Utah Sen. Mitt Romney urged the U.S. and NATO to provide aid to Ukraine on Saturday after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a Senate Zoom meeting.
In a statement via Twitter, Romney asked congressional leadership to put the Ukrainian aid bill on the floor Monday in order to provide military and humanitarian resources as quickly as possible. Zelenskyy relayed to the senators that much of the country’s defense systems have been destroyed, Lee said in a video message.
“People are dying, freedom is under assault, and his number one request from us is old soviet jets,” Romney wrote. “Waiting on the congressional calendar is unacceptable when people are dying.”
Lee said that Zelenskyy spoke to the senators “under humble conditions,” dressed in a green T-shirt in what looked like a bunker. In addition to an update on the country’s resources, Zelenskyy told the senators that he was concerned for the country’s own people, its neighbors, and even the Russians.
“You could see the passion and the energy in his voice, the tonal quality with his gestures — everything about it suggested that this is a man who loves his country deeply, and recognizes the direness of the circumstances in which he now finds himself,” Lee said. “[Zelenskyy] cares about his people, he cares about people in general — regardless of where they live.”
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