July 31, 2015

IN THE PRESS: Poroshenko asks if the West is with Ukraine

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“The President of an invaded country asks the West: Are you with the barbarian or with the free world?” by Sohrab Ahmari, The Wall Street Journal, July 28:

“…Asked about the kind of weapons his armed forces would need to deter further aggression by Russia and its separatist proxies in eastern Ukraine, [President Petro] Poroshenko gets specific: ‘We’re looking for just 1,240 Javelin missiles, and this is absolutely fair.’

“The number 1,240 has special significance for Mr. Poroshenko. He says that was the number of nuclear warheads Ukraine gave up under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, jointly signed by the U.S., Britain and Russia. ‘Ukraine voluntarily gave up its nuclear arsenal,’ Mr. Poroshenko says, ‘and in exchange for that the United States of America and Great Britain… promised to guarantee our sovereignty and territorial integrity.’

“Compared with strategic weapons, 1,240 Javelin missiles are small beer. Yet the Obama administration has thus far refused to transfer to Kiev [sic] the antitank system – or any other form of lethal aid. Mr. Poroshenko is thankful for American political support, loan guarantees and nonlethal assistance… Yet such assistance has so far failed to change Russian supreme leader Vladimir Putin’s calculus in the war.

“Rather than helping Kiev impose real costs on the aggressor, Washington and the European powers are pushing both sides to work through the Minsk process…. ‘We think Minsk is not working from the Russian side,’ says Mr. Poroshenko. …”

“Nor does Minsk II address Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea. The concern in Kiev is that the West would be willing to trade away the peninsula in exchange for calm in eastern Ukraine. ‘If anybody proposed to the U.S. to give up the Florida peninsula,’ the Ukrainian president says, ‘something like that would not work. This is our land… Whether it’s Donetsk, Luhansk or Crimea, at the end of the day, they will be freed.’ ”

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