U.S. Congress holds hearings on Ukraine

The U.S. Congress held two hearings on March 5 on the situation in Ukraine. U.S. Senator Ron Johnson said one of the reasons the hearings was because “we heard last week there was potentially an offensive being planned in the next few weeks,” referring to the Russian positioning of soldiers and armaments outside the strategic port city of Mariupol. Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and currently a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, called for a multi-pronged strategy that bolsters NATO and supports Ukraine while taking steps to constrain Russia’s possibilities to threaten other parts of Europe.

 

Pifer urged the U.S. government in prepare to provide increased military assistance to Ukraine, including defensive weapons. They should be provided if Moscow fails to implement the terms of the Minsk Two agreement, he said. Ukraine will need USD 20-25 bln in the next two years from the EU and the U.S., in addition to the USD 17.5 bln IMF loan, Pifer said. He proposed increasing U.S. military assistance to Ukraine to USD 1 bln per year for three years. “While most of the recommended assistance would go to non-lethal equipment, the report also recommends a change in U.S. policy to allow provision of lethal defensive weapons,” he said.

 

The goal of military aid is to give the Ukrainian military the capability to inflict greater costs of the Russian army should the Russians resume or escalate the fighting – and thereby deter Moscow from further military activity, Pifer said. The U.S. should not send combat troops to fight in Ukraine, nor should it provide advanced offensive weapons, he said, which the Ukrainians haven’t asked for. Should the ceasefire take hold and the separatists and Russians proceed in good faith to implement the other elements of the Minsk Two agreement, a decision could always be taken later to suspend the actual delivery of defensive arms, he said.

 

Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who serves as the chairman of the international advisory council on reforms of the president of Ukraine, said anti-tank weapons are needed from the U.S. to strengthen the Ukrainian defense. Time is short and the Russian plan is to seize more territory in southeastern Ukraine and destabilize the socio-economic situation enough to collapse and overthrow the government, he said. “The United States should take the lead, empowering regional actors like Poland and other neighbors of Ukraine, joining with supportive nations like the United Kingdom and Baltics to create a coalition to arm and train the Ukrainian army,” he said.

 

In the other event, the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing, “Ukraine Under Siege,” to hear testimony and pose questions to Victoria Nuland, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. She reported that Ukraine’s parliament passed “important but difficult economic reforms” on March 3 to stabilize the economy and support the swift disbursement of additional support by the IMF and other international donors. Among other measures, the parliament has passed laws to enhance transparency in public procurement, reduce government inefficiency and corruption, make the banking system more transparent and improve the climate for business and attract foreign investment.

 

The U.S. government expects from the Minsk Two accords a complete ceasefire in all parts of eastern Ukraine; full, unfettered access to the whole conflict zone, including all separatist-held territory for OSCE monitors and a full pull-back of heavy weapons as stipulated in the agreements under OSCE monitoring and verification.

 

In a separate hearing on March 4, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey said the Russian-backed rebellion threatens to undo more than six decades of peace in Europe and could potentially splinter the NATO alliance. “I think we should absolutely consider lethal aid and it ought to be in the context of NATO allies because Putin’s ultimate objective is to fracture NATO,” Dempsey told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

 

Zenon Zawada: The testimony of Nuland before the U.S. House of Representatives, and five Ukraine experts before the U.S. Senate, demonstrated that U.S. congressmen have access to accurate analyses and insightful assessments of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The most important message that resonated in the testimonies was that modern armaments are needed to prevent further Russian aggression and force the Russian government to the negotiating table. Ukraine’s military inferiority before Russia has only encouraged Russia’s military aggression, as demonstrated in Debaltseve last month.

 

The hearings demonstrated that the leadership in the U.S. Congress is supportive of providing lethal, defensive arms. “To not decide is to decide,” said U.S. Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce during the hearing. He and other House leaders asked Nuland what is holding up the White House’s decision. “There is no shortage of the will to fight, only a shortage of defensive weapons,” Royce said.

 

Therefore, we expect these hearings to lead to a decision by the White House to provide the Ukrainian government with defensive arms, which will be positioned at Mariupol to prevent a Russian-sponsored attempt to seize control of the strategic port city. As late as yesterday, fighting continued in the village of Shyrokyno, just 23 kilometers east of Mariupol. We believe the White House will realize that providing arms and the training to use them (with instructors already being dispatched) must be done to prevent a siege of Mariupol, rather than a reaction to an offensive.