Emboldened by British and American war-hawks who are itching for a military showdown with Russia, the Ukrainian government continues playing its role of goading the Russian bear. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a videoconference yesterday with 20 members of the U.S. Congress to demand the further arming of his country to confront a purported planned Russian military attack, as well as increasing sanctions pressure on Russia. Zelenskyy also continued to argue for Ukraine to be allowed to join NATO—an explicitly stated red line for Russia.
Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), the co-chairman of the Senate Ukraine Caucus, issued a statement afterwards demanding that “the United States must continue to increase the amount of defensive lethal military weaponry it sends to Ukraine and tailor it to the threat they will face so Ukraine can better defend itself,” he said.
Meanwhile, Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council which oversees the military, claimed in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s goal is to re-establish a zone of control over Ukraine and other parts of the former Soviet Union. “He thinks this might be a time of weakness for the United States and so he has decided to test it,” Danilov said. “For Putin, sovereign countries should not exist near his borders. For him, there is no Ukraine, Poland or Baltics. They don’t exist.”
