Spartz
Congresswoman Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.-05) spoke passionately Tuesday at the House Republican Press Conference to castigate Vladimir Putin’s senseless violence against the Ukrainian people – and against what she calls the feckless leadership of the Biden administration.
Rep. Spartz has family and friends still in Ukraine, including her 95-year-old grandmother.
In answering a reporter’s question about the safety of people in Ukraine, Spartz said, “These people will not surrender, but we need to give them a chance to survive!”
The Reporter brings you Rep. Spartz’s comments in full. You can also watch on YouTube.
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I didn’t prepare a speech – so I’ll talk from my heart.
This is not a war. This is genocide of the Ukrainian people by a crazy man who cannot get over that Ukrainian people do not want socialism, Soviet Union, communism. They want to be with the United States of America. They want to be free people and they want to be with the West, and he cannot get over it.
I’ll tell you a personal story. I have my grandma – she’s 95. She’s, right now, in the city of Chernihiv. Actually, Chernihiv, on the part of Kyivan Rus’, started Moscow and controlled Moscow. So they’re bombing – they couldn’t take the city – they’re bombing civilians nonstop. Day and night. The whole city.
She has a daughter – she called her daughter – she lives in a little village by Chernihiv, and her daughter told her they came into the village with heavy machine guns. [They] killed almost every person in that village, and whatever people were left – women and children – they forced them to walk in front of the tanks as a human shield because they cannot take that city.
My mom was shocked. She [my grandmother] said, no, don’t cry. We are not crying here. We’re going to fight, but just give us some guns so we don’t just fight with sticks. This woman was born in Russia in the far east. She’s a Russian-born woman.
And they’re killing women and children!
Carpet bombs – they are using illegal weapons. They now have special groups that are trying to kill women and children tied to western Ukraine. I called my friend and she said she was able to get out – her friend was trying to get out. She saw a woman in a gas station get shot with her children with machine guns. So she stayed in the city.
They’re leveling the cities to the ground, destroying the people. They’re slaughtering them like animals. Their killing the people. It is not a war, it’s a genocide because we have a crazy man that believes that he has the whole world hostage.
And then we [the United States] have a president that talks about, talks about, and doesn’t do things. What? Is he going to wait for millions to die, then he’s going to do more?
We have not just a moral duty, we are the leaders of the free world. This is going to be the biggest genocide ever that this world has experienced. They’re not asking [us] to fight for [them]. They’re asking us to help and become serious so they have the ability to defend themselves. Actually, they need to understand we’re serious about the sanctions …
I can tell you one thing: If we don’t stop him there, he is not going to stop. He is going to go further, and then we will have to send our children to die to fight this.
So I think we have an obligation and duty to save this world – help Ukrainian people to survive. And this president [Biden] needs to get his act together and exercise some leadership. What’s happening under his watch is an atrocity. What he’s doing to this country, to the world, is unforgivable.
I think we’ll get together as Republicans and Democrats, but he must act decisively fast or this blood of many millions of Ukrainians will be on his hands, too!
All the oil – that was blood – flowing from Russia, and gas – we are buying that and Europeans are buying that. There’s going to be blood of the Ukrainian people.
So I hope you’re going to help me to send that message because we have to be strong and we have to stop him.
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Rep. Spartz also took a question from a reporter. Her impassioned response can be seen at this link.