The Honorable Lindsey O. Graham
Senior United States Senator for South Carolina
United States Senate
211 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
BY FAX: +1 202 224 3808
December 7, 2023
Re: CONTINUED CONGRESSIONAL SUPPORT FOR FREE UKRAINE
SECOND LETTER
Dear Senator Graham:
I write further to my letter of December 4, 2023 and I want to thank you and your colleagues for considering the argumentation I made in that letter in support for continued Congressional financial support for free Ukraine. Along with all Ukrainians and the rest of the Free World, I waited up last night for news of the Senate’s vote not to pass the relevant appropriations bill at this time, which in draft provides for financial support for all of the United States’ staunch allies, Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. I respect the vote of you and your colleagues, Republican, Democrat and Independent, in the voting choices you made in balancing their various domestic and foreign policy interests of the United States and I want to thank you for your time and effort in considering the difficult and important issues involved and in reaching the decision to vote that you did.
I now feel it appropriate to write again, not only to express my views but to express the views of the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians with whom I have the privilege honor and good fortune to serve as volunteers committed to the cause of preservation of the Free World, and also on behalf of my fellow countrymen of the United Kingdom and on behalf of the greater majority of all European citizens committed to the principles of democracy, free markets, rule of law and international law. I know that these are values universally shared by us all, including you and all your colleagues in the Senate, irrespective of political affiliation. These are the values that bind all citizens of the Free World together as one and that have formed the backbone of the transatlantic Alliance and the principles of common defense, security and intelligence cooperation throughout the English-speaking peoples and beyond. These are the values that my family and yours fought for in the twentieth century’s World Wars and that continue to resonate as fundamental principles of human decency amongst all civilized nations.
I fully acknowledge the position of the Republican caucus in the Senate to the effect that enhanced domestic border protections on the United States’ southern border are essential to uphold immigration rules and regulations, assist in the reduction of serious crime and maintain the integrity of American territory and its legal system. These are all laudable goals, to be sure. It is not for me, as a person who not a citizen of the United States, to comment upon these domestic security policy priorities but I understand the importance of the issues involved and I respect your judgment as an elected representative of the people of South Carolina in the United States Senate in using your vote on the Senate floor, along with those of your colleagues within the Republican Party, to promote fundamental domestic policy interests of the United States that you rightly perceive to be important.
Nonetheless I wish in this letter to emphasize the anxiety amongst the entirety of the Ukrainian population, and the whole of the Free World, that the current delays in the United States Senate in approving funding for continued military and civilian support for Ukraine is generating. There is a real concern within Ukraine and amongst your country’s principal allies that continued delay in this regard grants sustenance to the resolve of the murderous tyrannical neo-communist regime of Vladimir Putin, the worst global tyrant in modern times, to continue his barbaric attacks upon sovereign Ukrainian territory and thereby place the free nations of Eastern Europe under threat and to undermine the integrity of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an institution that has served the United States, Europe and the world admirably since its inception in 1949.
The figures are startling. Every day dozens of Ukrainian soldiers in a standing army of over 700,000 are dying protecting the current front line from a Russian onslaught that seeks to occupy key strategic positions within the Ukrainian infrastructure so as to ever further enlarge the Russian stranglehold on occupied Ukraine. In particular the town of Avdiivka, a suburb of occupied Donetsk held by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the most atrocious of wintery conditions and constantly blitzed by the Russian Armed Forces on three sides, requires ongoing support and assistance. The valiant heroes of the Ukrainian Armed Forces who protect Avdiivka are kept persevering in their daily toll of death, injury and destruction by the knowledge that Ukraine has the moral financial military political and legal backing of the United States and her principal allies. Therefore the effect upon morale amongst both Ukrainian military personnel and Ukrainian civilians, in consequence of the vote that took place in the Senate yesterday, was significant.
I am confident that you and your colleagues in the Senate are working conscientiously to overcome party differences and to find a compromise in which domestic security policy concerns relating to the United States’ southern border are respected at the same time as essential aid packages for the United States’ allies Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan are passed. I still truly believe in bipartisanship when such fundamental global interests are at stake, notwithstanding the party political divide that caused the vote yesterday in the Senate not to pass. I am sure that you will work hard to negotiate over the coming days with a view to agreeing with your colleagues in the Democratic Party a package that both supports the United States’ foreign policy interests and pays proper regard to domestic security priorities which we all understand are of importance to the United States.
The people of the Free World are looking to you and your colleagues for leadership, support, inspiration and guidance. The leaders of the unfree world relish every hesitation, every party-political division, every misstep, and will not hesitate to take advantage of any appearance of weakness in the admirable U.S. constitutional system based upon liberty, democracy and the rule of law.
Ultimately I believe that this conflict will be resolved only with admission of Ukraine into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, because only then will the Russian government in its current color understand that perpetuating the conflict with Ukraine will lead to its utter destructions. This is the unfortunate logic of contemporary Russian politics and I feel certain that you understand everything that the United States, with her might army and her powerful industry, has to do to protect the international legal order and as the Leader of the Free World.
God bless you and your colleagues in your hard and diligent work over the coming days, and for you continued support for the people of Ukraine and for the Free World.
Sincerely yours,
Dr. Matthew T. Parish, Esq.
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