WASHINGTON, D.C., USA — Rep. Victoria Spartz, who represents Indiana's 5th Congressional District, was born in Ukraine and has passionate thoughts about the Russian invasion of her home country.
Spartz did not mince words when she described what she feels is happening in Ukraine.
"This is not a war, this is genocide of the Ukrainian people by a crazy man who cannot get over the Ukrainian people do not want socialism, Soviet Union, communism," Spartz said. "They want to be with the United States of America. They want to be free people. They want to be with the West and he cannot get over that."
Spartz said family members in Ukraine have been sharing with her what is happening there.
"So they’re bombing, they couldn’t take the city. They’re bombing civilians nonstop, day and night, the whole city. She has a daughter. She call her daughter – she lives in little village by Chernihiv – and her daughter told her they came into village with heavy machine gun. Kill almost every person in that village, and whatever people were left, women and children, they force them to walk in front of the tanks as a human shield because they cannot take that city," Spartz said. "They killing women and children. They doing the bombs, vacuum bombs, car bombs. I mean, they are using illegal weapons. They now have special groups that trying to kill women and children."
Spartz said people are left fighting with sticks against Russian soldiers carrying guns. She said President Joe Biden needs to do more to get weapons to Ukraine.
In terms of military assistance, the U.S. substantially increased the amount to Ukraine to nearly $1 billion in the past year. That includes $200 million assigned in December and $350 million last week. Since 2014, U.S. military assistance to Ukraine has totaled more than $2.7 billion.
Spartz warns the U.S. and President Biden need to get more serious about sanctions against Russia.
"If we don’t stop him there, he is not going to stop. He is going to go further. And then, we’ll have to send our children to die to fight this. So, I think we have an obligation and duty to save this world, help Ukrainian people to survive," Spartz said.
Russian forces escalated their attacks on populated urban areas Tuesday, bombarding the central square in Ukraine’s second-largest city and Kyiv’s main TV tower.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office also reported a powerful missile attack on the site of the Babi Yar Holocaust memorial, near the tower. A spokesman for the memorial said a Jewish cemetery at the site, where Nazi occupiers killed more than 33,000 Jews over two days in 1941, was damaged, but the extent would not be clear until daylight.
Overall death tolls from the fighting remained unclear, but a senior Western intelligence official estimated that more than 5,000 Russian soldiers had been captured or killed. Ukraine gave no overall estimate of troop losses.
Britain’s Defense Ministry said it had seen an increase in Russian air and artillery strikes on populated urban areas over the past two days. It also said three cities — Kharkiv, Kherson and Mariupol — were encircled by Russian forces.
Many military experts worry that Russia may be shifting tactics. Moscow’s strategy in Chechnya and Syria was to use artillery and air bombardments to pulverize cities and crush fighters’ resolve.
The value of the Russian ruble plunged to a record low Monday after Western countries moved to block some Russian banks from a key global payments system. Also Monday, the U.S. Treasury Department announced more sanctions against Russia’s central bank.
Various companies have announced plans to scale back or pull out from ventures in Russia, or to suspend operations in Ukraine due to the conflict. The Russian central bank has also raised its key rate to 20% from 9.5% in a desperate attempt to shore up the plummeting ruble and prevent a run on banks. Russia's stock market remained closed on Tuesday.