NC's Sen. Thom Tillis: Putin is 'the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime'

Danielle Battaglia, McClatchy Washington Bureau on Feb 20, 2025

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WASHINGTON — Sen. Thom Tillis took to the Senate floor Thursday afternoon and denounced Russian President Vladimir Putin while alluding to comments by President Donald Trump that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is “a dictator” and that Zelenskyy’s actions have “led Millions unnecessarily” to die.

Trump’s comments were made on his social media account, where he railed against the monetary aid the United States has provided Ukraine while President Joe Biden was in office. His comments came just hours after Zelenskyy criticized the president for repeating Russian misinformation.

“I’m a Republican,” Tillis said. “I support President Trump and I believe that most of his policies on national security are right. I believe things are pretty good. But what I’m telling you, whoever believes that there is any space for Vladimir Putin and the future of a stable globe, better go to Ukraine, they better go to Europe, they better invest the time to understand that this man is a cancer and the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.”

In recent weeks, Tillis has faced a slew of headlines about how he has fallen in line with Trump over Trump’s Cabinet nominations after facing threats of a primary challenge and over his safety. The Senate has largely focused on nominations, not policy, since Trump took office.

Monday will mark the third anniversary since Russia invaded Ukraine.

From the beginning Tillis has been a central figure in advocating to protect the Ukrainian people and provide aid. And he’s been an outspoken critic of Putin, often labeling him “a murderer.”

He told McClatchy Thursday afternoon that when then-Rep. Madison Cawthorn, a North Carolina Republican, called Zelenskyy “a thug,” that was “what quite honestly motivated me to try and support somebody in a primary.” Cawthorn lost his primary election.

Tillis is co-chair of the Senate NATO Observer Group with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire. Shaheen and Tillis returned Monday from a trip to Kyiv, Ukraine, where they saw the devastation from the war, firsthand. They both spoke Thursday afternoon about what they witnessed.

“(Putin) decides to allow, under orders, Russian military to go into a community of about 200,000 people — that’s roughly the size of the community I live in in North Carolina, just north of Charlotte,” Tillis said. “Imagine what they’re doing: They’re going through the city, and indiscriminately, when somebody walks past them, shooting them, sometimes with 50-caliber weapons and tank armor, murdering them, stacking them up in mass graves. I went to the site.”

Tillis stood in front of a poster board with a photo of one of the graves to solidify his message.

His voice cracked as he spoke.

He later told McClatchy he was getting emotional talking about what he saw there.

“I mean, you go to Bucha,” Tillis said, “and you see a community that is about the size of your home, you just internalize in your mind, seeing that happen to the person that rides through your neighborhood getting shot.”

It wasn’t the only gruesome photo shown Thursday. Shaheen stood before a photo of a dead woman’s hand. Investigators were able to identify her through her manicurist who recognized her work on her fingernails.

“This is how (Putin’s) trying to win the war, because he can’t win the hearts and minds of the Ukrainian people,” Tillis said on the floor. “He’s destroyed the hopes, the dreams of anybody that’s lived in the Soviet era and he wants that to reemerge and he’s willing to do anything, including terrorizing innocent civilians to break their will.”

Tillis “thanked God” that the Ukrainians are “brave people.”

“This made them go on to a battlefield and live in trenches 24 hours a day, repulsing the Russian invasion,” Tillis said. “There is no moral person on this planet who can consider Putin to have a legitimate reason to effect this sort of carnage and I saw it first hand.

“And I will never be able to forget it.”

He added that people worldwide will never be able to forget what Putin caused.

“He’s got to be held accountable,” Shaheen said on the floor. “We can not let him get away with this.”

She added that Ukraine will need further financial support and she’s confident if another bill came to the floor to help, it would pass with bipartisan support.

Tillis told McClatchy he’s not concerned about the United States continuing to aid Ukraine, but said it’s up to lawmakers to continue explaining why it’s needed.

Tillis said he has not spoken to Trump since Trump made his post, but he has spoken to people around him.

“I just respectfully, I don’t think there’s any scenario where you could convince me Putin is anything less than a despot and a murderer,” Tillis said.

And he’s worried that pro-Putin rhetoric could start making people more sympathetic to him.

“That’s why it’s on all of us to say who he is,” Tillis told McClatchy. “You can be sympathetic to him, if you want to be, as long as you know he knew every single day what the body count was in Bucha. And if you’re telling me that, you can be sympathetic to a mass murderer, then I want to hear your rationalizations. I can’t be.”