Biden's bogus claims about aid to Ukraine

Marc Thiessen:
Joe Biden has said that by holding up vital military aid to Ukraine, President Trump “used the power and resources of the United States to pressure a sovereign nation, a partner that is still under direct assault from Russia … to subvert the rule of law.”

That’s rich. The aid in question is lethal military assistance that the Obama-Biden administration refused to give Ukraine.

In 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea and began arming separatists in eastern Ukraine with tanks, armored vehicles and rocket launchers, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko came to Washington to plead for weapons to defend his country. In an impassioned address to a joint session of Congress — with Biden sitting directly behind him — Poroshenko said his country appreciated the nonlethal assistance he was getting, but declared “one cannot win a war with blankets.”

The Obama-Biden administration was unmoved. The Wall Street Journal reported at the time that “President Barack Obama stuck to his refusal to provide weapons or other lethal military gear to Ukraine.” Why?

Team Obama feared that lethal aid would provoke Moscow.

So what did the administration give him? Instead of rocket-propelled grenades, we provided food rations. As one frustrated former Pentagon official put it at the time, “What kind of message does that send anyway?”

Answer: a message of weakness.

When Trump took office, he delivered a message of strength. In December 2017, the new administration announced that the United States would send the lethal aid to Ukraine that Poroshenko requested and Obama and Biden refused — the sale of $47 million worth of Javelin antitank missiles.

In May 2018, after Ukraine tested its new Javelin missiles, Poroshenko exulted on Twitter “Finally this day has come!” and personally thanked Trump “for supporting Ukraine and adopting a decision to provide Javelin antitank missile systems.”

For Biden to now attack Trump for a temporary delay in a new round of lethal military aid reeks of hypocrisy. It was on Biden’s watch that the United States refused to deliver military aid at all. Yet the same vice president who sat there impassively while Ukraine’s president begged for weapons now dares to cite the Russian threat to Ukraine in castigating Trump?
...
Biden is just too dishonest even for a politician.  Perhaps he has a short term memory problem on even the big things.  But he and his son's dealings with a Ukraine gas company are ones Democrats would be screaming about if they involved Trump and his sons.

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