6 October 2022

U.S. opens door to new weapons, training for Ukraine

Olivier Knox

Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. Via the Associated Press: On this day in 1927, the image and voice of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover were transmitted live from Washington to New York in the first successful long-distance demonstration of television.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has opened the door to giving Ukrainians fighting invading Russian soldiers “larger, more sophisticated” weapons than what America and its allies have provided to date, as well as training on how to use them, a potential deepening of the U.S. involvement in the war.

Blinken’s comments came Wednesday in response to a question from Deutsche Welle in a roundtable interview facilitated by the State Department’s Russian-language Telegram channel as he traveled in Belgium.

They also followed a series of seemingly contradictory or muddled statements from top U.S. officials over the past two weeks about whether America is currently training Ukrainians, even as it advertises giving them military hardware to kill Russian tanks and planes. U.S. forces trained Ukrainians in the years after Russia’s invasion in 2014, but officials have said those programs stopped in the run up to the Feb. 24 escalation.
“What we’re focused on is making sure that we get to Ukraine the systems that they can use now and use effectively,” Blinken said. “At the same time, we’re looking at other systems — some of them larger, more sophisticated — that may be useful and important going forward.”

But “Ukrainians need to be trained, because some of these systems you can’t just turn them over and have them be used immediately,” the secretary said. “Training is required; maintenance is required.”

The White House did not comment on the record when asked who would do the training, and where. The State Department referred The Daily 202 to the Defense Department, which declined to comment.

But earlier, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters at his daily briefing: “I know of no other American systems that are either being planned to go in or are already in that they require additional training on.” (He had not specifically been asked about Blinken’s remarks.)

Administration officials have told The Daily 202 that the West Wing worries about American troops training Ukrainians on NATO bases within range of Russian missiles, given the possibility (however remote) Moscow might decide the Ukrainians are legitimate targets.

Mixed Messages

Blinken’s comments punctuated a strange two-week stretch in which top U.S. officials, from President Biden on down, have left unclear whether there is an ongoing U.S. program to train Ukrainians.

On March 22, Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters “we do not have U.S. troops currently training Ukrainians.”

On March 28, Biden explained a remark he made during a visit with troops from the 82nd Airborne in Poland by telling reporters “we were talking about helping train … the Ukrainian troops that are in Poland.”

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