Sen. John McCain plans to welcome in the New Year with Marines in the Ukraine, where he’s been issuing a string of harsh criticism against Russia for trying to interfere with the U.S. election.
“Spending #NewYearsEve w/brave Ukrainian Marines at a forward combat outpost – we stand w/ them in their fight against #Putin’s aggression,” the Arizona Republican tweeted on Saturday. McCain is in Ukraine with a handful a couple of other senators, including Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Spending #NewYearsEve w/ brave #Ukrainian Marines at a forward combat outpost – we stand w/ them in their fight against #Putin‘s aggression pic.twitter.com/vkz0gdozVV
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) December 31, 2016
McCain, who chairs the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, called the Kremlin’s interference in the U.S. elections process an “act of war” on Friday. After the Obama administration announced sanctions against Russia for its cyber warfare, McCain panned the move as being long overdue and urged the administration to beef up the sanctions even more.
“When you attack a country, it’s an act of war,” McCain said on a Ukrainian TV channel, according to Reuters. “And so we have to make sure that there is a price to pay, so that we can perhaps persuade the Russians to stop these kind of attacks on our very fundamentals of democracy.”
Both the FBI and the CIA have agreed that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help President-election Trump win the White House. McCain’s committee will hold a hearing on Thursday about foreign cyberthreats to the U.S.
