“The E.U. is a key partner, especially in our efforts to repossess Russian sovereign assets to help rebuild Ukraine,” Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told USA TODAY. “I look forward to working with the ambassador on it in the months and years ahead.”
On Monday in Washington, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski pushed House Speaker Mike Johnson to allow a vote on Ukraine aid, telling an audience at the Atlantic Council that if “Ukraine was to suffer reversals on the battlefield it will be his responsibility.”
Neliupšienė, whose work involves smoothing transatlantic relations on topics including trade, artificial intelligence, and climate change, avoided commenting on U.S. domestic politics during a 45-minute interview. But the career diplomat, who wrote her doctoral thesis on Ukraine and Belarus, made clear the moral necessity of stopping Putin.
Asked about statements by a number of Republicans likening Trump, who faces four criminal indictments, to Alexei Navalny, the Russian dissident who died last month in an Arctic Circle prison camp and was buried on Friday, Neliupšienė brushed off any comparison between the U.S. and Russia.