Kaine meets with Ukrainians in Roanoke Valley, shares insights from recent visit

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine met with Roanoke-area Ukrainians and their supporters last week to share what he’d learned on a visit to the war-torn country and other European nations last month.

Kaine visited Finland in February, and Poland, Ukraine and Germany during the Senate’s Easter recess. During his mid-April visit to Ukraine, he placed flowers at the Bucha Memorial, which remembers the more than 400 civilians and prisoners of war executed in 2022 by members of the 234th Air Assault Regiment, a Russian paratrooper unit based in Pskov, a city with which Roanoke paused a sister city arrangement in 2023.

He also was in the country in the aftermath of Russia’s Palm Sunday attack on the Ukrainian city of Sumy, which killed dozens of civilians.

The Virginia Democrat and former vice presidential candidate serves on the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees, among others.

He spoke of the visits to the four countries.

“They all have different perspectives, but they all agree on the following,” Kaine told the crowd at Roanoke’s Third Street Coffee House. “Vladimir Putin is not stopping with Ukraine, they all agree on that. Russia is not stopping after Vladimir Putin. They all agree on that. Ukrainians have a resolve, and they will fight hard, whether the U.S. is in or not, but the U.S. needs to be in for Ukraine to be successful.”

The Trump administration is currently seeking to broker a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia that would hinge on Ukraine formally ceding Russian-occupied territory to the Kremlin, something the Ukraine does not want to do. Kaine said if the U.S. withdraws its support from Ukraine, it will deeply damage America’s credibility abroad and may hamper other countries from supporting Ukraine.

In a lighter moment during his April 24 visit, Kaine joined in on harmonica with Bob Schmucker and Greg Trafidlo to perform “Ukrainian Now,” written by Tom Paxton and John McCutcheon, and other songs.