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Friday, 02 March 2018 12:10

UNCLE SCROOGE WILL ... SELL, NOT GIVE, JAVELINS TO UKRAINE

Michael MacKay, Radio Lemberg, 02.03.2018 
 
The United States will sell Ukraine 210 Javelin anti-tank missiles and 37 launchers for $47 million.
 
The US is providing Javelins, removing a prior restriction on selling lethal weaponry to Ukraine that was foolishly imposed by the Obama administration. But Ukraine will have to buy the missiles and launchers – the US is not giving them as military aid. This makes no sense from the point of view of US obligations to Ukraine, of US strategic interests in countering Russian aggression, or of Ukrainian requirements for national defence and the defence of Europe from invasion from Muscovy. The US should be giving the Javelins to Ukraine for free, it should be giving many more missiles and launchers, and it should be urgently supplying much more weaponry and military assistance besides.
 
The United States is a signatory to the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances of 1994. In return for Ukraine giving up all of its nuclear weapons, the US promised Ukraine to guarantee its sovereignty and its territorial integrity within Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders. The United Kingdom and the Russian Federation also made this promise to Ukraine. Russia broke its promise to Ukraine in 2014 by invading – an armed aggression which destroyed the peace of Europe and the post-World War II settlement. The US and the UK failed to keep their promise to Ukraine by failing to stop and reverse Russia’s invasion and occupation of Crimea and parts of Donbas.
 
One way for the US to keep its Budapest Memorandum promise would be to declare war on Russia and defeat Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The US didn’t do that. Another way would be for US armed forces to fight alongside Ukrainian armed forces to stop the Muscovy invaders and to uphold Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The US didn’t do that. Another way would be for the US to give lethal weaponry to Ukraine so Ukrainians could more effectively defend themselves and their fellow Europeans from the Muscovy invaders. The US didn’t do that and doesn’t plan to do that – the US will demand payment of $47 million from Ukraine for 210 Javelin anti-tank missiles and 37 launchers instead of fully meeting its obligations under the Budapest Memorandum.
 
Selling Javelins to Ukraine instead of giving them to Ukraine is an ineffective way to defend the West against the war of aggression which Putin’s Russia has launched against it. Russia has invaded and occupied all of Ukraine’s southern peninsula of Crimea and is turning it into an armed camp. Missiles, military aircraft, and naval vessels are pouring into illegally occupied Ukrainian Crimea from Russia, threatening to turn the Black Sea into a ‘Russian lake.’ Crimean Tatar leaders in exile report that Russia is staging tactical nuclear weapons to occupied Crimea (as they already have done to occupied Königsberg, so-called Kaliningrad). Russia is sending effectively unlimited weaponry, ammunition, fuel and matériel to the 1st and 2nd Army Corps (Donetsk or so-called “DPR” and Luhansk or so-called “LPR”) of the Russian armed forces in occupied Donbas. Russian tanks by the hundreds are staged in the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine that the Muscovy invaders have occupied. This Russian tank army concentrated in Donbas dwarfs the tank forces of Germany, France, and the UK combined.
 
It’s against this that the US will now send a mere 37 launch systems with missiles – and require Ukraine to pay for it. Ukraine is already spending 5% of its gross domestic product (and rising) on the military in a fight for national survival and a fight to save Europe from the Muscovy invaders. The Javelins will actually be used as a forward defence of the US and the broader North Atlantic region by a democracy, Ukraine, which is an effective ally of the US and other NATO members.
 
Ukraine will use the precious few Javelins it is getting to destroy Russian tanks that are invading Ukraine and attacking Europe. The threat of destruction by Javelin missiles may deter Russian invaders from getting in their tanks and making war in the first place. But Ukraine should be getting far more lethal weaponry from the US, and it should be getting it as a grant – as military aid. The survival of Western civilization depends on stopping Russia’s invasion, liberating Crimea and Donbas, and restoring peace to war-torn Europe. 
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