Sen. Lindsey Graham: ‘If we pull the plug on Ukraine, it would be worse than Afghanistan’
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Sunday warned of potentially disastrous consequences for Ukraine if the Trump administration doesn’t restart military aid and intelligence sharing with the Eastern European nation.
“As long as the fighting is going on, if we pull the plug on Ukraine, it would be worse than Afghanistan,” Graham said during an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”
“Until we have a ceasefire, I would give Ukraine what they need in terms of intelligence and weapons to defend themselves,” Graham added. “In terms of Russia, I’ll be introducing sanctions on their banking sector and their energy sector next week, urging them to get to the table. If they don’t engage in ceasefire and peace talks with the administration, we should sanction the hell out of them.”
His comments come just days after the Trump administration paused military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine, which just marked the three-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion across Ukraine’s eastern border.
The U.S. help for Ukraine came to an abrupt pause last week after tensions between President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy boiled over during an Oval Office meeting that devolved into a shouting match. In the fallout from that meeting, Russia has launched an increasing barrage of attacks on Ukraine. [Continue reading…]
Ukraine’s presence in Russia’s Kursk region has deteriorated sharply, with the Russian advance threatening Kyiv’s sole territorial bargaining counter at a crucial time in the war.
Military bloggers from both sides say Ukraine is on the back foot, while Ukraine’s army says Russian forces used a gas pipeline to launch a surprise raid in one area. Russia’s defense ministry on Sunday said its forces had captured four settlements in a couple of days.
Ukraine launched its shock incursion into Kursk in August, swiftly capturing territory in what was the first ground invasion of Russia by a foreign power since World War II.
As well as capturing land that could potentially be swapped for Russian-occupied territory, the campaign aimed to divert Moscow’s resources from the front lines in the east.
But since then, Ukraine has struggled to hold onto its territory in Kursk and faces a fundamentally transformed diplomatic picture, with United States President Donald Trump piling pressure on Kyiv to agree peace by halting US military aid and intelligence sharing. [Continue reading…]