At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) questioned Sec. Marco Rubio about Vladimir Putin.
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00:00Thank you. Appreciate that. Senator Shaheen.
00:02Thank you. Mr. Secretary, I have a number of questions,
00:05but I first want to go back to what you had to say about China,
00:09because I agree that their efforts are predatory.
00:13But I think somebody may be missing what they are doing
00:19in response to our ceasing of foreign assistance in places.
00:23And Mr. Chairman, for the record, I'd like to submit this fact sheet,
00:27the PRC supporting international assistance is U.S. withdraws.
00:31It's dated April 29th.
00:34And just to give you a few examples, earlier this month,
00:38General Michael Langley, who's the commander of U.S. Africa Command,
00:42I sit on the Armed Services Committee,
00:45and when we asked him about the end to specific USAID programs,
00:50he stated that the PRC is trying to replicate, in quotes,
00:55specific USAID programs in Africa that the Trump administration cut,
01:00including PEPFAR.
01:02And, I mean, there are several pages of these examples.
01:06Another one is in Cambodia.
01:08After the U.S. terminated $2 million in demining programming in Cambodia,
01:12the PRC immediately announced $4.4 million to expand its own demining programs.
01:17The PRC also recently stepped in to fund child literacy and nutrition programs
01:23previously supported by USAID.
01:25So we can pretend that China is not doing these things and picking up
01:31and promoting themselves as a reliable partner when the United States is not,
01:36but we have specific examples that show where this is happening.
01:40But I want to move to Ukraine because we heard the conversation that the president had
01:49with Vladimir Putin, the phone conversation where Putin didn't agree to any meaningful
02:00negotiation that would end this war in Ukraine.
02:04Ukraine, as President Trump has admitted, Vladimir Putin is taking him for a ride.
02:11Now, we have a bipartisan bill in the Senate that's led by Lindsey Graham.
02:15It has 80 sponsors.
02:17It's, I understand that the House members are ready to take this up on a discharge petition
02:24if we pass it out of the Senate.
02:27How much longer until we rein Putin in?
02:30And are you prepared to support that sanctions bill that Graham and Blumenthal
02:36and 20 or 78 other members of the Senate support?
02:40Well, let me answer your last question first, and that is about the bill.
02:43We obviously can't control what Congress does, and we've told the Russians this.
02:47Not now, six, eight weeks ago.
02:48I believe, Senator Shane, you were involved in a conversation that made it clear to the Russians
02:52what would happen if there was no progress made.
02:54And that's been repeated multiple times.
02:56I would also make this point, and it's important.
02:58Every single sanction, not one sanction has been lifted on the Russians.
03:01Every single sanction that was in place under the previous administration remains in place.
03:06So this idea we've given up leverage, well, we have the same leverage today
03:09that we had under the previous administration.
03:11Well, Mr. Secretary, I would argue that the leverage that we've given up
03:15is taking NATO membership off the table,
03:18taking away a commitment to continue to help the Ukrainians with intelligence sharing
03:24and with military equipment and arms that they need to help fight this war.
03:29Well, that continues.
03:31There was a pause for one week.
03:34All of that was restarted, and it continues.
03:35That was intelligence sharing, though, but it doesn't cover the equipment and arms.
03:39Oh, absolutely.
03:40That program has not been rescinded.
03:41They continue to receive armaments from the United States.
03:42And we continue to fund what the Ukrainians need as the president,
03:47and are you prepared to pass another supplemental bill to support them?
03:53Well, that's a different decision.
03:54That's a different question.
03:55That's not up for me to decide.
03:56The White House would have to make a determination about whether to come to Congress for a supplemental.
04:00But everything that's been approved and congressionally appropriated is ongoing.
04:03In fact, to the extent that the Ukrainians have asked for anything additional,
04:06what they've asked for is air defenses, Patriot units, which, frankly, we don't have.
04:11But we are working closely with our NATO allies.
04:13There are NATO allies that do have some batteries of Patriot missiles
04:17that they could provide or transfer over to the Ukrainians to defend, for example,
04:20the airspace of Kyiv and other places.
04:22And we've been encouraging in that front and working alongside our partners there
04:26to get deliveries of some of these systems.
04:28As you can imagine, none of these countries want to give up their Patriot systems either.
04:31But we can't make them fast enough.
04:33And part of the challenge we have in Ukraine is that munitions are being expended
04:37substantially faster than the ability of the broader West, not just us, but the West, to produce them.
04:43Now, that said, on the issue of Ukraine, here's what we can all agree on.
04:45There is no military solution to this crisis.
04:48Right.
04:48It will have to end in a negotiated settlement.
04:50And the fundamental challenge we have in Ukraine is this.
04:53Russia wants what they do not currently have and are not entitled to,
04:56and Ukraine wants what they cannot regain militarily.
05:00And that's been the crux of the challenge.
05:02I don't disagree with that at one level.
05:05But on the other hand, what Vladimir Putin is doing now is playing for time.
05:10And he's playing this president like a fiddle.
05:13And the more longer he plays it, the more opportunity he has to gain territory in Ukraine,
05:20and the harder it's going to be to get him to the table.
05:23What we need to do is to put pressure on Vladimir Putin in every way we can
05:28to ensure that we can get them to the negotiating table.
05:32Well, I disagree with this playing with a fiddle analogy,
05:35because the truth of the matter is when Vladimir Putin woke up this morning,
05:38he had the same set of sanctions on him that he's always had since the beginning of this conflict.
05:42And Ukraine was still getting armaments and shipments from us and from our allies.
05:45And the European Union is about to impose additional sanctions.
05:48And the U.S. is looking for no patriot batteries to be able to transfer from other NATO nations into Ukrainian hands.
05:55And what the president is trying to do is end a war.
05:57He's trying to end a bloody, costly war that neither side can win.
06:00Which I think we all support.
06:00And people are dying every single day.
06:02But this notion that I don't know what has Putin gained throughout this.
06:06He hasn't gotten a single concession.
06:08He hasn't gotten a single sanction lifted.
06:10He's gotten time. And the more time he gets without additional pressure on Russia,
06:13the more incentive he's got to continue to gain territory and continue to play for time.
06:21But I want to just get to a final question because my time is running out.
06:26And that is, I recently wrote a letter to you about the issuance of executive orders on thousands of Afghan allies.
06:34These are people who fought alongside our military during the war in Afghanistan.
06:39They've been stranded in Qatar and Albania and Pakistan and Afghanistan.
06:44These are individuals who have been vetted already.
06:47They're ready to travel to the United States.
06:49And the question I have is, is this administration going to allow them to come to the United States as it promised?
06:55Because unless we're willing to keep our commitments to those people who were willing to fight and die alongside of us,
07:03then how can we ever ask people to do that again?
07:07Yeah, a couple of points.
07:08Some of those are, I think the issues that's getting mixed up here is whether we are going to pay for them to fly to the United States
07:14once a visa is issued or whether they have to find their own transportation to the U.S.
07:18So there's two separate topics, our payment to move people forward, but also the issuance of the visas.
07:24And when that is still going through an internal review as to who is going to be allowed in,
07:28there's been a review of the vetting process that's been used.
07:31Frankly, there have been some errors found in the previous vetting process that we're concerned about.
07:35And I'm separating out from that audience people who we have closely vetted
07:39because we've been working alongside them for many years with regards to their service
07:43alongside our intelligence forces or special operators on the ground from the broader.
07:47Remember, they're also bringing dependents with them.
07:49And so there were some concerns early on about freezing or slowing down this program
07:53until we could determine whether we were properly vetting people to come towards the United States.
07:57And that process is ongoing, and I think we'll have more concrete answers for you,
08:01which I know is not satisfactory at this moment.
08:04But we've obviously had a lot going on.
08:06But this is something that we've heard a lot from, from both our DOD partners and others in the intelligence community,
08:11and we're working to make progress on that.
08:13I'm out of time, but just to clarify, on last week, Secretary Noem announced that temporary protected status,
08:22which I understand is not exactly the same, but for over 8,000 Afghans would end on July 12th.
08:28Many of those people are people, again, who fought and died alongside of our men and women in the military.
08:35And for us to send them back to sure death at the hands of the Taliban is just not what they were promised when they agreed to fight with us.
08:46Thank you, Mr. Chairman.