The State Department signed off on a potential $47 million sale of 210 Javelin anti-tank missiles and 37 launch units to Ukraine Thursday, moving the planned purchase one step closer to completion.
Russia has fueled a bloody war on Ukraine’s eastern border since 2014, bolstering separatists there with money and weapons. More than 10,000 people have been killed.
“This is a 100 percent Russian-commanded and-controlled operation. Militarily, politically, economically,” U.S. special representative for Ukraine negotiations Kurt Volker said Friday during an event at the Hudson Institute. “There is no ambiguity about it.”
“Don’t ever forget that this is still a hot war. People are getting killed every week,” he said. “It’s urgent. It’s truly urgent.”
Now the potential sale will bounce to Congress for a 30-day approval window. Lawmakers have long expressed bipartisan support for lethal defensive aid, and authorized $350 million in security assistance to Ukraine in the 2018 defense bill.
“The final interagency approval and formal notification of Congress marks another important milestone towards the fulfillment of America’s promise to stand with Ukraine,” said Ohio senator Rob Portman.
The Javelins can be transferred to Ukraine shortly after the congressional review period.
Critics of providing defensive aid say that it could trigger Russian president Vladimir Putin and escalate the conflict, while proponents view it as a deterrent that could increase pressure on Russia to stop the violence and pave the way for a diplomatic solution.
“The Javelin system will help Ukraine build its long-term defense capacity to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” an administration official said. The Pentagon said that the proposed sale would not alter the military balance in the region.
The sale includes technical assistance, training, and other support related to the Javelins, which are “being provided from U.S. Army stocks.”
Trump originally approved the sale in December, in a sharp departure from President Barack Obama, who relied instead on non-lethal assistance. In addition to the planned Javelins, the U.S. has provided Ukraine with counter-artillery radars, radios, medical and protective equipment, night-vision devices, and Humvees, an administration official said.
“The United States remains committed to the Minsk agreements as the way forward in eastern Ukraine,” the official added. “The resolution to this conflict must be a diplomatic one.”
A series of ceasefires have not succeeded in ending Ukraine’s bloody war. Putin suggested openness in September to deploying a U.N. force to protect international observers—a suggestion that the West saw as an attempt to solidify the Kremlin’s gains in the east.
But Putin’s indication of openness piqued Western interest. Diplomats and experts are now exploring how U.N. peacekeeping operations, shaped with input and support from Russia and Ukraine, could actually work. Richard Gowan, a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, writes that the peacekeeping force should seek to stop the fighting, oversee local elections (as reflected in the 2015 Minsk agreements), and “facilitate a transition culminating in the full restoration of Kiev’s authority.”
A successful operation, he wrote, requires genuine buy-in from Moscow and Ukraine, a credible military presence from the U.N., an international police presence, and a “long-term civilian presence” to oversee the local elections.
Volker said Friday that a genuine peacekeeping force “establishes area security throughout the Donbas, facilitates the cantonment of heavy weapons, and controls the Ukrainian side of the Ukraine-Russia international border.”
“That is very, very different from what Russia proposed in September,” he said.
Volker said that if Russia decides to get out of eastern Ukraine, a peacekeeping force will be necessary for security and political reasons.
“Would Russia ever agree to do this? That’s what we’re waiting to see,” he said. “The argument that we’ve presented is that Russia is not getting anything out of this. If it was hoping to produce a Russia-friendly government in Kiev again, it’s not working.”
