Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) slammed Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “cancer,” not long after President Trump stepped up his criticism of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.
“Look, I’m a Republican, I support President Trump, and I believe that most of his policies on national security are right. I believe his instincts are pretty good,” Tillis said Thursday on the Senate floor while warning of global turmoil.
“But what I’m telling you, whoever believes that there is any space for Vladimir Putin in 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,” he added.
Trump has sought to pin blame on Zelensky in recent days for the ongoing war, which began in earnest following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“Look, Zelensky was fighting a much bigger entity, much bigger, much more powerful. He shouldn’t have done that, because we could have made a deal and it would have been a deal that would have been — it would have been a nothing deal,” Trump told Sean Hannity in a January interview.
“I could have made that deal so easily. And Zelensky decided that, ‘I want to fight.’”
However, Tillis, who’s running for reelection in 2026, rebuked all claims of Zelensky’s wrongdoing and placed the blame squarely on Russia. He argued that the U.S. should fight the expansion of Russia’s land grabs at every turn.
“It will be a cancer that spreads into the South China Sea, into Taiwan, and metastasized across the globe,” the North Carolina lawmaker said of Putin’s efforts to enlarge his territory.
“So ladies and gentlemen, when I tell you that Vladimir Putin is a liar, a murderer, and a man responsible for ordering the systematic torture, kidnapping, and rape of innocent civilians, believe me, because the evidence is mile high.”
