PRESS RELEASE
National Security Council Said To Be Ready To Present Ukraine Arms Package to Trump
Nov. 20, 2017 (EIRNS)—ABC News reported, on Nov. 17, that the U.S. National Security Council (NSC) has agreed to present to President Donale Trump a $47 million aid package for Ukraine that includes the provision of Javelin anti-tank missiles, "a move aimed at deterring aggression from pro-Russian separatists," according to an unnamed U.S. State Department official. This has not been confirmed by either the White House or the State Department, and probably won’t be unless Trump approves it. ABC notes that the Republican Party platform was amended to be much softer on that question after Trump got the GOP nomination, and that, were Trump to approve the package, it would mark "a major shift away" from that platform.
Vladimir Shamanov, the head of the Duma defense committee (and former chief of the VDV, the Russian airborne forces) warned yesterday, that if the arms sale contemplated in the NSC-proposed package were to go ahead, the situation in Ukraine would sharply deteriorate.
"These Klimkin’s ’wishes’ sharply destabilize the more or less set state of affairs in the zone of the [Donbass] conflict, which can be controlled, at least to a certain extent, by the international organizations and local residents. The equipment which he listed is offensive, and, of course, this will affect negatively all the parties to the process—political, diplomatic, not even mentioning the military ones. This will not just complicate the situation [in Ukraine]; this will explode the situation,"
Shamanov told Sputnik.
The "wishes" to which Shamanov was referring, were those expressed by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin at the Halifax International Security Forum over the weekend. Klimkin expressed the expectation that the West would soon be supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine, including anti-tank weapons and other equipment.
