McCain, Durbin urge Obama to send weapons to Ukraine

However, McCain and Durbin’s request met with resistance from another visiting U.S. senator, Chris Murphy, who said that Obama is right to carefully consider any decision to send weapons to Ukraine. McCain is a leading Republican and former presidential candidate, while Durbin and Murphy are Democrats.

If he were president, McCain said Ukraine would have already been given weapons and the senator urged Obama to immediately grant the new government in Kyiv the military help that officials are desperately seeking.

“To make it happen, all the president has to do is order it tomorrow,” McCain said. “He can have it done tomorrow.”

McCain: Ukraine’s military needs ‘everything’

“Obviously the situation is very tense,” McCain said, speaking to journalists in Kyiv late on March 13. “It is unclear what (Russian President) Vladimir Putin will do now, whether he decides to move in eastern Ukraine or not, although he has certainly taken all the steps to facilitate such a step — the movement of troops and their concentration in western Russia, the largest airborne operation that the Russians have carried out since World War II.”

After meeting with interim Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov and interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, McCain said he expects the new government is “not going to accept a significant incursion from Russia into eastern Ukraine. They need very badly military equipment. Under (deposed President Viktor) Yanukovych, their military capabilities, what they had, deteriorated very significantly. They only have a few thousand combat troops and would be overwhelmed by the Russians if it came to that. One of their urgent requests is to have us supply them with weapons. I will be urging our administration to arrange that transfer as quickly as possible.”

McCain said that quick military supplies can deter any plans Putin might have of invading.

“I watched during crises in the Middle East where planeloads of arms came within hours literally,” McCain said “It’s not a problem of getting them in. First of all, they need small arms but they need other military equipment as well. There needs to be a training regimen also. A lot of their military is not well trained, nor ready to fight. That shouldn’t prevent us from getting arms to them, not just to defend themeless but as a signal that we are supporting them. I think it’s vital to give them arms and I think it’s also vital to send a message that we’re willing to give them arms with which to defend themselves from an imminent invasion of another party of their country.”

McCain said that Ukraine’s poor state of military readiness should not be a reason to refuse arms requests from Ukraine’s government.

“You might want to ask the people who have had a good chunk of territory taken over by the Russians. I think you should ask the people who are their leaders. Would you like them to throw rocks? Four dead people last night (in Donetesk),” McCain said. “I cannot imagine someone who has nothing to fight with who wouldn’t desperately want something to fight with. If that’s what they’re literally begging for, why should  we judge whether we should give it to them or not?”

Besides infantry rifles, McCain said that Ukraine’s military needs anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons — and just about everything else.

“i asked the most senior defense guy in uniform. I asked: What what do you need? He said ‘everything,” McCain said. “They’re desperate for it.” He noted a parallel to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, after which the U.S. supplied rebels there with arms. “If we had not given the weapons to the afghans to drive out the russians, they would have not been able to drive out russians. End of story.”

Durbin: Ukrainians ‘have to have the wherewithal to defend themselves’D

Durbin, another veteran senator, also said that America should help supply Ukraine to defend itself militarily — short of sending in American troops, which has been ruled out. “We are not talking about sending American troops into Ukraine, period.” 

Durbin said that the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which the United States, Russia and Great Britain pledged to defend Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty in exchange for surrendering its Soviet-era nuclear weapons, is “a statement of principles.” It is not, he said, a mutual defense pact or an event that would trigger a NATO military response.

“When they go throughout the list of things they need: food, MREs, tires. The belief is that Yanukovych knowingly, purposely weakened the military to the point where it couldn’t stand on its down and that’s what they face today,” Durbin said.

“Ukraine does not have a might army. It has a small army,” Durbin said. “Yanukovych had hollowed it out this army and weakened it to the point where in the words of the prime minister — we don’t have anything that floats, flies or runs. They are at ground zero in terms of military capacity with few exceptions. 
Time and again, they asked us for military help. They need it. I think they should have it. They have to have the wherewithal to defend themselves.”

Murphy: ‘There is a limit to what Ukrainians can make use of’

However, Murphy, the Connecticut Democrat said “there is a limit to what Ukrainians can make use off” in terms of military supplies, given the poor state of its defenses, and a danger of raising false hopes of a military solution through the supply of American weapons.

“There is no military solution, there’s only a political solution,” Murphy said. “Given the pitiful state of readiness within the Ukrainian military, I think it’s important to be careful about approving these requests.”

Senators believe Yanukovych responsible for mass murders; suspect Russia might have helped

The three senators who spoke on the issue of Ukraine’s February mass murders believe, as the Ukrainian government does, that Yanukovych ordered the crackdown. At least McCain suspects Russian involvement in the killings. More than 100 people were killed in the EuroMaidan Revolution in January and February, most of them demonstrators by police or snipers.

“In my mind, it is clear this is was government-inspired, based on what (the U.S. Embassy’s military attaché in Kyiv) told us today,” Durbin said. “He believes there were thee or four sniper teams involved, many from government billings, one from a hotel. This notion that some who want to change the government are behind this, it doesn’t make sense in the first place and there’s no evidence of this.”

Durbin said that the U.S. Embassy’s military attaché, who was on the scene of the mass murders, said “this was totally planned. The police pulled back to entice the people to move up into the killing zone. That’s when the sniper fire occurred. It was just a cold-blooded events.” Durbin said that government soldiers and police forcers had red reflective tape on their helmets so that the snipers would be able to identify them and not mistakenly shoot them.

McCain said that “we’ve heard there was constant communications between the Russians and Yanukovych. We also have seen published reports that Putin urged yanukoych to have a crackdown. If those are true, it shouldn’t be surprising they were involved n this particular exercise.”

Murphy recalled his meeting with Yanukovych in December, describing the toppled leader as “unhinged” during a 2.5 hour conversation with him and McCain.

“He had no sense of the reality of Maidan. He believed it was a bunch of fascist and anti-Semites. He believed they were responsible for all the violence that had taken place. Even at that point, in mid-December, he had had no idea what was happening on the square. It is not at all far-fetched that he would make a terrible mistake and order the type of massacre that happened.”

Senators: Sanctions will be tough, get possibly tougher

Durbin expects the Senate to have strong bipartisan support for “not only specific sanctions on Russia for their aggression in this area, but as well on those who are part of any kleptocracy that precedes the current government, who are guilty of corruption. It spells out a $1 billion loan and the IMF program that would be available to them.”

Referring to Ukraine, Durbin said that tough times are ahead.

“Here is a new country facing a very real economic crisis that is going to call on them to make some changes in their country to deal with a weak economy and the debt,” Durbin said. “The changes are going to be politically difficult to sell to the people of Ukraine. They’ve spoken to the IMF and basically warned the IMF to ask for only as much as they need. It could be a very difficult political sell. They have to deal with pensions, utility bills, property taxes and other things.”

Durbin, making his first trip on Independence Square, said that “you couldn’t help but feel you were walking on sacred ground” and that the shrines on Institutska Stret, where the protesters were killed, will have a profound effect long into the future as the new government more closely aligns Ukraine with the West.

McCain also described Independence Square in Kyiv as an “exceptional place. I have been to a lot of places in my life, but i have never seen anything like the night and next day at the height of the protests” in December. He believes sanctions should be applied against anybody responsible for violence and human rights abuses in Ukraine and Russia, including anyone in Russia responsible for violating Ukraine’s sovereignty as a nation.

The sanctions could get tougher, depending on Russia’s actions, the senators said.

Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner can be reached at [email protected]