By BRENT MARTIN and MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
Missouri United States Sen. Roy Blunt suggests President Biden waited too long to put sanctions in place against Russia.
Blunt, during a stop in St. Joseph, says sanctions might have been more effective if enacted when Russian President Vladimir Putin amassed 130,000 troops, plus military equipment, along the border of Ukraine.
“There should have been some penalty, in my view, then and I supported that then,” Blunt tells reporters after a meeting at Rosecrans Memorial Airport. “The president had the tools to do that without any Congressional action.”
Blunt has talked with commanders of the Air National Guard’s 139th Airlift Wing based at Rosecrans; an update of improvements being made at the base.
Now that Russia has invaded Ukraine, how America reacts is important, according to Blunt.
Blunt, a Republican who serves on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, tells St. Joseph reporters it’s important the U.S. draw a distinction between how it responds to Ukraine versus how it would respond if a NATO country had been attacked.
“What you don’t want to do is let Putin in Europe or the Chinese in Asia believe that we will not maintain our commitments,” according to Blunt.
As Russian troops draw closer to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv's mayor is filled with both pride over his citizens’ spirit and anxious about how long they can hold out.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday, after a grueling night of Russian attacks on the outskirts of the city, Mayor Vitali Klitschko was silent for several seconds when asked if there were plans to evacuate civilians. He says “we can’t do that, because all ways are blocked.” The mayor added “right now we are encircled.”
Meanwhile, Russian President Putin has ordered Russian nuclear forces on high alert amid tensions with the West over his invasion of Ukraine.
The order means Putin wants Russia’s nuclear weapons prepared for increased readiness to launch and raises the threat that Moscow’s invasion and the West’s response to it could boil over into nuclear warfare.
In giving the directive, the Russian leader cited what he called “aggressive statements” by top NATO powers along with the West's hard-hitting financial sanctions.
Even though Blunt is critical about how slowly Biden imposed sanctions against Russia, he says sanctions might work if focused on those truly responsible.
“It’s hard to say here that the Russians deserve this, because this is a government that’s run by essentially a ‘thugocracy,’” according to Blunt. “The top thug is Putin and the Oligarchs are his henchmen and they’re the ones that need to have the penalty and pain here. And some of that is just simply by how we impact their banking system.”
Blunt adds Europe must understand Putin and the Russian Oligarchs will not be stopped by half measures.
“Frankly, I’m ready to look at investigating what they’ve taken from the Russian people, where it’s been distributed all over the world; whether that is winter places in Miami Beach or money in banks in London or New York City,” Blunt says.
Russia has unleashed a wave of attacks on Ukraine targeting airfields and fuel facilities in what appears to be the next phase of an invasion that has been slowed by fierce resistance.
Huge explosions lit up the sky early Sunday south of the capital, Kyiv, where people hunkered down in anticipation of a full-scale assault by Russian forces. The latest targets include an oil depot near an airfield south of the capital and a gas pipeline in Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.