Tulsi Gabbard (D), a former US representative for Hawaii, has warned about the possible dire outcomes of the United States continuing to fan the flames of the Ukraine crisis by funneling weapons to prop up the Kiev regime.
“The American people need to understand the seriousness of the situation that the Biden administration and leaders in Washington have put us in. So we go beyond kind of the day-to-day battle updates of what's happening in our proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and actually take a step back and focus on the big picture and the great threat that we face, which is the reality that this war is continuing to escalate,” Gabbard said, appearing on "The Ingraham Angle" on Wednesday.
The Hawaiian US Army Iraq War veteran, who sought the Democrat presidential nomination in 2020, added that President Biden himself “has no idea when or how it's going to end.”
“…But we know where this escalation leads. It leads us closer and closer to the brink of a nuclear war with Russia,” warned Gabbard.
Tulsi Gabbard has previously not minced words when weighing in on Washington’s response to Moscow’s special operation launched on February 24 to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine.
She had sent out a tweet on the day the operation started, saying the escalation could have been avoided “if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO, which would mean US/NATO forces right on Russia’s border.”
The politician raised questions as to why Ukraine should join NATO and why the US would support that, as she appeared on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show earlier in the year.
"I have a hard time seeing how President Biden or anyone can say with an honest face, 'we are defending democracy,'" Gabbard told Carlson.
"Putin has said for years his security concerns are about NATO increasingly approaching and surrounding Russia on all sides. The Biden administration has failed to outline for the American people how does this serve your best interests? What will the costs be?" Gabbard said in an interview with the New York Post.
The interview had followed her Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) speech in Orlando where she slammed what she dubbed the “Biden-Clinton-neocon-neolib foreign policy that she claimed shipped soldiers overseas to “be the policemen of the world… all in the name of ‘spreading democracy.'”
The former Democratic congresswoman accused the modern progressive movement in the US of hypocrisy for punishing dissent at home while purportedly standing up for democracy abroad.
“They’re hypocrites. They proclaim that we must go to war to spread democracy and freedom while they actively work to undermine our democratic republic and our freedoms right here at home,” she said.
Back in 2019, Gabbard found herself in the crosshairs as Hillary Clinton suggested the Russians were "grooming" a Democrat in the presidential primary to run as a third-party candidate in a comment that appeared to be directed at Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.
"She's the favorite of the Russians," Clinton had stated, speaking on a podcast with former Obama adviser David Plouffe. Gabbard, who had battered away the allegations, responded on Twitter at the time to sarcastically thank Hillary Clinton, the “queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party.”
Russia launched its special operation in Ukraine on 24 February, as Donbass suffered from intensifying bombardment by Kiev's troops. President Vladimir Putin noted that the operation was started to put an end to the eight-year-long war, waged by Ukraine against Donetsk and Lugansk, which has claimed thousands of lives since 2014.
The special military operation in Ukraine followed months of failed negotiations in which NATO members refused to meet Russian security concerns over Ukraine's bid to join the bloc, with Moscow having repeatedly urged NATO to stop expanding its military footprint near its borders.