Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is blasting President Joe Biden’s strategy on sanctioning Russia after an invasion of Ukraine.
Grassley made his remarks on a Tuesday tweet: “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine makes clear he wasn’t going to b deterred by talk only. Shld hv imposed some sanctions on Russia 4 threatening invasion as Republicans proposed.”
A bill had been introduced last week by 32 Republican senators to immediately impose sanctions on at least 15 Russian oligarchs and those people close to Putin. The bill would have imposed sanctions even if Russia didn’t go ahead with an invasion, according to Axios.
Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was the lead sponsor of the bill.
He had said the preemptive sanctions would “ensure Putin pays a price now for hybrid attacks already launched.”
The bill called for an additional $500 million in security assistance for Ukraine, a lend-lease program, and the creation of "Ukraine Resistance Fund" as a policy framework for post-invasion U.S. assistance, Axios noted.
But Senate Foreign Relations Chair Bob Menendez, D-N.J., called the Republican bill "partisan posturing."
“The latest proposal by Republicans is largely a reflection of what Democrats had already agreed to in our ongoing conversations, building off of the ‘mother of all sanctions’ we initially proposed," Menendez said in a statement.
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.