NATO provocations and EU sanctions have raised tensions in Europe to unprecedented levels in recent months amid media-fuelled claims by the US and its allies that Moscow is ‘preparing to invade’ its neighbour. Russia has dismissed the allegations, invited NATO to provide evidence of their accusations and accused Washington and NATO of destabilising the situation in the Eastern European country.

‘The US establishment is more concerned about the situation on the border between Russia and Ukraine than what’s happening on the southern US border with Mexico‘, Republican congressman Matt Gaetz has suggested.

‘Only in the beltway bubble of Washington, DC do people seem to care more about the border between Russia and Ukraine than the border between the United States and Mexico.

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What they’re talking about, massive movements of troops is precisely the provocation that Putin is looking for as a pretext to engage in military action,’ Gaetz said, speaking to former Trump White House aide Steve Bannon on Real America’s Voice, a conservative news outlet.

‘And by the way, if he does, why do we give a damn? If Vladimir Putin goes and gets ethnic Russians who speak Russian in eastern Ukraine to reunite with Russia, you’re telling me that that is some like cataclysmic critical event in the lives of Americans? It isn’t,’ the Florida congressman suggested.

The GOP congressman suggested that it should be up to the Europeans to care about Ukraine, and bashed NATO as an ineffective alliance.

And to sit there and pound your chests about NATO? Give me a break, NATO is a joke. As long as Turkey is in NATO and considered a NATO ally, I am not looking at NATO as a serious organization,’ Gaetz said.

‘There are two-and-a-half combat divisions in all of NATO, I think it is,’ Bannon chimed in. ‘They don’t put any money into their defence. We just got out of 20 years in Afghanistan, after 10-12 years in Iraq, $9 trillion, 10,000-12,000 dead, 50,000 combat injuries, suicides every day, PTSD. We’re out of that just over 90 days and in this town, I can’t tell you, they are so determined to go back in,’ the former Trump advisor said.

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Gaetz suggested that the US threat of new sanctions against Russia was a total joke, given the size of the Russian sovereign wealth fund.

‘And by the way, it isn’t like the Russians are holding a whole lot of US dollars anyway at this point. My suspicion is, we’ll do this dance with Putin and ultimately Biden’s weakness will be on full display,’ the congressman concluded.