US Considers Giving Weapons to Ukraine

In purest Cold War style, the Ukrainian crisis threatens to become a conflict between the U.S. and Russia, with mutual threats and each of the powers arming its allies.

For the moment, it is clear that the extension of the crisis to eastern Ukraine has provoked a hardening of the U.S. position. Thomas Shannon — adviser to Secretary of State John Kerry, former ambassador to Brazil, and former head of U.S. diplomacy for Latin America during the presidency of George W. Bush — admitted this Monday in Berlin that “obviously,” the U.S. is considering giving weapons to the government of Ukraine “as an option,” although he added that he could not “anticipate” if it was going to happen or not. Until now, Washington has not discarded giving U.S. weapons to Ukraine from its plans.

Shannon repeated the argument of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power: What is happening in Ukraine is a covert invasion, which follows the same pattern as Russia’s operation in Crimea. The indirect corollary of that idea is that the U.S. will have no choice but to drop its convictions and economic sanctions and arm its allies, i.e. the government of Kiev. On Sunday, the Department of State had already sent the media an unusual email entitled “Russian Fiction. Part 2,” made up of 10 points, in which it accused Moscow of lying to the international community and of carrying out direct operations in order to occupy eastern Ukraine.

The document began with a serious accusation: “The Ukrainian Government has arrested more than a dozen suspected Russian intelligence agents in recent weeks, many of whom were armed at the time of arrest.” It also denied that the risk of a civil war exists in Ukraine because “what is going on in eastern Ukraine would not be happening without Russian disinformation and provocateurs fostering unrest” among the population. Finally, the Department of State accused Moscow of carrying out an economic war against Ukraine.

Tensions go beyond verbal expression. This Monday, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that on Saturday, a Russian combat plane made 12 trips very close to the U.S. destroyer “Donald Cook,” which is located in the west of the Black Sea, close to the coast of Romania. According to U.S. authorities, the plane flew about one kilometer from the boat, while it was flying at an altitude of about 150 meters. The equipment was a “Su-24,” a Soviet bomber from the 1970s that has been employed in combat by the USSR and Russia in Afghanistan and Chechnya, among other conflicts.

The “Donald Cook,” which was found this Monday in Romanian territorial waters, is in the zone to “assuage” NATO allies and the members of the Black Sea, according to Washington. Moscow does not want U.S. ships in the zone. However, since the month of January, the U.S. Army has maintained a permanent military presence in the region.