Biden Stands Up For Ukraine To The Shame Of Trump & The GOP

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Caleb Newton
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Republicans who might claim that the Biden administration is somehow kowtowing to the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin simply aren’t honestly reflecting the facts. This weekend, after just recently speaking with Putin, President Joe Biden talked over the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy amid the ongoing threat of further Russian military action against Zelenskyy’s country. According to a White House recap of the conversation, Biden “made clear that the United States would respond swiftly and decisively, together with its Allies and partners, to any further Russian aggression against Ukraine.” Russian authorities have set up a military build-up on the border with Ukraine, and American officials have entered a sort of crisis mode in dealing with the threat.

In tandem with the White House’s involvement in diplomatic negotiations, U.S. personnel — including diplomatic figures and military members — have been revealed to be swiftly leaving Ukraine. The Biden administration has also pushed for private United States citizens to leave the country; although the president’s team is prepared to continue tangibly assisting the Ukrainians in their stand-off against the Russians, including in the event of further escalation, there’s no apparent plan for a U.S. military presence inside of Ukraine to counter Russian military action. Meanwhile, the White House recap of Biden’s conversation this weekend added that the U.S. president “reaffirmed the commitment of the United States to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” adding that Biden and Zelenskyy “agreed on the importance of continuing to pursue diplomacy and deterrence in response to Russia’s military build-up on Ukraine’s borders.”

The previous official recap from the White House of the recent conversation between Biden and Putin said that Biden “was clear that, if Russia undertakes a further invasion of Ukraine, the United States together with our Allies and partners will respond decisively and impose swift and severe costs on Russia.” Besides measures like economic sanctions, the United States has also been delivering military aid to the Ukrainians amid rising concerns. In addition to the contrast between Biden and Trump’s approaches to Putin, Biden’s relationship with the Ukrainian president is also profoundly distinct — it’s this same Ukrainian president who was cajoled by Trump to pursue investigative efforts that would have been favorable to the Trump team, and that pressure unfolded while U.S. military aid for Ukraine was held up. As for Putin, it’s worth remembering that Trump pushed for him to be brought back into the G7 group of world leaders — from which he’d been excluded specifically because of previous aggression by the Russians towards Ukraine.

Trump’s foreign policy record features failure after failure. Despite the hubbub around his meetings with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, the North Korean regime still possesses nuclear capabilities. Trump’s withdrawal of the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal seriously undercut an opportunity to substantively constrain nuclear development elsewhere. Throughout his presidency, the administration imposed various sanctions on foreign goods — eroding relations between the U.S. and other countries while leaving higher taxes on certain American interests (the ones doing the importing). Issues continue from there.



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