Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., issued a blistering statement on Tuesday on the “short-sighted decision” by Donald Trump to pause military aid to Ukraine.
“Ukraine has been bravely fending off Vladimir Putin’s cruel and unjust invasion for over three years. US assistance – supported by Congress on a bipartisan basis – has helped Ukraine resist and hold its ground against a Russian army that was supposed to take Kyiv in weeks or even days. Now President Trump threatens those hard-fought gains and imperils the lives of the Ukrainian people by unilaterally cutting off the aid that has helped Ukraine maintain its freedom in the face of aggression,” said Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“Cutting off arms now only undermines the prospect of a peace deal that depends on Ukraine’s ability to negotiate from a position of strength,” Warner said.
Trump doesn’t seem interested in helping Ukraine have the ability to “negotiate from a position of strength,” instead doing everything he can to push Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to accept a peace deal on Putin’s terms, which would include allowing Russia to retain control of Ukrainian territory gained in its three-years-and-counting invasion.
This was the motivation behind the made-for-TV Oval Office spectacle last week in which Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Zelensky in front of TV cameras after the Ukrainian leader resisted their pressure tactics, and the news leak late Monday that revealed the decision to pause military aid to Ukraine until the Trump administration “determines the country’s leaders demonstrate a good-faith commitment to peace.”
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Zelensky, in a lengthy statement posted to Twitter on Tuesday, wrote that he “would like to reiterate Ukraine’s commitment to peace.”
“None of us wants an endless war,” Zelensky wrote. “Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than Ukrainians. My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.”
In the tweet, Zelensky proposed a partial ceasefire, a “truce in the sky — ban on missiles, long-ranged drones, bombs on energy and other civilian infrastructure — and truce in the sea immediately, if Russia will do the same.”
The air and sea ceasefire, it should be noted, would give Ukraine time to find a workaround to the US military aid pause, if the pause would end up being of an extended nature.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the US pause would hit Ukrainian air-defense systems hard, but the country should otherwise be able to hold the line on the ground, because Ukraine has been able to ramp up internal production of artillery shells, mines and drones to meet a healthy portion of its military needs, and has been able to augment that with support from European allies.
So, basically, what Zelensky is trying to do with the proposed air and sea ceasefire is rebuild the “position of strength” that Trump is trying to take from Ukraine.
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Trump himself isn’t exactly operating from a “position of strength” on Ukraine. Republicans aren’t exactly marching in lockstep behind their leader on his push for a Putin-dictated peace deal, with one top Senate Republican, Ted Cruz, R-Texas, making it clear, in an interview with ABC News on Monday, that a Ukraine-Russia peace deal needs to result in “a clear and unequivocal loss for Russia and loss for Putin.”
“Russia is not our friend. Putin is not our friend. And I believe it’s important that at the end of this war be a clear loss for Russia,” Cruz said.
It can’t help Trump that his equally disastrous move to reinstate his threatened tariffs on Canada and Mexico are now roiling US and world markets, with the Dow, S&P 500 and NASDAQ all down sharply for a second straight day.
In essence, Trump can use a win, and Zelensky, in his Tuesday tweet, offered an olive branch, and a chance for Trump to declare victory, leaving open the proposed agreement giving the US access to Ukraine minerals that was supposed to be signed last week, but was put on the table after the Oval Office blowup.
“Our meeting in Washington, at the White House on Friday, did not go the way it was supposed to be. It is regrettable that it happened this way. It is time to make things right. We would like future cooperation and communication to be constructive,” Zelensky wrote.
“Regarding the agreement on minerals and security, Ukraine is ready to sign it in any time and in any convenient format. We see this agreement as a step toward greater security and solid security guarantees, and I truly hope it will work effectively,” Zelensky wrote.
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Chris Graham
