Ranking Member Shaheen Speaks on Senate Floor to Urging the Senate to Pass Legislation Pressuring Putin’s War Machine

WASHINGTON - Today, U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, spoke on the Senate floor urging the Senate to advance bipartisan legislation she introduced and supported. This legislation would raise the cost of Russia's war in Ukraine by cutting off Vladimir Putin's access to the money and weapons that sustain his aggression and help fund Ukraine's resistance without burdening American taxpayers.

Senator Shaheen advocated for passage of two bipartisan bills that passed out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: the REPO Implementation Act, which would authorize the transfer of frozen Russian sovereign assets held in the United States into an interest-bearing account to fund Ukraine's defense and reconstruction without new cost to American taxpayers, and the STOP Russia and China Act, a bill that Senator Shaheen introduced with Senator Cornyn that would impose sanctions on entities and individuals in the People's Republic of China supporting Russia's defense industrial base.

You can watch her remarks here.

Key Quotes:

The Ranking Member's remarks, as delivered, are below.

Mr. President, my colleague from Virginia was very persuasive, I think, in pointing out the threat to national security that providing Nvidia's chips to China presents. Unfortunately, another area that has the potential to significantly undermine our national security is the efforts by this administration to try and negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. Now, don't get me wrong. I support ending the war in Ukraine. I think it would be in America's interests, in Europe's interests and in Ukraine's interests to do that.

But to do that in a way that undermines Ukraine for the long term, that gives Vladimir Putin access to the Ukrainian army, which is the largest army in Europe now, the most technologically advanced, and to do that in a way that would further undermine the future security of Ukraine is not in America's interests. But to continue his war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin needs two things: he needs money and he needs weapons. Russia has hundreds of billions of dollars of assets frozen overseas, some of which are subject to U.S. jurisdiction. Moscow is fighting hard to gain access to that money because it would help sustain its war effort. But as we know, money alone is not going to be enough. Sanctions have significantly degraded Russia's defense industry. And to keep building weapons, Russia relies on outside supply chains.

Much of that support now comes from Chinese entities providing the materials and technologies that keep Russia's war machine running.

So, if President Trump is really serious about ending this war, those are the pressure points to put against Vladimir Putin. The good news is the tools we need to apply that pressure already exist. The U.S. can deny Russia access to its frozen sovereign assets, and we can disrupt the supply chains that enable Russia to keep fighting.

The Foreign Relations Committee has already reported out two bills that have had strong bipartisan support that would address each of these. One is the REPO Implementation Act, known as REPO 2.0. And I think that's particularly important because important because hundreds of billions of Russian sovereign assets have been frozen, including about $5 billion here in the United States, since the start of Russia's murderous invasion of Ukraine. Now, to help Ukraine beat back the Russian invasion and to eventually rebuild, seizing and repurposing those Russian frozen funds is the right place to start. Senators Risch and Whitehouse led the Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity for Ukrainians Act, known as the REPO Act, which I supported, to allow the frozen assets to ensure reconstruction and ensure a just and lasting peace. The partnership has worked again in this session of Congress to put in place an even stronger REPO 2.0 and that bill, which passed out of committee, promotes regular scheduled transfer of sizable amounts of these underlying assets to Ukraine to build pressure until Russia ceases its war of aggression and agrees to terms compensating Ukraine for war damages.

Now, I think it's particularly important for the United States to act because our EU friends have been working on this issue. They've had significant objections. Last year, when the first REPO Act was introduced, they raised a number of concerns, but this year, our European allies are working very hard to get this done in Europe where most of the Russian assets are actually being held. There's a meeting on this today in Brussels.

The question of freezing and then seizing and deploying Russian sovereign assets is a global security question. It should be discussed in a global security environment. Now, as I said, the Foreign Relations Committee adopted REPO 2.0 by voice vote in October. I'm confident that we will pass this legislation out of this Congress at some point in the next few months, if not today.

But supporting Ukraine against Russia in this unjust war is important to America's national security. And one way to help ensure Ukraine has the support they need is to pass the REPO 2.0 act.

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