Members of Congress on Sunday emphasized what has become a widely held position on Capitol Hill: that the United States should respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by banning Russian oil imports, but not by imposing a no-fly zone over the country that could draw nuclear powers into war.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike took that position on a variety of Sunday morning television news programs.
“It makes no sense whatsoever to continue to buy oil from Russia that they use to fund this war and this murderous campaign that they’re undertaking,” Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” He added that there was support for supplying Ukraine with supplies and aircraft after the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, made that request to Congress on Saturday.
But Mr. Rubio and others said the risks of the United States imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine — as Mr. Zelensky also requested — were too great. On ABC’s “This Week,” Mr. Rubio said that move would draw the United States directly into the war between Ukraine and Russia, starting a conflict between two nuclear-armed powers.
New York Times