(CNSNews.com) - Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) blamed the current state of affairs between Russia and Ukraine on the “weakness” and “fecklessness” of President Biden, adding that his “surrender and disastrous retreat from Afghanistan is the worst military catastrophe for the United States in decades.”
When asked if we’ve done all we can on Russia and Ukraine, Cruz said, “Not remotely, and, tragically, Europe is on the verge of war because of the weakness, the fecklessness of Joe Biden. You know, I heard a minute ago Admiral Kirby make reference to that the Biden administration, I think he said, ‘we're still digesting what happened back in August.”
“Joe Biden's surrender and disastrous retreat from Afghanistan is the worst military catastrophe for the United States in decades, and the consequences -- at the time I said, as a result of this incredible weakness, all of our enemies across the globe are looking to Washington, they are taking the measure of the man in the Oval Office,” he said.
“And, as a result, as I said back in August, the chances of Russia invading Ukraine have just risen 10-fold, the chances of China invading Taiwan had just risen tenfold. We're seeing the first of those two shoes dropping today because of Biden's weakness,” the senator said.
“But, Bill, it's even worse than that. We had in place bipartisan policies to prevent what is happening right now. Specifically, in 2019, I introduced legislation, targeted sanctions directed at the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Nord Stream 2 is the pipeline that Putin is building from Russia to Germany,” Cruz said.
“The reason he's building the pipeline is that it skips Ukraine. It goes right around Ukraine. Why? Because the real insurance that Ukraine had against invasion is that Putin has to take his energy, his natural gas, in pipelines that go through Ukraine. Once he builds Nord Stream 2, he no longer has to worry about those pipelines,” the senator said.
“In 2019, I authored sanctions, bipartisan sanctions in Congress, they passed with overwhelming bipartisan majorities. President Trump signed my sanctions legislation into law. And Putin stopped building the pipeline the day President Trump signed those sanctions. That pipeline was dead for over a year until Joe Biden became president and Putin began building that pipeline again on January 24, 2021, four days after Biden was sworn into office,” he said.
“Why? Because he knew what was going to happen -- was going to happen, which was that Joe Biden formally waived sanctions on Russia, on Putin, and gave the green light to build Nord Stream 2. That is why we have over 100,000 troops and Russian tanks on the border of Ukraine preparing to invade. That's why we're on the brink of war in Europe,” Cruz said.