At a press briefing on Thursday designating Russia and Belarus state sponsors of terrorism, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) spoke about the rise of political violence including the killing of Charlie Kirk, and the need to return abducted Ukrainian before more negotiations can begin to end the Russian-Ukrainian war.
00:00Thank you very much to both of you. Thank you as well to Senator Britt. I also, like my colleagues, I want to make very clear that there is no place for this political violence. And you think about Charlie Kirk's wife today, you think about those little babies that are never going to know their dad growing up.
00:22And I can't help but think about what's happened in Minnesota this summer. Same thing, right? A madman killing our former Speaker of the House and her husband, gunning them down in their house, attempting to kill another legislator, eight bullets through him, eight and nine bullets through his wife. That all happened in our state.
00:43And the next one, I'm going to yet another funeral on Sunday of a little 10-year-old girl named Harper, gunned down while that's, they weren't politicians, these were kids, while they were praying in mass.
00:56Fletcher's funeral was last weekend. We were all there. The manifesto was political. It was all purpose. A shooter was an all-purpose hater against every side, every which way.
01:08But that's what we're seeing right now. And it has to end. And we have to join together to condemn it.
01:15So we're here today on another atrocity, and that is these Ukrainian kids.
01:21Etched in my memory forever will be the trips that I took to Ukraine, one of them with the Center of Blumenthal, but another with Center of Portman.
01:32And the burned out apartment buildings, the mass graves, it just goes on and on and on.
01:39And now you have nearly 20,000 kids. It's one estimate. One is at 35,000, with only 1,600 returned.
01:48And if you want to know what terrorism about, it's kidnapping kids.
01:52And one of the things that we have made very clear is that this is, these kids must be returned before there's any negotiation on the war,
02:02only because you can't start having incentives for combatants in war to capture and kidnap kids.
02:09These kids, Lindsay mentioned the ones that were being trained to be part of military in Russia.
02:19You also have kids that parents, desperate, were told, well, just come to a summer camp in Russia,
02:25and it'll be a way for them to take a break. It'll be a safe place. And they never come back.
02:30You have kids that were taken either in the war zone or more likely in a situation like this when they were so young
02:39that they can't even remember their Ukrainian language or the Ukrainian culture.
02:44And the parents aren't going to be able to identify them because they were one-year-olds or two-year-olds when they were taken.
02:50And now they've been there for two years, three years. That's what's happening right now.
02:56I did a meeting with some of the families, Ukrainian families in Minnesota.
03:01And as one of the moms told me, Irina, when we met them, she's talking about the one she met, a few that came back,
03:09they didn't cry, they didn't scream, they just stared eyes wide, eyes empty.
03:15So that is why I support this bill. But it is also why Senator Grassley and I came together on our resolution.
03:22But there's something, another bill that's very complementary to this right now that we are working,
03:28and I believe will get included in the defense bill, and that is to make sure that we keep tracking,
03:35that we assist the Ukrainians in tracking these kids.
03:39And we appreciate the First Lady's involvement in writing a letter to Vladimir Putin directly about these kids.
03:46And we believe that this must be bipartisan as we go forward.
03:51But Senator Grassley and I are hopeful that this will complement this new bill,
03:56and that is that we make sure that as a nation we're continuing to track these kids
04:01so that when this war ends or even before it ends, we will know who's out there
04:06and as best as our ability where they are so they can be reunited with their families.
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