Ernst Statement on Getting Banned from Russia
It’s “a pretty clear sign that I’m doing something right,” the Iowa senator said. “Putin can put my name at the top of his list.”
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the first female combat veteran to serve in the U.S. Senate, released the following statement after officially getting banned from traveling to Russia:
“I consider getting sanctioned by an autocratic, murderous thug a pretty clear sign that I’m doing something right,” said Senator Joni Ernst. “Vladimir Putin’s lawless, unprovoked, and horrific war on Ukraine will be remembered by history as a despicable and unforgiving act. Putin can put my name at the top of his list.”
Ernst has a personal connection to Ukraine, in that she lived there in 1989 as part of an agriculture exchange program as a student at Iowa State University when the country was still a part of the Soviet Union. Ernst led a bipartisan Senate delegation visit to Poland and Germany and met with military leaders, Ukrainian civil society, refugees and NGOs, and U.S. State Department personnel. She has long pressed the Biden administration to immediately provide Ukraine with the lethal aid they urgently need to win the war and has called Biden’s foreign policy a “doctrine of appeasement” that has emboldened America’s enemies.
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