Lawmakers from both parties are pressuring President Obama to ship defensive weapons to Ukraine as Russia continues to support anti-government rebels in violation of a ceasefire that’s barely holding.
The House and the Senate have passed legislation authorizing the supply of U.S. weapons to Ukraine’s armed forces in addition to the nonlethal military aid already being provided. The issue will likely to come up Wednesday and Thursday as Defense Secretary Ash Carter meets with NATO defense chiefs and new Ukrainian Defense Minister Col. Gen. Stepan Poltorak.
Obama has so far refused to arm the Ukrainians, and key U.S. allies such as France and Germany also oppose the idea. But many lawmakers insist it be a key element of U.S. strategy against Russian land grabs in Ukraine.
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“It’s one of the most shameful chapters in American history,” said Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., who traveled to Ukraine over the weekend. “They are begging for us to help them defend themselves.”
McCain is the lead sponsor of the defense authorization bill in the Senate, which calls for at least 20 percent of the $300 million in military aid to Ukraine be earmarked for defensive weapons. The Senate passed the authorization bill last week.
“They fight. And we’ve got to give them something to fight with,” McCain told the Washington Examiner. “We won’t even give them intelligence information. It’s so disgraceful. Historians will judge this president very harshly.”
Carter told lawmakers at his confirmation hearing in February that he was open to the idea of sending weapons to Ukraine, and said Monday at a news conference in Germany that “we have not taken a decision and haven’t changed our policy with respect to weaponry in Ukraine.”
But other administration officials have said they fear arming Ukraine will encourage Russian President Vladimir Putin to escalate the conflict. They prefer to stick with a combination of economic sanctions and an increased rotation of U.S. forces in NATO countries bordering Russia, as well as training exercises with Ukrainian troops, to get Moscow to honor a peace deal reached in Minsk in February.
“It’s a very fragile ceasefire, but I can’t see any other alternative, other than to continue to support the full implementation of the Minsk Agreements,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday. “Meaning the full respect for a ceasefire, they withdraw all the heavy weapons and to let the international monitors have full access to the area so they can monitor the ceasefire and the implementation of the Minsk Agreements.”
In a speech to the Atlantic Council on Tuesday, House Armed Services Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, quoted Lenin, who said “Probe with bayonets. If you encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw.”
“It seems that Mr. Putin and those around him don’t see economic sanctions and training exercises as steel,” Thornberry said.
Thornberry noted that arming Ukrainian forces so they are more effective will raise the cost for Putin, who’s already under fire from some in Russia for casualties incurred by troops who aren’t officially supposed to be fighting in that country.
His point echoed the conclusion of a report released in February by a panel of experts that included former diplomats, Pentagon officials and NATO’s former supreme allied commander in Europe. The report said arming Ukraine could bolster efforts to find a negotiated solution by raising the cost to the Kremlin of continuing to back separatists in eastern Ukraine.
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The United States, along with Britain and Russia, also committed in writing to guaranteeing Ukraine’s territorial integrity under a 1994 agreement in which Kiev gave up its nuclear weapons inherited from the former Soviet Union.
“It may be that if the Ukrainians receive additional lethal assistance that Putin will up the ante,” Thornberry said.” But they still have a right to defend themselves.”
