President Joe Biden has allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin to intimidate him into withholding key military assistance from Ukraine, according to a senior House Democrat.
“We should be more aggressive about what we’re giving them,” House Armed Services Chairman Adam Smith (D-WA) said Wednesday during a Center for New American Security event. “I don’t agree with the president on the notion that we shouldn’t give them long-range strike missiles, because I think he’s sort of buying into Putin’s rhetoric here.”
That criticism provides support from among Biden’s top congressional allies for a Ukrainian and Central European complaint that the United States and other leading NATO allies have neglected to provide the arsenal needed to fight effectively in eastern Ukraine, thereby allowing a Russian military that sustained a major defeat around Kyiv to regain the initiative in the Donbas. Biden justified the withholding of long-range rocket systems, on the grounds that it would “enabl[e] Ukraine to strike beyond its borders,” but Smith dismissed that argument.
“Every single piece of artillery we send them is capable of striking Russia because Ukraine’s right on the border with Russia,” he said. “The longer-range stuff is not about going into Russia. It’s about giving you the ability to have a more standoff capability to hit the Russians who are in Ukraine, because if the Russians can see farther and shoot farther, then you’re at a disadvantage.”
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Ukrainian officials have pledged to use the artillery they are provided for defensive purposes. Biden agreed to give high-mobility artillery rocket systems, known as HIMARS, armed reportedly with missiles that can fire about 40 miles, rather than the longest-range munitions that could hit targets 185 miles away.
“So we’re providing them, as you said, with the, with the Brits and others, about 10 systems,” U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told reporters Wednesday in Brussels. “They’re going to have well over 100 rounds of ammunition[in that] initial package, and we’re training a platoon at a time in Germany. The secretary has directed the next platoon to be trained and so on. So this capability will build, but because it’s a precision weapon … if they use the weapon properly, and it’s employed properly, they ought to be able to take out a significant amount of targets.”
Of those 10 artillery systems, only four are coming from the U.S. The modest size of that transfer has drawn bipartisan criticism that, even when the administration provides upgraded weaponry, that aid is restrained by anxiety about Putin’s response.
“It has been months now, and the Ukrainians cannot afford to have imprecise and low-level assistance from the world’s most powerful military,” Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said Monday on the Senate floor. “Ukrainians need our help, and Congress has done its job in an overwhelming bipartisan fashion. We should not be tentative now. Not now.”
Smith, the House Democrat, also faulted the Biden administration for “foot-dragging” with respect to the transfer of MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones, which can carry Hellfire missiles and fly 25-hour missions for both long-range strikes and also intelligence collection.
“We should be giving them more drones more quickly,” Smith said. “I don’t agree with the foot-dragging on the Gray Eagle, and I’ve heard the arguments. I know what they are. Some of them are classified, but none of them, to my mind, carry the day.”
That disagreement about how to help the Ukrainian military defend its territory could soon extend into the question of how to drive the Russians out of places that they hold at the moment, as Smith acknowledged. The committee chairman cited Putin’s recent comments likening the current war to Peter the Great’s conquests that established the modern Russian empire as evidence that the Kremlin chief regards the war as “a vanity project” that won’t end with a partial victory in Ukraine.
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“What Putin wants to do right now is lock in his gains … he’ll eat Ukraine by one small bite at a time instead of the all-encompassing envelopment that he envisioned at the beginning, but that’s just as deadly,” Smith said. “We need to start thinking about what does an insurgency look like in those parts of Ukraine that are currently occupied by Russians. … They are really engaged in genocide against Ukrainians in a certain part of the country. And I think we need to start contemplating how we can support an insurgency to fight back against that.”
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