US senators John McCain and Dick Durbin have called on President Barack Obama to immediately send arms and other military supplies to Ukraine.
US senators John McCain and Dick Durbin have called on President Barack Obama to immediately send arms and other military supplies to Ukraine.
If he were president, McCain, who lost the 2008 presidential election to Obama, said Ukraine would have already been given weapons and the senator urged Obama to immediately grant the new government in Kiev the military help that officials are desperately seeking.
"To make it happen, all the president has to do is order it tomorrow," McCain said. "He can have it done tomorrow."
However, McCain and Durbin's request met with resistance from another visiting U.S. senator, Chris Murphy, who said that Obama is right to carefully consider any decision to send weapons to Ukraine. McCain is a leading Republican and former presidential candidate, while Durbin and Murphy are Democrats.
McCain and Durbin are part of a delegation of US senators who have travelled to Ukraine as people in the autonomous Ukrainian region of Crimea are set to participate in a referendum that will determine whether Crimea will remain part of Ukraine or join Russia.
After meeting with interim Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov and interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, McCain said he expects the new government is "not going to accept a significant incursion from Russia into eastern Ukraine.”
“ They need very badly military equipment. Under (deposed President Viktor) Yanukovych, their military capabilities, what they had, deteriorated very significantly. They only have a few thousand combat troops and would be overwhelmed by the Russians if it came to that. One of their urgent requests is to have us supply them with weapons. I will be urging our administration to arrange that transfer as quickly as possible," Mccain added.
Tensions between Washington and Moscow have intensified during the past weeks over the crisis in Ukraine.
The US has stepped up the deployment of its military forces to Eastern Europe, including the dispatch of fighter jets and surveillance equipment to Poland and the Baltic states.
