"Should The U.S. Send Lethal Arms To Ukraine?" Topic

"This week, the United States delivered a shipment 10 Humvees to the Ukrainian government — the first installment of a $75 USD million aid package of non-lethal equipment that is meant to assist the fight against Russia-backed rebels in the country's east.

But despite the overwhelming adoption of a resolution in the US House of Representatives urging President Barack Obama to provide Ukraine with lethal arms, his administration has yet to send such materiel. Debate on this issue centers on whether outfitting the country with lethal aid will serve only to escalate the conflict and trigger a regional arms race between the government and eastern separatists. A question that has received less attention is whether Ukraine's army is even capable of effectively using the weapons it wants.

VICE News correspondent Simon Ostrovsky visited rebel-held areas and the capital of Kiev to explore whether it would be wise for the US to arm Ukraine's poorly trained military with advanced weaponry…"
Full article here-
link

YouTube link

Amicalement
Armand

I wonder what politicians and journalists consider "advanced" that Ukraine doesn't already have access to?

Decent ATGMs? Got 'em already.
GPS-guided artillery rounds? Probably the wrong caliber….unless we are gonna offload our old M198s or some new M777's along with them.

Some decent C4ISR software and encrypted radios would be far more useful, but I can imagine getting something like BlueForce Tracker integrated at an operational level to be a development, training, and logistics nightmare.

Supplying lethal arms could see Russia start to overtly supply higher tech offensive equipment to the separatist groups, which some may say would make little difference as they are already doing so.

link

The suggestion in this link is that the 'separatists' have access to sophisticated jammers. As he says, there are only 8 of them in Russia, and the separatists don't have any (because Ukraine never had any for them to capture).

The US has apparently supplied mortar tracking radars already, but they dont have sufficiently high quality communication gear to make effective use of the data. Problem is by the time they respond the unit has already left the area, so then they are just counter-firing into civilian areas.

We should have defended them from Russia in the first place, like we promised to do in exchange for their nukes.

So should Britain have done.

At this point, it's all over and too late. The West isn't going to do anything meaningful anyway.
-Kle.

@Kle: Thing is, that agreement didn't require either the US or Russia to actually DO anything about a border violation. It just said that the US and Russians would "respect" the Ukraine's borders.

Be careful about what you sign eh?

I don't think the Ukrainians are lacking weapons that are suitably high-tech for the conflict they are in.
They are lacking reliable manpower.

I imagine anyone eager enough to fight the russkies can go there and sort something out.

@Kle: Thing is, that agreement didn't require either the US or Russia to actually DO anything about a border violation. It just said that the US and Russians would "respect" the Ukraine's borders.

Yes, there are always mealy-mouthed weasel words that can be used when we don't want honor our promises. Our government is famous for using them; we should really put "yeah, right you suckers" somewhere on the Great Seal.
-Kle.

We should have defended them from Russia in the first place, like we promised to do in exchange for their nukes.
So should Britain have done.
At this point, it's all over and too late. The West isn't going to do anything meaningful anyway.
-----------------
personally having worked there recently and being a Brit I don't think there would have been any appetite in the UK for us to be dragged into yet another war – we might think that eastern Ukrainians are brainwashed but a significant chunk of people in the UK think we were dragged in Iraq and Afghanistan on US coat tails and there is a lot of resentment about that (whether actually well founded or not). There was always significant pro-Russian links in a fair chunk of the population there so I understand and after being subjected to barrages of propaganda and GRADs its not surprising that the situation is what it is today. Nobody knows what the true views of the majority of people in the rebel held areas are and short of a UN enforced and monitored vote no one will ever know. The Kyiv regime has done itself no favours (though maybe had to do it) in having to incorporate units like Azov etc into its defence forces – yes there are neo-Nazi groups in Russia and other countries but not sure if anywhere they are part (now anyway) of the state's forces. The issue seems to be a similar one that beset the JNA and others in the Balkan Wars – that the only really motivated formations are those formed from political extremists

@Kle: the NATO treaty is pretty clear that an attack on one member is considered to be an attack on all of them.

Had there been a clause like that in the Ukraine treaty, we wouldn't be having this discussion about the Russians retaking the Crimean Peninsula by force.