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Minutes before the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation imposing sanctions on Russia and aid to Ukraine, Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-VA) had harsh words today for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his nation’s “naked aggression” against Ukraine in Crimea. 

Speaking on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, Connolly, a senior member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said, “It is wrong, it cannot be allowed to stand, and we must make him (Putin) pay a price.”

Connolly said, “For the United States and its allies to allow this naked aggression to go unaddressed would be truly an abrogation of our moral responsibility and would be to turn our backs on the very lessons we should have learned from 20th century tragic history.”

Connolly urged his House colleagues to support legislation, H.R. 4278, to impose economic sanctions on Russia and authorize loan guarantees and direct aid for Ukraine.  

The legislation includes an amendment by Connolly that requires the State Department to issue an annual report on:  an assessment of the security situation in regions neighboring Russia, including Crimea; the goals and factors shaping the security strategy of the Government of Russia, including potential annexation of non-Russian territory; trends in Russian security behavior that would be designed to achieve Russia’s security goals; an assessment of the global and regional security objectives of Russia that would affect NATO, the Middle East, or the People’s Republic of China; an assessment of the capabilities of Russia’s military, and those capabilities’ effects on Russia’s neighbors; and any other developments that the Secretary of State considers important to national security. 

The bipartisan bill passed the House 399-19 and shows strong bipartisan support for the sanctions issued to date by President Obama.

Text of the statement follows:

I thank the gentleman for yielding,

Apparently once a KGB agent, always a KGB agent. Mr. Putin seems to have learned nothing from history other than that there is power at the end of the barrel of a gun.

To cite Russian speakers in Crimea as a rationale for one of the most audacious power grabs of the 21st century - in Europe no less - forgets history.

Let us not forget that Crimea was settled by Stalin when he expelled and executed the native Tatars. And this recent so-called referendum in Crimea was also done at the barrel of a gun.

Russian interests were never threatened in the Crimea after the revolution in Kiev. The new government in Kiev never abrogated the treaty that allowed Russia privileges, naval privileges, through 2042. The Ukrainians didn’t occupy military stations in Crimea and around the region - it was the other way around.

For the United States and its allies to allow this naked aggression to go unaddressed would be truly an abrogation of our moral responsibility and would be to turn our backs on the very lessons we should have learned from 20th century tragic history.

Mr. Speaker, we need to stop talking about the “He better not go further argument.” I am stuck at Crimea and I hope my colleagues are too.

It is wrong, it cannot be allowed to stand, and we must make him pay a price.

And the difference between now and Stalin’s time is that his economy is integrated into the global economy.

The ruble will fall. The stock market in Russia will pay a price. And investment will suffer because we will help make it so unless he relents. Until they pay a price that is so great - systematic and comprehensive, that he will understand that we no longer operate by the rule of the jungle in Europe, or indeed anywhere else on this planet.

Not with our blessing.  Not with our apology.

So I strongly support the legislation before us and urge my colleagues to join with all of us in telling Mr. Putin we will not stand idly by with history doomed to repeat itself.

I yield back.