Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, blamed Russia's invasion of Ukraine on the policies of the last three administrations.
The 2012 Republican presidential nominee took aim at President Joe Biden and former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
"[Russian President Vladimir] Putin's Ukraine invasion is the first time in 80 years that a great power has moved to conquer a sovereign nation. It is without justification, without provocation and without honor," Romney said in a statement on Wednesday night.
"Putin's impunity predictably follows our tepid response to his previous horrors in Georgia and Crimea, our naive efforts at a one-sided 'reset,' and the shortsidedness of 'America First. The '80s called' and we didn't answer."
Romney warned that Putin likely has his sights set on other countries, too.
"The peril of again looking away from Putin's tyranny falls not just on the people of the nations he has violated, it falls on America as well," Romney said. "History shows that a tyrant's appetite for conquest is never satiated."
The senator called on the U.S. and allies to impose the "harshest economic penalties" on Russia.
"America and our allies must answer the call to protect freedom by subjecting Putin and Russia to the harshest economic penalties, by expelling them from global institutions, and by committing ourselves to the expansion and modernization of our national defense," Romney said.
In 2012, Romney predicted that Russia was America’s "No. 1 geopolitical foe" — a comment for which he was greatly criticized.
"A few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not al-Qaeda," Obama said during one presidential debate." And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War's been over for 20 years."
Although his comments appear to have been prescient, Romney at the time was slammed by Democrats and the mainstream media for not being savvy in foreign affairs.
"It looks more like a signature [bias] moment in retrospect, that everyone can recognize Romney was right … just as they now recognize Romney was a much more decent chap than they painted him," Tim Graham of the conservative Media Research Center told Fox News Digital. "But in the ardor of battle, in reelecting Obama, demonizing was king."
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