Marco Rubio warns that Vladimir Putin isn’t stopping in Ukraine anytime soon

Sen. Marco Rubio on Tuesday repeated warnings about the situation in Ukraine, saying he expects Russian forces to continue moving into the country.

Rubio, appearing on Fox and Friends, said Russia had no intention of stopping with the two breakaway republics currently subject to Russian incursion, but intended instead to press on to Kyiv.

Rubio admitted he didn’t listen to or read the entire Vladimir Putin speech on Tuesday, but he got the gist.

“I read the English translation of the speech,” Rubio said. “It was long, so I took excerpts. I’m not going to read that whole thing, he went through these long, ridiculous history lessons.”

What was clearer than the history was the present tense.

“He’s not going to stop with these two little areas along the border,” Rubio said, referring to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of the country that seek to break away from Kyiv.

“They claim those. They’re going to move on those. And when they move on those, if Kyiv doesn’t give it up, they’re going to say ‘that violates our mutual defense agreement’ and they are going to go to war,” Rubio said. “That’s what he’s going to do.”

Rubio blasted President Joe Biden as well, saying that Putin perceives Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as “conventional politicians.”

“He understands conventional American politics. He’s been an observer of it for a long time,” Rubio said, adding that Putin may have had a “different opinion when Donald Trump was in office because he’s not a conventional politician.”

“People forget, our Presidents come and go,” Rubio said. “Putin’s been there pretty consistently for over 20 years. So no, I don’t think he’s thinking about or worried about Joe Biden with the moves he makes.”

Rubio has suggested that Moscow seeks a potential “New World Order” and has described the situation as the most dangerous since the end of the Cold War with the former Soviet Union. There is little from the White House that seems to reassure him the executive branch recognizes the challenges in play.

Rubio urged America to have a plan in place to recognize a “legitimate” Ukrainian government as Russia moves in, urging that “we need to make this as long, as painful, and as costly for Putin as anything possible. Another Vietnam for him, another Afghanistan.”

The Senator went on CBS News on Wednesday as well, and he made many of the same points.

“I think he takes the entire east of the country,” Rubio said of Ukraine, noting that Putin could make the “same argument” to justify invading the Baltic states that were once Soviet Republics under Moscow’s thumb.

Rubio added that the Biden administration needs to understand that a “full-scale invasion” of Ukraine is happening.