A Polish-born member of Congress said Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin will never win his war against Ukraine.
“Ukrainians are going to keep on fighting, but there’s no way that Russia can hold and occupy the territory that it’s capturing,” U.S. Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J., told Fox News. “There’s absolutely no way that Putin wins this in the sense of controlling and occupying and governing a Ukraine in which every single man, woman and child is against him.”
Thursday marked the eighth day since Russian forces began a full-scale war against Ukraine.
Since the invasion began, anti-war protests have broken out across Russia.
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“Thousands of Russians have been incredibly brave and going out to the streets to demonstrate, and many of them have been arrested,” Malinowski said. “This is a tragedy for the Russian people, almost as much as it’s a tragedy for the Ukrainian people.”
Malinowski, 56, who previously served in the Obama administration as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, called the economic sanctions the U.S. levied against Russia “incredibly powerful.”
“Major Russian companies like Gazprom have lost practically all of their value,” said Malinowski, who was born in Poland and moved to the U.S. at age 6 with his family. “Gazprom is the number one energy company in Russia, was worth over $65 billion a few days ago. It is worth only $250 million today.”
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Russian advances inside Ukraine appeared to pick up steam Thursday after Russian forces claimed to take control of the southern Ukraine city of Kherson, which close to 300,000 people call home.
Malinowski, who serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Fox News he doesn’t believe Putin has the support of ordinary Russians for his war against Ukraine.
“Most Russians have absolutely no interest in going to war with Ukraine, killing Ukrainians or Putin’s fantasies of expanding the Russian Empire,” he said.
More than one million people have fled Ukraine since the fighting began, according to recent United Nations figures. Malinowski, whose family fled the Nazis during World War II, said America should consider welcoming some Ukrainian refugees.
“We should absolutely be willing to take at least some small share of people who are leaving Ukraine,” he said. “I think we would very much benefit from any contributions they would make to America.”
