What a jerk. How short-sighted!
To stay free, Ukraine needs the US behind it.
In 1991, 91% of Ukrainians voted to be free of Russia and fully independent. Even the majority of Crimeans voted for this.
Then, and again in 1995 and 1997, Russians ratified recognition of borders between the two countries (sbornik-zakonov.ru).
One would expect that to be enough to ensure Ukraine's sovereignty, but in 2013, Ukraine's then-President Victor Yanukovich reneged on his campaign promise to Ukraine's voters to increase trade relations with the EU. This led to popular pro-democracy demonstrations in Maidan Sq. and pressure from Moscow for Yanukovich to use force to quell the demonstrations.
Yanukovich honored Putin's wishes and ordered guns turned on the demonstrators. Dozens of unarmed Ukrainian civiliand were killed. Ukrainians and Ukraine's legislators were enraged and Yanukovich fled to Russia. Shortly after, in 2014 Russia intervened by forcefully overrunning Crimea and beginning a war in Donbas and Luhansk.
For MTG & her silly caucus pals, respect history & international protocols. Since 1945 the recognized protocol was that there would be no "land grabs" allowed in Europe. While the Soviets "essentially" compiled after WW2. But Moscow had little compunction to enforce allegiance of lron Curtain partners as it did in Hungary in the 1950s and Czechoslovakia in the 1960s.
Moscow's 2014 land grab of Ukraine's Crimea, Donbas and Luhansk provinces set a new precedent and underscored Putin's government's Soviet-style heavy handedness.
With the world preoccupied with Moscow's war against Ukrainians, Putin is securing control over the Abkhazia part of Georgia (former lGeorgian SSR) by building a new Black Sea Fleet base there close to Georgia's capital, and he's striving to encourage Moldova's Russian speaking residents of the Transnistria region along Ukraine's border to undermine Moldova's democracy. And Putin's minions and trolls are also working to undermine NATO country democracies in Hungary, Slovakia & elsewhere.
This is a perilous situation. If the West were to abandon Ukraine, it wouldn't be long for Putin to push to overthrow Ukraine's democracy and to install a Soviet-style pro-Moscow puppet leader there. And then to focus on Moldova and Georgia to bring their governments in "line", too,
Who knows what would follow after. (Probably some subversive manipulations to the democracies of Romania and Bulgaria to strengthen Putin's desire to "own" the Black Sea, and in the Baltics and Poland to open up the Baltic Sea to Russia's maneuverability there.)
In any event, Republican games in Congress to make legislators do what Trump wants, means screwing freedom seeking Europeans living in Putin's targeted former Iron Curtain "territories". If Republicans love Putin's model of klepto-fascism, then ditch Speaker Johnson and support Putin. Trump and Putin would love that.
