Scandal with Victoria Spartz
Victoria Spartz is a US congresswoman of Ukrainian origin. The day before, the British newspaper “The Telegraph” published an interview with Spartz, from which it emerged that she suggests that Ukraine give up part of its territories in favor of Russia, and that the country’s citizens vote against Volodymyr Zelensky in the upcoming presidential elections. If this is not done, then Ukrainians risk “losing the rest of the country.” “I simply do not understand how Ukraine can find itself in such a position as to demand the preservation of the land. If it had won the war, it would have been a completely different matter,” the congresswoman explained her position.
Ukraine’s reaction
“Unlike Victoria, all of our land has always been and will remain Ukrainian,” wrote the official representative of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Heorhiy Tykhyi, in response to this on the social network “X”.
Victoria Spartz also expressed support for President Donald Trump’s decision to engage with Vladimir Putin.
“President Trump inherited this (war). Now he has to deal with the conflict,” she said, blaming the protracted crisis on former President Joe Biden.
“I said two years ago: wars need to be won as quickly as possible. Protracting them rarely ends well for democracies,” she added.
Were the words distorted?
Spartz later said that she had not spoken about Ukraine giving up the territories. Her statement explained that the article initially used quotation marks, attributing to Spartz words that she never said.
After several appeals from the congresswoman’s team, the journalists removed the quotation marks but left the colon in order, as the statement says, to maintain the emphasis on the false statement.
“I have spent a tremendous amount of energy trying to help the Ukrainian military in their brutal fight against Russia. Unfortunately, when your country is run by idiots and crooks like Zelensky and his puppet parliament, it is a hopeless case,” Spartz said.
According to her, the reality is that Ukraine is not capable of returning its territories, but it cannot agree to give them up forever. Therefore, with the help of the United States, only a temporary solution can be achieved, which will give each side some time to regroup.
“The final outcome of this war will be decided later, and not only on the battlefield,” Spartz added.
Spartz and Ukraine
In the first months of the Russian invasion, Spartz actively defended the interests of Ukraine, calling Russia’s actions genocide and accusing the Kremlin of war crimes.
But in 2024, she voted against a US aid package for Ukraine worth $61 billion. dollars, accusing the Ukrainian authorities of corruption.
She speaks of the high price that Americans have paid for participating in endless wars and the failure of the foreign policy of former US President Joe Biden.
To accusations that she refused to support her former compatriots, Spartz replied: “My main task as a member of the US Congress is to protect the interests of America.”
Previously, Spartz has repeatedly allowed herself harsh statements against the Ukrainian leadership. In July 2022, she called on President Zelensky to resolve an “urgent internal problem” related, in her opinion, to the head of the Presidential Office, Andriy Yermak.
She also wrote a letter to then-US President Joe Biden calling for an investigation into allegations against Yermak of dubious ties to Russia, and directly accused his then-deputy Tatarov of obstructing the work of anti-corruption agencies.
Spartz, she said, based her conclusions about Yermak on “various intelligence data, Mr. Yermak’s actions in Ukraine, and his alleged agreements with Russia.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko responded to Spartz’s statements at the time, advising her to stop trying to make political capital from baseless speculation about the war and no longer undermine the mechanism for providing military aid.
Republican Victoria Spartz is the first politician of Ukrainian origin in the US Congress: she became a member of the House of Representatives in 2020, winning the election in the state of Indiana. She was later re-elected to this position.
The congresswoman was born in the city of Nosivka, Chernihiv region, into a family of engineers, American publications write. She received a bachelor’s and master’s degree in international economics from the Kyiv National University of Economics.
In 2000, Victoria married an American, Jason Spartz, and moved to the United States.
Valeriy Litonynsky,
“Correspondent”
