Sen. Rand Paul floated the possibility of a dialogue with Russia about keeping NATO from further expanding its umbrella into Eastern Europe.

The Kentucky Republican, who recently returned from a trip to Russia for meetings with Russian lawmakers, suggested that the country’s leaders may have fears of NATO seeking to go as far as expanding into Georgia and Ukraine.

“Sanctions are sort of the stick, and the question is what is the carrot. I would say that one of the carrots might be considering whether or not we continue to insist that Ukraine and Georgia be in NATO,” Paul said. “I think that if you really wanted to influence Russia’s behavior and you were talking in a one-to-one basis with Russia and you were to have some sort of agreement, I think an agreement not to have Ukraine and Georgia in NATO might lead to less conflict in both Ukraine and Georgia.”

Paul was speaking at a Foreign Relations Committee hearing on U.S.-Russian relations featuring testimony from both the State Department and the Department of the Treasury.

Paul’s questions and commentary were much different from Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle who took a harder line toward President Vladimir Putin. But Paul asked whether the existing U.S. sanctions regime is working and what an alternative might look like.