Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday he thinks the Obama administration should be sending arms to Ukraine, The Hill reported on Friday, April 18th.
“Here is what I would do: I would be sending arms to the Ukrainian army,” McConnell said to the hometown radio station, WMST. “I would provide serious assistance to the Ukrainians so that they could defend themselves.”
So far, the Obama administration has given Ukraine a $1 billion loan guarantee, sanctioned leaders involved in the annexation of Ukraine and pledged non-military aid to Ukraine.
McConnell said the administration should be doing more to ensure that Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t take further action and invade more neighboring territory.
 “I would renew the discussions that the president just dropped, the idea of missile defense and the Czech Republic and Poland at the beginning of his term as a sort of a gesture to the Russians,” McConnell said. “I would reengage with the Pols and the Czechs and see if we can’t get missile defense back in those countries. All of those steps would indicate without sending in a single American soldier that the U.S. is serious in standing up to this kind of new form of Russian aggression.”
On Thursday, Obama announced a tentative deal that could deescalate the situation.
McConnell said Obama’s weak stances in Iran and Syria gave Putin the signal that it was fine to invade Ukraine.
“You are hard-pressed to name a single place in the world where we are in better shape now than we were when he came to office,” McConnell said.