Congressman Mark Green discusses Ukraine crisis
JACKSON, Tenn. — District 7 Congressman Mark Green says after Ukraine has been its own sovereign nation for decades, Russian President Vadimir Putin has ordered troops into separatist-held parts of Ukraine after recognizing the independence of those two breakaway regions.
This could be the first step before a full-scale invasion.
“His parliament, of course, voted yesterday or the day before to consider a region of Ukraine as an independent state. Putin used his people to go in there. He used his disinformation to go in and malign the Ukrainians, and now when they say, ‘Okay, we’re going to rebel.’ He sends his troops in there to ‘save the people,'” Green said.
Green says the world recognizes this type of behavior as an invasion. One that can happen any day now.
“The troops are already moving into the two regions. They’re putting tanks in there. As far as the rest of the country, it really could happen at any moment. He’s got 150,000 troops surrounding all of Ukraine,” Green said.
Green says the reason the United States is becoming involved is for the security of Europe and the impact on the United States.
He says destabilization in Europe bleeds over into other parts of the world.
“Twice last century, America waited until it was too late, and it cost us hundreds of thousands of lives in World War I and World War II. What we want to do is try to prevent that from happening. Russia is a nuclear state. If Putin isn’t checked, what’s next? The Republic of Georgia? Or the Baltics?” Green said.
Green believes Putin is trying to recreate the Soviet Union. He says the chances of a major war in Ukraine is relatively small.
“They’re not an ally, but they are a democracy, and so this authoritarian regime of Vladimir Putin is essentially seizing a democracy,” Green said. “While we’ll do sanctions, hopefully, completing full sanctions to include the swift transactions, but we’re not going to put boots on the ground there.”
Green says the ultimatum Putin has laid out is unacceptable. He says he needs to be confronted on his actions.
“We can talk about missiles, where we put missiles. We can talk about troop exercises and things like that. I think those are negotiable, and we’ve made that clear to him, but not who we get to have as allies and who NATO gets to have join its ranks,” Green said.
Green says America needs to continue to stand up and push back to prevent ripple effects from taking over throughout the entire world.
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