You're reading: Johnson: Putin should be held responsible for further bloodshed in Ukraine

 U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, one of eight American senators on a fact-finding mission to Kyiv this weekend, said that the United States should hold Russian President Vladimir Putin responsible for any more bloodshed in Ukraine.

“I’ll tell you what, from my standpoint there is one person I hold accountable for this aggression and it’s Vladimir Putin.  If there’s further bloodshed, there’s also one person I will hold responsible,” Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, told a news conference in Kyiv. “There’s one person that can stop it, that can prevent it.  That’s Vladimir Putin.”

U.S. Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who led the mission, said that Ukraine deserves long-term military aid from the United States and help rebuilding its fighting forces.

“Ukraine is going to need a long term-military assistance program from the United States,” McCain said. “Equipment both lethal and non-lethal.  Ukraine has been invaded. Russia is massing forces on the border provoking unrest, threatening to annex part of this sovereign nation, and possibly worse.  When free people and patriots, victims of aggression wish to defend themselves and their homes from further aggression and when they ask for some modest means that can help them resist, I believe we should provide it.  Not to offer false hope or to harbor it ourselves, but simply it’s the right and decent thing to do.”

McCain said he expected American politicians to show “strong bipartisan support for Ukraine” and “against Russia’s baseless violation of these principles and its
efforts to divide this country.:

He said that Americans “are also deeply concerned about
reports today of Russian military movement into areas around eastern
Ukraine. These movements are deeply
disturbing.”

McCainn said he expects Congress to next week approve legislation to provide $1 billion in loan
guarantees to support Ukraine’s economy and impose “sanctions, severe sanctions, on those responsible for
violence and human rights abuses against peaceful Ukrainians, and those who
threat Ukrainian stability, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and on
Russian officials responsible for corruption here.”

He noted that “there are now
thousands of brave Ukrainian members of the military who are surrounded in
bases in Crimea. We are deeply concerned
about after this phony referendum that’s going to take place, that the lives
and welfare of these individuals could be in danger.  We urgently urge the Russians to be
restrained and to respect the lives and welfare of these brave Ukrainian
service men and women who are serving their country.”

Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said that “we owe it to the people of Ukraine and to
those in Crimea to speak up for them at this moment and to tell Russia we will
not return to a history of invasion and aggression which was too common in this
part of the world. We also need to make it clear that
when countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia and Ukraine
enter into an agreement — the 1994 Budapest Memorandum — that it means
something.  When a country will step away
from its nuclear arsenal, only asking for protection of its territory and its
future, we need to stand by them.  That’s
why we’re here as well.”

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat expressed confidence that America and Europe will unite to impose sanctions that “deliver an economic blow to
Russia that will make it clear that there is a price to be paid for this type
of aggression.” 

Johnson, the Wisconsin Republican, thanked journalists for covering the conflict and asked them “to maintain that courage. Bring the pictures to the world
of what is happening here about this aggression.  It’s probably the single most important thing
that can be done to prevent further bloodshed.”

McCain said the Kremlin’s invasion of Crimea showed the world who Putin is “and what his ambitions are…this
is the person that occupies parts of the sovereign nation of Georgia, that
occupies Transnistria and Moldova, that is now active in an act of naked
aggression.”  

The West needs to “enact steps that
make it clear to Vladimir Putin that his ambitions will not be realized by the
great community of nations that would resist,” McCain said. :Let me just give you a couple of them
real quick. One, start the missile defense
system again in Poland and the Czech Republic that we abandoned once. Look forward to perhaps Moldova and Georgia
and Ukraine, if they wish, to become partners in NATO.  Have some military exercises with our Baltic
friends — Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania — that are under severe pressures from
Vladimir Putin and Russia as we speak. The United States of America with our
allies are the strongest force in the world. We can act to counter Vladimir Putin’s ambitions without reigniting a
Cold War and without conflict.”

McCain also said that “economic sanctions can be a very powerful weapon.  We’ve seen the effect that it had on the
Iranians.  Most of us, all of us agree
that it brought them to the bargaining table. A severe regimen of economic sanctions
on individuals, corporations and even governments I think can have a
significant beneficial impact.”

Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner can be reached at [email protected]