During an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press this Sunday, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) insisted that Russian President Vladimir Putin must not “reap any rewards at all” for the invasion of Ukraine that he recently launched. The sort of so-called rewards that were under discussion involved potential territorial transfers from Ukraine as part of a hypothetical peace deal to end the war, although Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a CNN interview that threats to Ukraine’s “territorial integrity” would not be an option in negotiations. Cheney’s comments could also be applied in other contexts, including any push to normalize economic relations with Putin’s regime after the war ends — such a thing would also be profoundly inappropriate according to her framework. As Cheney explained the issue:
‘I think it’s very important that Putin not reap any rewards at all for this aggression. I think territorial gains would be a reward for him. I think that we cannot be in a situation where the security and the peace that has been guaranteed — really since 1945 on the continent of Europe certainly — suddenly now powers believe that by the kind of onslaught that you’ve seen, the kind of war crimes, the kind of brutality that you’ve seen Putin unleash, that they can gain from that. So, I do think it’s critically important for the United States and for NATO to be clear. Obviously, we are going to support President Zelenskyy, but we need to be very clear we do not believe Putin should be able to gain, to benefit from the actions he’s taken.’
Check out Cheney’s remarks below:
We cannot allow Putin to reap any rewards for the brutality he has unleashed against Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/XzDtjuU2NW
— Rep. Liz Cheney (@RepLizCheney) March 20, 2022
As Zelenskyy recently explained his position, “There are compromises for which we cannot be ready as an independent state… Any compromises related to our territorial integrity and our sovereignty and the Ukrainian people have spoken about it, they have not greeted Russian soldiers with a bunch of flowers, they have greeted them with bravery, they have greeted them with weapons in their hands… [Russia] cannot curry favor with the citizens of another country forcibly… You cannot just make a president of another country to recognize anything by the use of force.” Putin and his regime continue to stand by the violence in Ukraine, the true scope of which the Russian government largely refuses to acknowledge. Russia has been conservatively estimated by U.S. intelligence to have already lost over 7,000 troops in fighting in Ukraine, and defenders there have also claimed to have made major dents in the invading forces’ equipment capacity — although none of these details mean that Russian soldiers haven’t inflicted devastating impacts on locals. In one example, Russian forces fired on a nursing home in the Luhansk region, killing 56 people. Russian personnel forcibly moved survivors of the attack elsewhere.
⚡️On March 11, Russian occupation forces fired on a nursing home in Kreminna, Luhansk Oblast, killing 56 people.
15 people survived, Russians took them to the occupied territory in Svatove
— Hromadske Int. (@Hromadske) March 20, 2022
