GOP congressional candidate with decades-old ties to Ukraine says Biden too weak to cut Russia ‘at the knees’

ORLANDO, Fla. – Congressional candidate George Santos, R-NY, feels President Biden has essentially looked the other way while Russia attacked Ukraine because of frail leadership, but the Republican candidate with family ties to the region believes a stronger administration would cut the Kremlin out at the knees. 

"If we’re going to be honest about it, Joe Biden is a colossal failure for us, and I hate saying that because his failure is our failure, as a country. I want our country to succeed," Santos told Fox News Digital from the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando as the Russian invasion unfolded. 

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Santos said it would be "disingenuous" to claim his relatives were at stake, but ties from a previous generation give him a connection to the war-torn nation.  

"My grandfather was born in Kyiv and left in the late 20s and migrated to Belgium where he met my grandmother and then started a family," Santos said. "We don’t carry the Ukrainian last name, for a lot of people who are descendants of World War II refuges or survivors of the Holocaust, a lot of names or paperwork were changed in the name of survival."

Santos is running in New York’s 3rd Congressional District. The House district includes most of the North Shore of Long Island – from northwest Suffolk County, across northern Nassau County, and into the northeastern corner of the New York City borough of Queens – a district that was particularly devastated by the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

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"The issue hits home in a sense of, there could be people related to me in the Ukraine that I don’t know, or simply the fact of the human cost that this has," Santos said. "We all lived through 9/11, so we know the feeling of being attacked on the homeland, and we know what it’s like, and it’s really reminiscent of 9/11 to see missiles being flown over the capital of Ukraine and striking civilian-populated areas. So, it hurts." 

The Republican, who has long criticized "radicalized Democrats," thinks the invasion would have been avoided if American had a strong president. He told Fox News Digital that it’s not about whether a Republican or a Democrat occupied the Oval Office, as competent leadership is the key factor regardless of party. 

"We need people who lead from the front, not from behind, so I think this is just a very good example of what weak leadership in the White House signals to the world," Santos said. "It signals we’re vulnerable, weak, and we’re not really going to do what we’re supposed to do." 

BIDEN SAYS 'NO-ONE EXPECTED SANCTIONS TO PREVENT ANYTHING FROM HAPPENING,' DESPITE PRIOR WHITE HOUSE CLAIMS

On Thursday, Biden said that "no one expected" sanctions imposed on Russia in response to its incursions into Ukraine to "prevent anything from happening" – an apparent contradiction from prior White House messaging that emphasized the value of deterrence. After the president backpedaled, Santos blasted Biden’s messaging as an example of weakness. 

"It sends a signal to Russia, we’re pulling back sanctions … If you’re not going to enforce your sanctions, if you’re not going to stand by them, to not only remove them from the SWIFT [banking] system," Santos said. 

"They need to remove them from the international banking community altogether," he continued. "Cut them at the knees, cut their supply to oil, cut the pipeline. Sanction the pipeline, stop it. Don’t make it operational. It’s not operational yet. Sit down with Germany and say, ‘We need to make them understand that they are going to have severe consequences for their actions,' but instead we’re giving them a pat on the shoulder." 

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Santos said the Ukraine invasion makes him think what Americans could have done to avoid the carnage.

"It leaves us with this really bad taste in the mouth," Santos said. "All I say is, let’s pray for Ukraine … and they need the prayers. I know that it wasn’t easy for my grandfather’s family, and they migrated from there because it was tough." 

Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser and Adam Shaw contributed to this report.