Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri criticized Democratic President Joe Biden for not sending enough aid to Ukraine despite previously voting against an aid package to help the country shore up its defenses against Russian forces.
Writing on Twitter, Hawley referred to the speech that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave to Congress as "powerful" but questioned why Biden has not been "serious" about shutting down Russian energy production, bolstering domestic energy production and "arming" Ukrainians with more weapons.
You can see his tweet here:
But Hawley was swiftly called out by at least one person who recalled that he had chosen to vote against sending Ukraine aid to begin with.
Hawley had called on Biden to drop his support for Ukraine eventually joining The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), arguing that to do would only leave the United States "more embroiled in European conflicts."
Hawley was one of 31 Senate Republicans to vote against Ukraine aid, a list that includes such prominent ones as Tom Cotton (Arkansas), Ted Cruz (Texas), Ron Johnson (Wisconsin), Rand Paul (Kentucky), Mitt Romney (Utah), and Marco Rubio (Florida).
He was swiftly criticized for hypocrisy.
In the weeks before the invasion, Russia had issued several security demands the United States and its allies rejected.
Putin aims to curtail the enlargement of NATO, seeking to bar Ukraine from joining the alliance in a bid to assert Russia’s influence over its neighbors, aspirations that gained further prominence after Putin seized the Crimean Penninsula in 2014.
Although Ukraine is not yet a member of NATO, it is partnered with the military alliance. This development angered Putin, who views Ukraine not as an independent nation but as land lost as a result of the end of the Cold War, which resulted in the Soviet Union's collapse and diminished Russia's superpower status.
Putin had left world leaders guessing as to whether or not he actually wanted to proceed with an invasion though he clearly wants NATO to curb military exercises in Ukraine and in other former Soviet satellite states, demands that resulted in a diplomatic stalemate.
