Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken advantage of President Donald Trump’s efforts to bring an end to the war in Ukraine, Sen. John Kennedy told “Fox News Sunday.”
The Louisiana Republican said that “Putin has reneged on every promise that he has made to President Trump. His latest proposal is, well, nothing. He wants to keep all the territory that he has taken, he wants to prohibit Ukraine from joining NATO and he wants America and Europe to stop helping Ukraine.”
Kennedy said: “I think Putin thinks that America has taken the bullet train to Chinatown. I think he thinks we’re afraid of him. He has jacked around President Trump at every turn. He has disrespected our president.
“I don’t think it is going to get any better until we make it clear to Mr. Putin that we are willing to turn him and his country into fish food, and I am not talking about nuclear weapons.”
Instead, the senator said, “I would start with oil” and exploit the Russians’ dependence on the commodity against them in order to inflict harm on the country.
Kennedy said that “America under President Biden and Europe” made a mistake by agreeing “that Russia could sell its oil, as long as it does not get more than $60 per barrel.”
The senator explained that “Russia gets one third of its revenues from oil,” so “we need to stop all of [its] sales of oil. We need to get Russia down and choke them. They are not going to come [seriously] to the [peace negotiations] table otherwise.”
Kennedy said that, mainly, Putin must understand that there is a price to be paid for “jacking our president around.”
He also pointed out that, regarding Putin, “America is paying the price right now for President Biden’s appeasement. The Biden people believed in diplomacy, first, last, and always.
“We are in a knife fight with Russia and China and Iran and the Biden people wanted to quote Socrates to them.”
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