Madam Speaker, Madam Vice President, our First Lady and Second Gentleman. Members of Congress and the Cabinet. Justices of the Supreme Court. My fellow Americans.
Oil prices soared and investors shifted more money into ultra-safe U.S. government bonds as Russia stepped up its war on Ukraine. The price of oil surged back above $100 a barrel after Russia, a major energy producer, faced further isolation and economic damage because of its invasion of Ukraine.
In 1974 when Vice President Gerald Ford succeeded to the presidency after Richard Nixon resigned, the country was in a bad economic crisis. The Arab oil shocks of 1973 led to a 300% increase in the price of oil, which translated into inflation of more than 12%.
Russia’s president criticizes the West as the country faces a new massive wave of sanctions, while Ukraine's president asks to be admitted into the European Union.
President Vladimir Putin dramatically escalated East-West tensions by ordering Russian nuclear forces put on high alert Sunday, while Ukraine’s embattled leader agreed to talks with Moscow as Putin’s troops and tanks drove deeper into the country.
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, said that the European Union would close its airspace to Russian aircraft in response to the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, ABC News reported.
Russia and its allies from the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics launched a military operation in Ukraine on Thursday aimed at "demilitarising and denazifying" the country in the face of a security crisis of a scale unseen in Europe in decades.
The smell of blood and sounds of gunfire and wailing car alarms woke residents in Kyiv on Friday as Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine's capital city for the first time.
