U.S. lawmakers are preparing a bill to impose sanctions on Russia as part of a pushback against the Trump administration’s proposed agreement to end the fighting in Ukraine, two Republican congressmen told reporters on Wednesday.
They were “dumbfounded” and “sick to my stomach” upon reading a deal that would cede Ukrainian territory to Russia and force the Ukrainian military to shrink, said Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, and Don Bacon, R-Neb., of the House Armed Services Committee.
“That is a crossing of a Rubicon where Congress now fully and wholly needs to inject itself in this debate, and that’s what we’re going to do,” Fitzpatrick said.
They hope to weaken Russia’s negotiating power with Fitzpatrick’s sanctions bill, which mirrors a Senate version that has 85 bipartisan cosponsors. Bacon said he would be signing it Monday. If it garners 218 signatures, lawmakers will be forced to vote on it.
“Because that plan, that 28-point plan, was utterly ridiculous, should be nowhere in the conversation, nowhere,” he said. “That’s Munich Agreement all over again. We are not going down that path.”
Bacon also raised questions as to why Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the U.S.’s top diplomat, was shut out of negotiations in Ukraine in favor of top officials from the U.S. Army, whose legally defined roles are limited to the manning, training and equipping of soldiers.
“I think what we’ve seen, too, is the gutting of the National Security Council over the last 9, 10 months, and their role is to help coordinate between the various departments,” Bacon said, pointing out that Rubio is moonlighting as Trump’s national security adviser. “I think we see some of the impacts here, because Secretary of State Rubio has been cut out of some of these negotiations.”
The agreement leaked last week has now been revised and sent back to Moscow, CBS reported Wednesday. The original included concessions by Ukraine that would threaten its ability to exist as a sovereign democracy.
“When I looked at that 28-point peace plan on Thursday, I was sick to my stomach,” Bacon said. “When you’re telling Ukraine that they have to give up more territory, they can’t be part of NATO, they can’t have foreign troops on their soil, they have to reduce the size of their military, and on and on. It was a recipe for Russian domination of Ukraine for decades to come, and would have been an avenue for Russia to renew its invasion at any time.”
It also called for Ukraine to make good-faith demonstrations in ways that Russia did not offer to hold itself to.
“I kind of, like, am dumbfounded when I see demands from Russia that Ukraine hold an election. Of course, they should hold an election,” Fitzpatrick said. “How about Russia holds an election within 100 days too? That is monitored by international monitors, right? Why don’t we do both?”
Both agreed that working toward a peace agreement is necessary, though they both agreed that an agreement is necessary to break the stalemate. Part of that should be a forfeiture of $300 billion in Russian assets frozen in European banks to help rebuild Ukraine, Bacon said.
