The drumbeat on Capitol Hill to arm the Ukrainian government in its bloody conflict with Russian-backed separatists has quickened in recent months. And with the movement’s leader, Sen. John McCain, who is widely expected to become chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee in the new year, Congress is poised to challenge the Obama administration’s reluctance to get directly involved in the complicated civil conflict.
“I’ll push it as hard as I can,” the Arizona Republican told the Washington Examiner. “It’s a national disgrace and a shame that we’re watching [Ukraine] just being dismembered by Vladimir Putin, and we refuse to give them weapons to defend themselves.”
The administration has suggested it believes Russian forces are directly engaged in the military conflict in Ukraine. The United States and European Union have slapped Russia with economic sanctions over the matter.
But the White House fears that sending arms to Ukraine could amp up already heightened tensions between the West and Russia, and could provoke further Moscow-backed aggression in the region.
McCain called the administration’s position “insanity” and suggested it is reminiscent of the West’s capitulation to Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
“It’s shameful to think that you’re worried about provoking the guy that’s already dismembered the country,” he said, referring to Putin, the Russian president.
“I don’t know what it takes to move this administration” on the issue of arming Ukraine, he said. “There’s ample testimony that the people who are making decisions [in the administration] know nothing about warfare.”
McCain isn’t alone. He has been working with Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as well as fellow Republicans Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina to push forward legislation to better help Ukraine defend itself.
Corker said it is vital for Congress to make arming Ukraine a priority because the White House “definitely need[s] pushing on this issue.” He said he is hopeful the administration’s Ukraine position may be “evolving.”
He also suggested that congressional action would give the administration political cover to sell the issue of arming Ukraine on the international stage.
Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said he thinks the administration eventually will agree to accelerate its arms shipments to Ukraine because failing to do so would create a “domino effect” of Russian-backed aggression throughout the region.
“If we don’t do that [for Ukraine] then you’re going to have Lithuania and Latvia and those countries facing the same thing that Ukraine is facing,” he said.
Inhofe and the committee’s retiring chairman, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., jointly penned an opinion piece for the Washington Post in October saying that the Russian-backed aggression in Ukraine “undermines peace and stability not just for Ukraine but also in all of Europe, and it sets the wrong precedent for international relations.”
But Levin and others on the Hill favor arming Ukraine only with defensive “non-provocative” weapons, fearing that giving them heavy equipment would be a step too far.
Levin said during a Senate hearing in early December that while he doesn’t believe the conflict will be solved militarily, “if the Ukrainians want to die, go down fighting … they have that right to defend themselves, and we should give them what they’re asking for — providing it’s not provocative” weapons.
“If it’s offensive weapons [they want], that’s different,” he said.
Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., said denying Ukraine heavy weapons would send a bad message to other former Soviet bloc countries that gave up nuclear weapons in the aftermath of the Cold War.
“I think it’s unconscionable that we have not provided this assistance to them,” Ayotte said during the same committee hearing. “If we don’t, I think the consequences are quite grave, not only for Ukraine but the surrounding countries in the region.”
The Senate on Thursday approved a Russian sanctions bill that included a provision to supply Ukraine with anti-tank and anti-armor weapons, counter-artillery radar and other military equipment and defense services “for the purpose of countering offensive weapons and reestablishing the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
The bill stopped short of providing heavier equipment such as tanks and warplanes. And the House isn’t expected to take up the measure before the new Congress convenes in early January, at which time the Senate measure would expire without House approval.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has pleaded with the West to send him more military equipment, “both lethal and nonlethal.”
“Blankets, night-vision goggles are also important, but one cannot win the war with blankets,” he told a joint session of Congress in September.
McCain warned the administration and America’s European allies against ignoring Poroshenko’s plea because Ukraine “is the best judge” of what it needs. Failing to help Ukraine, he added, will only encourage Russia to further flex its military muscle elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
“The only thing that will dissuade Vladimir Putin is if coffins come home to Russia with Russian bodies in them,” he said.
