Segments of Ukraine have been reduced to near rubble and the sound of small arms fire is frequently heard in daylight hours giving way to booms and bright flashes at night, reported the Associated Press, as Russian-back separatists and Russian troops continue to amass on the border with the looming threat of invasion.
With that perilous backdrop in place, President Joe Biden has delivered little but hollow gibberish in recent talks with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, warning that Moscow will pay a high price if it attacks Ukraine.
The only people paying a high price now, however, are the ones living in Ukraine under imminent menace of Russian invasion. And the only one not paying anything except lip-service to their dire situation is Biden, who continues to withhold desperately neede d aide for Ukraine.
Specifically, the Biden administration is refusing to release a $200 million package of military assistance for Ukraine, reported NBC News.
The stonewalling has been met with bipartisan condemnation, with a group of nearly two dozen U.S. House members urging Biden to hasten military funding support for Ukraine.
“To maximize deterrence, it is critical that at least some military aid — Stingers, Javelins, drones, and anti-ship missiles — are provided immediately,” the lawmakers wrote. “The Ukrainian state must be equipped with the tools necessary to defend itself and the region against Russian aggression.”
Ukrainian leaders, unsurprisingly, are rightfully concerned that Putin will see the withholding of support as a sign of U.S. weakness, exacerbating an already tense and deadly situation.
“We have our own capable military forces in Ukraine, and we don’t expect Western countries to put boots on the ground,” Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote in commentary last week in Foreign Affairs.
“We do, however, need more weapons to be able to defend ourselves,” Kuleba wrote. “Everything counts, from ammunition to medical equipment, but we are in particular need of air and missile defenses.”
What they’ve received so far from Biden is more chatter and delay.
“For too long, the West has declined to take Putin’s ambitions seriously and responded with delay, indecision, and weakness,” Kuleba wrote. “It is time to meet them with strength.”
That assessment was shared by retired Gen. Jack Keane, who served as vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
There is a growing perception, Keane told Fox News, that “this [Biden] presidency and this administration is more about accommodation and appeasement” than about confronting and countering adversaries, unlike the previous Trump administration.
“People may disagree with the rhetoric associated with [Trump], but the policies were firm,” Keane said. “Our adversaries understood that.
“I believe the reason for this is they see weakness here,” he said about the current showdown in Ukraine and Biden’s wobbly response. “I don’t like saying that, but that is the conclusion one must draw in terms of what is happening here.”
The same assessment was put in more succinct and stark terms by 84-year-old, Ukrainian resident Halyna Moroka.
“We are frightened,” she told the Associated Press. “It’s really scary to sit here and wait for death. It’s horrible!”
