The damage to railway tracks in Poland shows that the war in Ukraine goes beyond its borders, said Roger Wicker, head of the US Senate Armed Services Committee, in an interview with PAP. As he emphasized, this sabotage requires a decisive response, also from the United States.
“Dictators watch how we react”
– What is happening goes beyond Ukraine and Russia and has significance for the whole world. And the world is watching – Senator Wicker, also chairman of the Helsinki Commission of the US Congress, told PAP.
“Dictators, war criminals, would-be dictators are watching to see what we do because the way we respond to this type of provocation in a country that is our NATO partner will be very, very significant,” he added.
The Republican politician thus referred to the acts of sabotage of railway infrastructure in Poland revealed on Monday. This incident and Russian threats and hybrid war against the countries of NATO's eastern flank were the topics of Monday's meeting of the Helsinki Commission (officially the Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe), an institution operating at the Congress and composed of politicians from both chambers.
In an interview with PAP and media representatives from the Baltic states, Wicker criticized the Pentagon's decision to withdraw the American brigade stationed in Romania on a rotational basis. However, he expressed hope that this decision, made against the will of Congress, would be “corrected.” He recalled that immediately after the announcement of the decision of the Ministry of Defense, he wrote, together with the head of the House of Representatives' armed forces committee, a letter to the head of the Pentagon, in which he condemned the actions of the American authorities in this matter. He emphasized that he believed that his comments were heard.
– The presence of American soldiers is important for countries that help Ukraine, that value freedom and our alliance – NATO. So I hope this will be fixed. It has happened before that certain decisions were later changed, said the politician.
Wicker he also supported the draft law on sanctions against countries purchasing Russian oil and gas, by his Senate party colleague, Lindsey Graham. Graham announced on Monday that Trump – after more than six months of delay – agreed to adopt this package.
– I am in favor of putting this project to a vote now. The fact that leadership in the Senate is considering it in the near future shows that they have received a signal from President Trump and the White House that this is a good idea, he said. He added that he also supports another project co-authored by Graham, which assumes that Russia will be officially recognized as a state supporting terrorism if the Kremlin does not return illegally deported Ukrainian children to their families. He announced that Pope Leo XIV would soon raise this issue.
“The threat to NATO countries still exists”
During Monday's hearing at the Helsinki Commission, all speakers – both congressmen and guests, including Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna – drew attention to the threat posed by Russia to NATO countries and the hybrid war it is waging. The Estonian minister warned the US against further decisions to withdraw troops from NATO's eastern flank countries.
– Any signal that the US is withdrawing troops from Europe is bad, because Russia will certainly take advantage of it. I'm not just talking about the military potential, but about the message it conveys. Russia and Putin will surely use this as a signal that the US is weak and will withdraw troops because of them, because of Putin. And this is a very, very wrong direction, Tsahkna said.
Other guests, CSIS and Hudson Institute think tank experts Seth Jones and Peter Rough, argued that – despite NATO's defensive nature – in the face of Russian provocations, the Alliance should show that it also has offensive capabilities. Rough, a former George W. Bush administration official, suggested that the US should, for example, launch a cyberattack on Russian infrastructure by turning off the lights in the Moscow subway, or support Ukrainian attacks inside Russia and elsewhere in the world.
Jones argued that Russia is vulnerable to further economic pressure and sanctions – including secondary sanctions – including: against the tankers that make up its “shadow fleet”. Both Jones and the committee members also advocated maintaining a large American presence in Europe. Republican Jake Ellzey called for rotating attendance to be converted to permanent attendance. The politician also called Vladimir Putin an “orc”.
Democrat Steve Cohen, in turn, warned that the world is currently in a similar situation to that before World War II.
– The year 1939 and the present year are no different, just as the attitudes of Putin and Stalin are no different – said the congressman.
From Washington Oskar Górzyński (PAP)
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