Support for Ending Ukraine Aid Growing in US Congress, Society
06:08 GMT 09.08.2023 (Updated: 11:11 GMT 09.08.2023)
© AFP 2023 / SERGEI SUPINSKY
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WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - Support for ending financial assistance for Ukraine is increasing among US lawmakers and the American people, independent candidate for the US Senate from New York Diane Sare told Sputnik.
"I have to tell you, it is shifting," Sare said. "I believe the support for ending this funding actually is growing and I would say in the American people, it's the overwhelming majority."
Sare noted that the recent vote in the Senate on having an inspector general for Ukraine aid also proves that.
While the amendment failed in a 51-48 vote, it nonetheless showed the increasing number of lawmakers who say they'd like to know where the money is going.
"That I find a major shift. You had the bill introduced by Marjorie Taylor Greene, that we should stop the funding and I believe it was 89 people in the House voted for it," she added. "You might say, well, it's only less than 25% since the House has 435 members, but 89 is a lot bigger than two or three, which is what it was a year ago."
When asked why many US lawmakers strongly support arming Ukraine, Sare said, "I think a lot of them don't have a clue."
"We had a famous - I forget which one, it was Congressman here in New York - who didn't even know where Donetsk was," she continued.
Sare stressed that the supply of US weapons to Ukraine should stop.
"This war of Ukraine, the arming of Ukraine - it's the most corrupt regime, maybe in the world. The weapons are turning up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels," she said. "We have a horrible crisis on our border, partly because we're supporting drug cartels all over the world. I think these are of a piece and if we could stop the funding of Ukraine, that would be a major step toward cleaning up a lot of corruption in our foreign policy."
Believing that Ukraine is going to win the war against Russia is a "fiction," and the US should stop "living in a fantasy," she stated.
"Ukraine is merely being used for a proxy war to destroy Russia," the candidate said.
A poll published last week showed that 55% of Americans oppose Congress authorizing additional funding to support Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, while 45% disagree.
The US has committed more than $75 billion in various types of assistance to Ukraine since February 2022. A major part, or nearly $50 billion, has been spent on weapons and related military equipment.
No peace initiatives on Ukraine will work until the United States and the United Kingdom abandon their goal to "destroy Russia," Diane Sare said.
Several countries, including China and a group of African nations, have set out their road maps toward peace in Ukraine, but none has been approved by Kiev.
When asked whether she sees any of the proposed initiatives as a possible way forward, Sare stated, "I think so, with a giant caveat."
"Which is that the United States and Britain have to change their desire, the goal of the destruction of Russia," Sare said. "The United States and Britain, unfortunately, are capable of sabotaging anything. Somehow, we must shift the United States and so far the Congress hasn't gotten the message, but I think that is actually critical to getting this conflict to end."
Commenting on what a possible negotiated solution to the Ukraine conflict may be, Sare noted, "That is really not for me to say."
"I think that Putin has expressed very legitimate security concerns which were ignored at the beginning of the process," she said. "I think there was an agreement that they had nearly reached with the help of Turkey mediating in March - April of 2022. It might be wise to start from that position."
1 August 2023, 06:22 GMT
Sare believes certain outcomes would be inevitable, including that Ukraine would have to be neutral and not acquire nuclear weapons.
"I think Crimea has to be recognized as part of Russia," she said. "I'm not sure that the people of Donetsk and Lugansk want to return to anything like the Minsk accords, but that all has to be hammered out. That's not for me to say, you have to have Western leaders acting in good faith, not in the treasonous way that they did around the Minsk accords."
Saudi Arabia hosted Ukraine peace talks in Jeddah over the weekend, having invited representatives from some 30 countries, but not Russia. The Jeddah meeting is a follow-up to a similar conference held in Denmark in June. The Copenhagen meeting failed to produce any joint statements.
Moscow has said it is open to peace negotiations if Kiev recognizes the territorial gains Russia has made since the launch of its military operation in February 2022. Ukraine has banned its officials from engaging the Russian government in talks as long as President Vladimir Putin is in power.
The US Congress has a role to play in investigating the attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines because it was not consulted on them in violation of US law, Diane Sare said.
"They [Congress] were illegally not consulted. That's against the law," she said. "You're not allowed to do a top covert action and not brief the Congress. This is an act of war. The Congress has to give their approval and they were kept out of the loop. So they absolutely have a role."
Sare said she believes the US government was involved in the attacks on the pipelines because President Joe Biden announced on February 7, 2022, before Russia's special military operation in Ukraine, that the United States would end the pipelines.
"He didn't say blow up. He said it will end them," she noted. "So he announced our plan to destroy the pipeline in a public meeting."
The candidate also cited reports alleging that then UK Prime Minister Liz Truss sent a text to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying "it's done" just after the blasts.
Sare also referred to an article of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh regarding the deep sea diving equipment and remote explosive devices used to attack the pipelines, noting that only a few countries in the world have such capabilities.
"This is why I'm convinced that it's the United States, the United Kingdom, probably Denmark, Norway - that is what Seymour Hersh says. They all had a role in destroying these pipelines," she said. "I would hope that people would not let go of it. I think it's something that really has to be answered. It's glaring. But that's our job. That's my job. That's the job of others to insist that the truth comes out."
The Nord Stream pipelines, built to deliver gas under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany, were hit by explosions in September 2022. The pipeline's operator said that the damage was unprecedented and it was impossible to estimate the time repairs might take.
Denmark, Germany and Norway have left Russia out of their investigations into the attack, prompting Moscow to launch its own probe on charges of international terrorism.
The freezing of Russia's assets by the United States is an act of theft prompting other countries to get rid of the US dollar, Diane Sare stressed.
"We should unfreeze them. This is just theft," Sare said. "We've stolen 300 billion from the Russians. Then we say, 'Why do people not trust United States?' I mean, it's just theft. We should stop it. It's outrageous."
Sare said Americans should not wonder why people around the world want to eliminate their holdings and reserves of the US dollar given the US government's actions regarding Russia and Afghanistan, among others.
22 July 2023, 13:02 GMT
"You saw what we did to Afghanistan. First we occupied the place for 20 years. We prop up a guy who flees the country with the cash falling out of the helicopter. Then we say we don't know why the Afghan people didn't fight for such a person. Then we say we don't like the Taliban and we steal $7 billion from their central bank," she said.
Sare also criticized the sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies on Russia, Cuba, Syria and other nations as being against international law.
"Unilateral sanctions should simply be abolished. They're against international law. A really cruel and outrageous policy. We shouldn't do sanctions," she said.
Sare, a candidate for the US Senate in the 2024 elections, said she would demand a review of every single one of the sanctions to determine whether they were necessary or made any sense.
After the start of Russia's special military operation in Ukraine, Western countries imposed comprehensive sanctions against Russia, including the freezing of nearly half of the country's foreign currency reserves, amounting to about $300 billion.
Moscow has repeatedly said that attempts to confiscate frozen Russian assets are an expropriation of property in violation of international law. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Sputnik that Russia would do everything possible to return the seized assets.
