To watch the interview, click here or the image above.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) joined Bloomberg TV’s Balance of Power today to discuss her recent trip to Eastern Europe, how the U.S. can continue to support Ukraine and penalize Russia, and how President Biden’s energy policies have failed the American people.

HIGHLIGHTS:

ON THE FEELING ON THE GROUND IN POLAND, GERMANY: “When we stepped foot in Germany to begin with, you could feel the intensity of which this Ukrainian situation is being felt all over Europe and with our NATO allies…they promised their sons and daughters that you would never see something like this again. And here we have an immoral and unjust war. So the military aspect of this is enormous. The needs in Ukraine are huge, both on the military, humanitarian side. We did go down and visit with some refugees. Very stark and startling and very, very sad.”


ON NEXT STEPS IN SUPPORTING UKRAINE, PENALIZING RUSSIA: “Number one, we should be supplying them with more military weapons. They're asking for more anti-aircraft, missiles. They're asking for helicopter stingers, javelins. You know, we did provide an aid package and a lot of those things are moving. The problem is it's every day counts. We can't wait a week. We can't wait 10 days. They need all of these reinforcements immediately. And so the urgency of now I think was very, very apparent. The issues that the Poles are dealing with are tremendous. They have stepped up to the plate like I've never seen with humanitarian and military assistance. So we have to support them through our NATO partnership…but the urgency and more is where we came away from this…I think we have to look at other ways to pressure the oligarchs. These are Putin's friends. They are also tied to the businesses, the Western businesses. So, we need to further impose those and make them more stringent. A lot of them have properties in New York or in this country. Let's look at really ratcheting down the pressure on them because I think internal pressure in Russia is one thing that we need to try to exert as much influence as we can and sanctions do that.”

ON STRENGTH OF THE NATO ALLIANCE: “The NATO alliance…has coalesced together like nobody really expected. A couple things: seeing that Putin is ruthless and will attack hospitals and children that from a frame of reference, moral frame of reference, really unites. But also the thing I was talking about, if Putin is successful here, he's going to be going into the Baltic States or Moldova or Poland or other areas that border that Ukrainian nation. So, that's why it's important to not just arm our Ukrainian friends with the ability to stay in the fight, we have to arm them with enough to win this fight. And NATO is very much…aligned with those kind of directives and those kinds of objectives.”

ON RISING GAS PRICES IN THE BIDEN ECONOMY: “We see gas up over $4.09 in West Virginia, over $4.24 nationwide just today. So it's going up. But there were a lot of things that happened in the run up to this war that the Biden administration has not let us drill on federal lands, has stopped some of the permitting that's going on. I mean, we need to really unleash our energy innovation. We can do this in a much cleaner way than almost anybody else. And so why wouldn't we be become more self-reliant? And what I think that means is more supply, and domestic supply –  natural gas, oil, coal, nuclear, renewables, all of that.”

# # #