“My friends,” Gary Bauer writes in his Feb. 24 “End of Day” commentary, “I want to be very clear about this: The Biden Administration has failed in the number one thing they said they were trying to do, which was to deter this attack.”
“We’re dealing with Biden’s second foreign policy debacle,” Federalist editor Mollie Hemingway similarly commented Friday, “and we’re only just over one year into this presidency.”
At a White House press conference, on Thursday, Biden announced a new round of sanctions that target four large Russian banks and also target the country’s powerful oligarchs, a list that does not include Putin himself.
“[Vladimir] Putin is the aggressor. Putin chose this war,” Biden said. “And now he and his country will bear the consequences.”
Elsewhere in the press conference, in a question-and-answer time with reporters, Biden summarized what is happening in Ukraine and why: Putin, the former KGB agent, is seeking to “re-establish” the former Soviet Union by conquering the sovereign country of Ukraine.
At another point in the press conference, Biden was asked by a reporter if the United States is asking China -- a Russia ally -- to “help isolate” Russia over the Ukraine invasion.
“I’m not prepared to comment on that at the moment,” the President replied.
The back story behind that brief reply became clearer Friday: The New York Times reported the Biden administration had asked China to help avert a Russia-Ukraine war. In an effort to demonstrate the urgency, the U.S. amazingly shared its intelligence about Russia’s war plans with China, intelligence that China later shared with Russia, the Times said.
That non-sensical decision left much of the public stunned Friday when the Times story hit.
In another troubling moment from the press conference, Biden pushed back on the suggestion that sanctions won’t hurt Putin and Russia as the White House claims they will.
“No one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening,” Biden said, a claim that was contradicted days earlier by Vice President Kamala Harris.
“The purpose of the sanctions,” she told the media, “has always been and continues to be deterrence.”
Back in 2019, then-candidate Joe Biden told the DNC Women’s Leadership Conference it would take a “hell of a lot of work” to make up for the “damage” Trump had done around the world as president.
“Imagine what he can do in another year,” Biden warned of then-President Trump. “Imagine what can happen in Ukraine.”
Ukrainians vow to fight Russian invasion
In current-day Ukraine, meanwhile, Russian troops claim they are advancing in the capital city of Kyiv, where the Ukrainian military is being encircled but also says it has killed and captured Russian troops in and around the city.
Those claims of heavy Russian losses have been verified by U.S. defense officials.
On Friday, AFN spoke to an American eyewitness to the fighting, Matt Herring, whose group Project Dynamo is attempting to evacuate Americans from the country. He says the Ukrainian fighters are fighting back and proving to be a "vicious fighting force" the Russians didn't expect to face.
"They are bloodying the Russians' noses a lot worse than anyone thought that they would," Herring advises. "And the weapons that we are supplying them with, the Stingers and the Javelins, are proving effective."
After handing out AK-47s to willing civilians, the Ukrainian government is now advising its people to begin making Molotov cocktails for the approaching Russian troops. A masked military instructor was demonstrating how to use the crude bombs to an audience of civilians, The New York Post reported.
"We're defending our independence and our country," President Volodymyr Zelensky, a former TV comedian, vowed in a video, "and that's how it'll be."
Reacting this week to Ukraine's bloody and tragic fight against Russia, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council said Ukraine is known for its strong Christian influence in the region.
"Ukraine is one of the countries that produces more missionaries in Europe than any other," he said. "We have many brothers and sisters in that country that are suffering and we need to be praying for them."
Bauer: Putin didn't move against Trump
In an interview with AFN, Bauer points out Putin took over the Crimea region during the Obama-Biden administration and is now invading Ukraine itself during the Biden-Harris administration.
“Under Donald Trump and Mike Pence,” Bauer says, “Putin didn’t move into any place. He was too afraid of what Trump-Pence would do.”
There are now concerns Putin’s invasion of Ukraine could set off World War III or, at the very least, create a dangerous standoff with weakened NATO countries not seen in Europe since the 1990s.
The irony of those predictions is Democrats and the media warned for four years that Donald Trump would trigger World War III, such as reaching out to Taiwan over China's objections and ordering the killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.
During his one term in office, it was also the former Republican president who publicly berated NATO members to fulfill their foot-dragging promise to spend more of their own money on tanks, rifles, and aircraft. And now the Russian army is conquering their neighbor.
"Sadly," Bauer writes in his commentary, "this is another tragic reminder that weakness, not strength, invites war."
U.S. senator warns Europe
Reacting this week to Putin's invasion, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) warned a meeting of European leaders that Putin will not stop with Ukraine.
"How can any of us," Wicker challenged the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe, "realistically believe he will stop with Ukraine?"
The Russian leader, who was repeatedly compared to Hitler by the senator, now occupies European soil in Crimea, in Donbass, in the Abkhazia region in Georgia, in the Transnistria territory of Moldova, and in South Ossetia.
Wicker, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also warned that Europe's NATO countries are not ready militarily to deter Putin.
