Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Need To Move Quickly To Pass Legislation To Revoke Permanent Normal Trade Relations With Russia

Washington, D.C. –  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor regarding the need to pass legislation to revoke permanent normal trade relations with Russia and to hold Putin accountable for his illegal war in Ukraine. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

This week, members from both parties must work together to take the next step in holding Putin accountable by passing PNTR legislation approved overwhelmingly by the House of Representatives. I believe it passed something like 424-8, both Speaker Pelosi and Leader McCarthy in support of the legislation.

The clearest message we can send Vladimir Putin is that we are united in passing PNTR that will land a heavy blow against Putin’s economy. This PNTR revocation was approved by the House, supported by the President, and would help make Putin pay a heavy price.

Time is of the essence to pass PNTR, because Putin’s savagery against the Ukrainian people grows day by day, and because the president is meeting with the G-7 ministers in Europe. On Monday morning, Putin’s savagery showed itself once again: missiles obliterated a ten-story shopping mall in the city of Kyiv, leaving an untold number of people dead in one of the largest attacks on the city to date.

In the south, the residents of the once-thriving port city of Mariupol fight on in what has become the most intense urban warfare that Europe has seen since WWII, and the most brutal at Putin’s hands.

In the words of one Mariupol resident:

“The dead lie in the entrances, on the balconies, in the yards. And you’re not scared one bit…Because the biggest fear is night shelling. Do you know what night shelling looks like? Like death.”

That’s a person living in Mariupol, and these words should ring in all of our ears.

It must be unacceptable for any nation so willing to slaughter civilians as Russia to have normal trade relations with the United States and the rest of the world, so the Senate must act quickly to pass the PNTR.

Every drop of Ukrainian blood demands a response, and the United States has an obligation to stand behind this young democracy.

Putin’s regime is wicked, and the best message we can send him is to pass this PNTR legislation with overwhelming bipartisan support.

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