Team,

I recently traveled to Ukraine to meet President Zelenskyy and other leaders. You fly over to Poland and travel to a train station for a secure overnight train that takes you into Kiev for early morning arrival. No visitors are allowed to remain overnight, so in the evening after all your meetings you return to the train and roll through the night back to the Poland station.

I can report to you that the morale of Zelenskyy and his officials was very high, as was the confidence of our Kiev-based American officials in their cause. Our traveling group was bipartisan and unanimous in advocating for sending Ukraine the weapons they need — particularly tanks and longer range artillery.

I’m glad the President has released U.S. tanks, which in turn unlocked a much larger release of European armor. The Russians have staged their command centers and ammunition depots behind the HIMARS range line, so the longer range missiles are our next effort.

Our final meeting was with the Ukrainian Prosecutor General, who has the grim responsibility of gathering evidence of war crimes and atrocities and preparing prosecutions of the guilty and reparations for the injured. There are tens of thousands of such claims. I believe it matters immensely to our common future to see that there is accountability and justice for Russia’s butchery within Ukraine, so we are working to assure the resources are adequate for that mission.

As I said in Kiev, the conduct of the Ukrainians makes me proud to be a human being. Their fight is our fight, one they are undertaking at terrible cost.

Sheldon Whitehouse