With the Beijing Olympics underway, reports indicate that both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have issued a joint statement as the tension between the United States and both Russia and China respectively increase. While the statement did not address Ukraine, the statement did address NATO expansion, and Florida Rep. Brian Mast (R) argued that “Putin could be testing NATO” by antagonizing Ukraine.
In the joint statement, Jinping declared his support for Russia to “oppose further enlargement of NATO.” The support comes after President Joe Biden (D) has declared that American troops are ready in the event that Russia launches an effort to overtake Ukraine.
In speaking to The Floridian last Friday, Rep. Mast slammed Putin, arguing that Putin’s goal with Russia is “his ideas of grandeur about a renaissance of the former USSR.”
Citing that he has been a “tactician,” the Florida Republican expressed that he has “calculated” several countries in order to benefit from them.
In turn, “what he’s doing right now is he is able to test the salt of NATO across the board by doing nothing other than moving his own military around his own country, and just by moving his own military – not spending any other resources than that – he’s able to see that… those chief NATO allies such as Turkey and Germany, they’re already backing down because they get all of their natural gas from Russia,” Mast detailed.
Over the weekend, reports further informed that airborne infantry troops had arrived in Poland as Ukraine prepares for an attempted takeover.
President Biden ordered that 1,7000 troops be deployed to assist Ukraine.
While President Biden remains committed to helping Ukraine, he has received scrutiny from Republicans over his handling of the situation.
Mast has been a vocal critic of the President, most recently calling on the Biden Administration to provide funding for water conservation.
