US decision to provide anti-tank missiles to Ukraine angers Russian leaders who say it ‘fuels war’
US President Donald Trump’s long-delayed decision to provide Ukraine with defensive lethal weapons signalled a new willingness to oppose Russian intervention in its neighbour, but has made European allies nervous that a recent hike in fighting could escalate.
The State Department said Friday that the administration would supply the government in Kiev with Javelin anti-tank missiles to destroy armoured vehicles used by Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, and to raise the cost of Russia’s intervention in the conflict.
The Trump administration said earlier in the week that it also would permit sales of some small arms to Ukraine from US manufacturers.
Kurt Volker, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, recently warned that the deadliest fighting since February had erupted in eastern Ukraine. More than 10,000 people have been killed since mid-2014, when Russian military forces seized the Crimean peninsula and began supporting armed separatists in eastern Ukraine against the government in Kiev.
It is … a transatlantic vaccination against the Russian virus of aggression
The Pentagon and State Department had recommended supplying the anti-tank missiles earlier this year. Officials in Washington and Kiev stressed that the anti-tank missiles are defensive in nature.
