By Thane Grauel

WESTPORT — U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal visited the Y’s Men of Westport/Weston on Friday morning for a discussion that ranged from defense spending, geopolitics, his hopes for more bipartisanship, and America’s “moral imperative” in Ukraine.

Blumenthal said he arrived back in Connecticut at 1:30 a.m. Friday after, as a member of Armed Services Committee, he helped pass the National Defense Authorization Act.

“It’s always been done by the end of the session, despite, sometimes the failure to get a budget done,” he said at the Westport Library. “As important as the budget itself is the fact that we do it in a bipartisan way.”

Blumenthal, a Democrat, for 20 years was Connecticut’s attorney general. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, and has been re-elected twice, most recently in November.

He said Congress is at the end of its current session and about to begin the next.

“Despite what your impression may be, I actually am very hopeful about this coming session,” he said. “There is the opportunity for bipartisan cooperation. It will have to be bipartisan, as you all know. The House will be under Republican control … if we get anything done, it’s got to be bipartisan.”

He said he’s hopeful because of progress in the last six months, mentioning legislation to benefit service members exposed to toxins on the battlefield and infrastructure funding.

“On Ukraine and on defense policy we have a lot of bipartisan cooperation,” Blumenthal said.

“Ukraine presents an opportunity and an obligation to push back on Putin’s savage, genocidal, criminal invasion of Ukraine,” he said. “I am very, very hopeful about the situation there.”

He said he’s visited Ukraine before and after the most recent invasion, and that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told him he would never leave Ukraine.

“I came away convinced not only he but Ukrainian people were in this fight to the end,” Blumenthal said.

“I came back and I said to the president, we are underestimating the Ukrainians,” Blumenthal said. “Because everybody at that point thought if Putin invades, he’ll be in Kyiv in a matter of days. And in fact our own military underestimated their will and ability to resist.”

Blumenthal said when the invasion occurred, he urged President Biden to send more arms and humanitarian assistance right away.

“We didn’t do it, but we have since then provided a lot of aid,” Blumenthal said.

Blumenthal went back to Ukraine in July.

“What I saw was in fact that commitment redoubled, and successful,” he said. “By that time, as you all know, they heroically and skillfully pushed the Russians back from Kyiv, where they were literally 20 minutes away from the capital. And they have succeeded beyond the expectations of our military, and many around the world.”

“They are committed to the last man, the last person in that defense,” he said. “They will resist all of the bombing, all of the missiles, all of the drones. I have every confidence that they will continue to fight and fight successfully in resisting the Russians. But they need our arms, and they need humanitarian assistance.”

“We need to regard the Ukraine fight as our fight because obviously if Putin is successful there he will keep going,” Blumenthal said.

He said there also is a moral component to aiding Ukraine.

Blumenthal said that on his last visit, his delegation, including U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was taken to some of the towns the Russians had taken before retreating.

“This was an experience I will never forget because what we saw was the mass graves,” Blumenthal said. “And we heard from townspeople about what they saw — women and children, hands tied behind their back. Not just a few here and there, but hundreds. And they photographs of the mass graves as they were being dug, and bodies, immediately after they were killed.”

“This is genocide,” Blumenthal said. “Those people — women and children shot in the back of the head or murdered even more brutally — were killed only because they are Ukrainians. And they’re a war crime.”

“There really is a moral imperative here …” Blumenthal said. “Being there with Lindsey, and seeing the way these people wanted to tell Americans about this experience, they wanted to tell Americans because in their view America can do the right thing.”

Thane Grauel, executive editor, grew up in Westport and has been a journalist in Fairfield County and beyond more than three decades. Reach him at editor@westportjournal.com. Learn more about us here.