Summary
Sen. Lindsey Graham warned that halting U.S. military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine could be “worse than Afghanistan.”
He urged continued support until a ceasefire is reached and announced plans for sanctions on Russia’s banking and energy sectors.
The Trump administration paused aid after a heated Oval Office meeting where Trump and JD Vance clashed with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. Russia escalated attacks following the fallout.
U.S. and Ukrainian officials will meet in Saudi Arabia to discuss a minerals deal and ceasefire, while Trump seeks further concessions from Ukraine.
Why go so far? Ukraine had a ceasefire with Russia between 2019 and 2022. There were even working mechanisms to deal with conflicts. Russia showed it can’t be trusted.
The Ukrainian government made no effort to implement Minsk II, had it been implemented then this war would likely not have happened.
Minsk explicity stated that elections come first and then withdrawal. Ukraine wanted Russia to withdraw first before allowing elections in the DPR and LPR which was against the agreement.
Ukraine also had the obligation to uphold linguistic rights to ethnic minorities but violated the Minsk Agreements with the 2019 language law which didn’t outright ban the Russian language but did discriminate against those who did not speak Ukrainian or an EU language.
Zelenskyy initially did campaign on a pro-peace platform but he was quickly pressured by far right militias to do otherwise.
You mean the law regarding Crimea and Donbas that Europe persuaded Ukraine to withdraw a month before Nazi Russia decided to violate the ceasefire? That’s a great example of the ceasefire mechanisms working.
The language law was only approved after the invasion, and given the Ruskyy Mir speech, it’s not surprising Ukraine is not comfortable with promoting Russian inside their borders.
Yes, problem is that despite the 26 January 2022 Normandy Format meeting that resulted in this, Russia received no words about Ukraine’s readiness to swiftly start the implementation of the Minsk agreements.
Zelenskyy himself even admitted that he never intended to implement Minsk.
What do you mean? It was declared effective on 16 July 2019.