NOTICIAS

Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined Hannity to discuss the latest on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. See below for highlights and watch the full interview here. 

On the costs Russia has incurred in invading Ukraine:  

“I think [the best way to stop aggressors like Russia] is to inflict [the] maximum amount of punishment possible…. Because you’ve got to stop them and … because other [authoritarian leaders] that are tempted to become like them would take that [punishment] into account before making the decision [to act.]

“Putin has done this because he has calculated, I think wrongly, that he would get some sanctions, but they wouldn’t be overwhelming. He thought Zelenskyy would abandon Kyiv as soon as the first Russian landed in Ukraine. He thought the Ukrainian government would collapse and he would be able to place a puppet government in [its place]. Now what he finds himself in is a very delicate situation, actually almost an impossible one. 

“[Putin] is either going to have a very costly military victory, followed by a painful costly occupation, or he is going to get bogged down in a quagmire. Meanwhile, his economy in Russia is headed towards Third World status. A week from today, people will be shocked at what shambles that economy is in. 

“The last problem [Putin] has right now is, today especially, we’ve seen an enormous increase in the awareness of Russians that they’re in a full-scale war, and that thousands of Russians are dying.”

On the Russian convoy headed toward Kyiv:
 
“For the first time, we are starting to hear and see from Ukrainian reports and reporters and people on the ground some real degradation in [the Russians’] readiness. You can’t have people sitting out in trucks in a traffic jam for three days and it not begin to degrade their readiness. 
 
“The Ukrainians know where [the Russian vehicles] are. Obviously we are not privy to their plans on what they intend to do about it. But they’ve been pretty good at picking these things off…. One of the reasons that convoy is stuck on the road is because the Ukrainians have targeted and taken out some of the first trucks in the convoy. It is a two-lane highway in some spots and if a couple of trucks go down, then everyone behind them is stuck…. The Ukrainians … have been doing some real damage to these guys. Putin’s got some real problems on his hands over there.”
 
On the possibility of cutting off Russian oil imports to the United States:
 
“The Biden Administration would say…, ‘It’s going to increase fuel prices in America.’ But it can be done in a way that it doesn’t [do that]. [Russian supplies make up] a little bit under five percent of the oil we buy in this country. We could easily replace that with our own domestic capability. Canada buys virtually no oil from Russia at all, and they’re just north of us. So if we wanted to [cut off Russian oil imports], we could. 
 
“We are producing 1.2 million barrels a day less than we did under Donald Trump in 2018, 2019. We could get back to that if [the Democrats] walked away from this crazy Green New Scam, or Green New Deal as they call it, that has waged war on fossil fuels, and allowed us to explore more. There are fields ready to go in places like Alaska and Texas. But this administration has cracked down on [them]. 
 
“We could easily replace the Russian supply with our domestic supply if this administration did it, but of course, we would have to go with the Squad and all the other radicals there.”