WASHINGTON — Sen. Charles Schumer yesterday urged President Obama to “stand up” to Russian President Vladmir Putin for granting amnesty to US security leaker Edward Snowden.
“I would urge the president to cancel the bilateral summit he’s having with Putin,” Schumer (D-NY) said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “President Putin’s behaving like a schoolyard bully, and in my experience, I’ve learned that unless you stand up to that bully, they ask for more and more and more.”
“He’s always going out of his way, President Putin is, to poke us in the eye, whether it’s in Iran, in Syria and now with Snowden,” said Schumer, adding that the US-Russian relationship is “more poisonous than at any time since the Cold War because of all of this.”
As part of this get-tough strategy, Schumer said Obama shouldn’t just cancel his one-on-one meeting scheduled with Putin, but should also press US allies to move the upcoming G20 summit out of St. Petersburg.
Schumer’s tough talk was cheered from across the aisle.
“For once . . . I agree with Chuck Schumer on that,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said on the same show. “President Putin thinks he can get away with pushing around this administration because the administration has given appeasement feelings that they can do this.”