaign became a bitter fight between two Black men in a major Southern state: Warnock, the state’s first Black senator and the senior minister of the Atlanta church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached, and Walker, a former University of Georgia football star and political novice backed by former President Donald Trump.

A Warnock victory would solidify Georgia’s status as a battleground heading into the 2024 presidential election. A win for Walker, however, could be an indication of Democratic weakness, especially given that Georgia Republicans swept every other statewide contest last month.

A 51-49 Democratic advantage in the Senate would mean that the party would no longer have to negotiate a power-sharing deal with Republicans and won’t have to rely on Harris to break as many tie votes.

Voting went smoothly despite some cold, rainy conditions in some parts early Tuesday. Stephanie Jackson Ali, policy director for the progressive New Georgia Project Action Fund, said the group had seen few issues around the state, with lines advancing and equipment issues being addressed promptly.

Total spending on the seat this cycle approached $400 million by Tuesday, a staggering figure even for such a populous state with an expensive major media market like Atlanta.
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Arizona Certifies 2022 Election Despite Republican Complaints

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Arizona’s top officials certified the midterm election results Monday, formalizing victories for Democrats over Republicans who falsely claimed the 2020 election was rigged.

The certification opens a five-day window for formal election challenges. Republican Kari Lake, who lost the race for governor, is expected to file a lawsuit after weeks of criticizing the administration of the election.

Election results have largely been certified without issue around the country, but Arizona was an exception. Several Republican-controlled counties delayed their certification despite no evidence of problems with the vote count. Cochise County in southeastern Arizona blew past the deadline last week, forcing a judge to intervene on Friday and order the county supervisors to certify the election by the end of the day.

“Arizona had a successful election,” Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said before signing the certification. “But too often throughout the process, powerful voices proliferated misinformation that threatened to disenfranchise voters.”

The statewide certification, known as a canvass, was signed by Hobbs, Republican Governor Doug Ducey, Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich and Chief Justice Robert Brutinel, a Ducey appointee.

When the same group certified the 2020 election, Ducey silenced a call from then-President Donald Trump, who was at the time in a frenetic push to persuade Republican allies to go along with his attempts to overturn the election he lost.

“This is a responsibility I do not take lightly,” Ducey said. “It’s one that recognizes the votes cast by the citizens of our great state.”

Republicans have complained for weeks about Hobbs’ role in certifying her own victory over Lake in the race for governor, though it is typical for election officials to maintain their position while running for higher office. Lake and her allies have focused on problems with ballot printers that produced about 17,000 ballots that could not be tabulated on site and had to be counted at the elections department headquarters.

Lines backed up in some polling places, fueling Republican suspicions that some supporters were unable to cast a ballot, though there’s no evidence it affected the outcome. County officials say everyone was able to vote and all legal ballots were counted.

Hobbs planned to immediately petition the Maricopa County Superior Court to begin an automatic statewide recount required by law in three races decided by less than half a percentage point. The race for attorney general was one of the closest contests in state history, with Democrat Kris Mayes leading Republican Abe Hamadeh by just 510 votes out of 2.5 million cast.

The races for superintendent of public instruction and a state legislative seat in the Phoenix suburbs will also be recounted, but the margins are much larger.

Once a Democratic stronghold, Arizona’s top races went resoundingly for Democrats after Republicans nominated a slate of candidates backed by Trump who focused on supporting his false claims about the 2020 election. In addition to Hobbs and Mayes, Democratic Senator Mark Kelly was reelected and Democrat Adrian Fontes won the race for attorney general.
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Через обстріл Кривого Рогу зруйнована критична інфраструктура, можливі «масштабні відключення» – Вілкул

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Голова ВЦА Олександр Вілкул наголосив, що очікуються повторні пуски ракет у бік Кривого Рогу, тому закликав мешканців залишатись в укриттях
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