Politics
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Maine’s congressional delegation disagreed with the U.S. refusing to blame Russia for its invasion of Ukraine in a series of United Nations resolutions Monday, with U.S. Sen. Susan Collins saying she was “appalled” by the votes.
President Donald Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator” last week and suggested Ukraine was to blame for the war that Russian President Vladimir Putin began by invading the neighboring country in 2022. The U.S. and Russia also held talks last week on ending the war, excluding Ukrainian representatives from the Saudi Arabia meeting.
Tension ramped up further Monday at the U.N. General Assembly when the U.S. joined Russia and North Korea in opposing resolutions that sought to make clear Russia was the aggressor in the ongoing war and demand an immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine.
“I’m appalled that the U.S. voted with North Korea, Russia and other allies of Moscow,” Collins, the Maine delegation’s lone Republican, said. “We must not risk erasing the real history of how this war started: [Putin’s] unprovoked and unjustified invasion of a free, democratic Ukraine.”
Collins, a centrist defense hawk, voted to acquit Trump in his 2020 impeachment case tied to pressuring Ukraine to investigate former President Joe Biden. She then voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment case tied to the U.S. Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021.
It remains to be seen if the Republican-led Congress will oppose Trump’s moves on Ukraine and Russia. While not endorsing his “dictator” comment, Republican senators, including Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said they feel Trump’s tactics will help end the war.
Dorothy Shea, the deputy U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said Monday multiple previous U.N. resolutions condemning Russia and demanding the withdrawal troops “have failed to stop the war,” which “has now dragged on for far too long and at far too terrible a cost to the people in Ukraine and Russia and beyond.”
“What we need is a resolution marking the commitment from all U.N. member states to bring a durable end to the war,” Shea said before the vote.
Civilian and soldier casualty counts for the ongoing war have varied widely, though a research group that studies conflict data estimates about 174,000 to 420,000 people have been killed across Ukraine and Russia.
U.S. Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats and who serves on the Senate’s intelligence and armed services committees, worries the U.S. “is sending the message that our allies can’t trust us.” King also said China may notice Trump’s stances on Ukraine and feel the U.S. will not defend Taiwan against incursions.
“Our allies are watching our strategic retreat, and our opportunistic adversaries are watching as well,” King said, calling the U.N. vote “shameful, to put it mildly.”
U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a progressive from Maine’s 1st District, said Trump is betraying Ukraine and European allies, adding that he is “bending the knee to a Russian dictator, giving him everything he wants and getting nothing in return” for Ukraine and the U.S.
U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a centrist Democrat in the pro-Trump 2nd District, said the Trump administration’s decision to side with Russia and North Korea in not blaming Russia for the war is “not in America’s national interest.”
“It’s dishonest and undermines the United States’ credibility in response to similar acts of aggression on the world stage in the future,” Golden said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
