Rep. Mast to Newsmax: Putin's Biggest Fear Is For Ukraine to Join NATO

President Joe Biden this week threatened Russia's President Vladimir Putin with economic sanctions if Moscow orders a military strike against Ukraine, but the one thing the Russian leader fears more than anything is Ukraine becoming a member of NATO, Rep. Brian Mast said on Newsmax Thursday.

"He's not going to tolerate Ukraine becoming a part of NATO," the Florida Republican said on Newsmax's "American Agenda." "He's betting that the world is not going to roll the dice against him … and I think he's judging correctly with this administration."

Ukraine's military, he added, is "generations" behind Russia's, so joining the NATO alliance would create a new fear for Moscow.

"They fear that the whole idea of an attack on one being an attack on all," said Mast. Meanwhile, countries like Poland, Lithuania, and Romania have a "very real fear" of becoming the next countries to be "the next part of the re-created USSR."

"Your France, your other countries that are further to the west, they don't have that same fear, and so you see them reacting differently," said Mast. "Vladimir Putin said, very clearly, he will consider that as an act of war if [Ukraine] becomes part of NATO. This is the place that we need to be judging, whether that's a false red line or not."

In 2008, NATO promised Ukraine and Georgia, both former Soviet republics, that they would become full members of the organization, but didn't say when, and Putin has called that vow a threat to Russia, reports The New York Times.

Ukraine remains a NATO partner, but it is not a member and doesn't benefit from the promise for collective defense, even as Russian troops are gathering by the tens of thousands on the country's border. However, Ukraine has sent in troops for the organization's missions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Putin, meanwhile, has "probably plotted out victory" and is making calculations that the rest of the world will "basically accept" that he will annex a large part of Ukraine, or its major cities, "with little more action than maybe kicking out a few diplomats, maybe trying to take a few dollars from him, maybe doing something with energy, but they're not going to respond to very violent and aggressive military action with another military action," said Mast.

The congressman, in other issues, has called for Biden's impeachment over the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and on Thursday accused House Democrats of having already forgotten much of what happened.

"They have already forgotten about the fact that he directly tried to change the intelligence on the ground to paint a different picture of what was going on in Afghanistan," said Mast. "It was very likely leading to what happened with the killing of our service members directly after the release of terrorists from that prison in Bagram ... aiding and abetting the enemy, that should be investigated as treason."

Mast has also introduced a bill that would stop employers from asking workers about their vaccination status in connection with Biden's vaccine mandate.

"You can't ask whether somebody had a syringe put in their arms and had an injection about anything, COVID, anything else," said Mast. "You don't get to ask that just like you don't get to ask if somebody's lesbian, gay, transgender. You don't get to ask those questions, but apparently, the federal government and the Biden administration like to think that they can do this with the COVID vaccine. They're wrong."

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