Exclusive: Rep. Kinzinger on Israel and Russia

The following quotes are selected excerpts from an interview with Rep. Adam Kinzinger (IL-16) on the July 25, 2014 Secure Freedom Radio program. Congressman Kinzinger serves on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The full interview may be listened to here.

On Israel:

For many years, there’s been this attempt to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians. In reality, what’s happening is that Israel said, “Look, we’re ready to admit that Palestinians have a right to a state. We’re ready to say that. But the Palestinians have to say, and specifically Hamas has to say, that Israel has a right to exist.” And that doesn’t happen because what we really know is happening at the end of the day is they’re trying for the destruction of Israel.

On Vladimir Putin:

People that are hungry for power can’t be satiated by getting things. It’s just not possible. If you look at what Vladimir Putin’s done: he moved into Georgia—I’ve been to Georgia twice, and I’ve been up to the occupied areas, and seen the Russian troops up there—and he did it under the pretense of coming in to support ethnic Russian populations…[Putin] said he wanted regime change, but the strong President Bush had moved warships into the region, and he backed out and took just the disputed zones. Then—not to mention all the soft power things he’s doing to Eastern Europe, which is cutting off energy and making it clear they rely on him—he moved into the Crimea, now into Eastern Ukraine. And the question is what’s next?

On European ties to Russia:

I think we have to call on Europe to do their part. The sad part about this is when you have a country that doesn’t necessarily have a moral-center focus like I think that the United States does—even with President Obama at the helm, the American people have this kind of focus. The French, for instance, are more interested in making their billion and a half dollars than they are in denying Russia the warships that they claim they need to control the Black Sea.