Russia Invades Ukraine. What Happens Next?

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has officially been labeled an “invasion” by the U.S. government. What happens next? So far, Germany has paused the certification process for Nord Stream 2. Additionally, the U.S. has started to impose regional sanctions in Russia. But these moves come after the invasion has already begun.

The invasion escalated when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered “peacekeeper” troops to regions of Ukraine, and also gave a lengthy speech expressing his goals for invading Ukraine. Is this the final move by Putin? Or are there further plans for a full-scale war?

Putin clearly laid out his goals for this invasion:

I would like to start by saying that the modern Ukraine was completely created by Russia, or rather, the Bolshevik, Communist Russia. This process started almost immediately after the 1917 Revolution; Lenin and his associates did it in a way, very brutal towards Russia itself – by separating, alienating parts of Russia’s own historic territories. 

Members of Congress are stepping up to try and deter a full-scale invasion. Senator James Lankford has introduced a bill that would hold Russia and any nation that aids them in an invasion, like Belarus, accountable. He joined Sekulow to discuss this legislation:

While a lot of people have been focusing on Russia, rightly so – these are Russian troops that are moving into eastern Ukraine even right now – and if they are planning to be able to move in on Kyiv from the north, that’s through Belarus. That’s Belarus facilitating it. Belarus right now is doing joint exercises with the Russians. They are preparing the way for the Russians to be able to move in. They should face the same kind of sanctions that Russia is facing, even if their troops don’t cross the border. They’re facilitating the process.

Sen. Lankford predicted how he sees this conflict playing out:

We can clearly see his intention is to be able to take over all of eastern Ukraine and to make what they have tried to assume, the fact that they’ll take this over, simply by saying, “They speak Russian, so they should be in the Russian area.” This would be like Mexico saying parts of southern Texas speaks Spanish, and so we’re just going to take those parts over. That’s not how it works, these are internationally recognized borders. And they can’t just move into to be able to do that. Now, how far he continues to go — our assumption is, if the Ukrainians push back and attack, which they should obviously respond to be able to protect their country, then Russia will move into the rest of the country and say, “The Ukrainians provoked us as we’re trying to protect other Russians.”

ACLJ Senior Counsel for Global Affairs, and former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo gave his take on the current state of this conflict:

The invasion has most certainly begun. . . . These aren’t peace keeping forces. They have surrounded Ukraine and now moved actual combat assets across the boundary of Ukraine. . . . I saw some pictures of Ukrainian soldiers getting ready with Ukrainian orthodox church leaders praying for themselves in battle. . . . The work that we have to do has to continue. We should support Ukraine. . . . We should move NATO forces into the Baltic states. . . . We should sanction the metals of Russia. . . . All of those things are things we can do to diminish Vladimir Putin’s continued wealth and capacity to force his own views on people who just want to be in a different place.

Work has to continue in not only deterring this potential full-scale war by Russia, but also our work to deter any attacks on our ally Israel. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is growing around the world, and we are fighting back. Legislation was moving through Alaska, Nebraska, and Tennessee to combat this by removing their investments from any companies that support BDS. However, the states needed help with technical language to be able to enforce this legislation.

We were able to give guidance to these states in an effort to help fix these technical issues. ACLJ Senior Counsel Jeff Ballabon explained the importance of this work:

I just want to highlight why this is so important. . . . Once we became aware of this, we reached out directly to be able to bring the attention of the governors and legislators of these . . . states and made the point that a foreign country – Ireland – was considering literally making it criminal to do business with Jews who live in Judea and Samaria, who would be trying to do business with a company that is Jewish in Jerusalem, which is insane. . . . They officially made reference to state anti-BDS laws that we were involved with, and they decided to back off. So, this is clearly important, and it is . . . not in just one or two states, but literally globally.

We will continue to fight the ongoing antisemitism and the delegitimization of Israel here at home and around the world.

Today’s full Sekulow broadcast is complete with even more analysis of the Russian/Ukraine conflict and our work fighting the BDS movement. 

Watch the full broadcast below.