On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave a speech via video to a joint session of Congress, in which he asked for more military aid from the United States
U.S. Army veteran and Republican candidate for Senate Mike Durant said he supported giving the Ukrainians what they needed to hold Russia back.
Friday on WVNN’s “The Yaffee Program,” Durant said the United States should help Ukraine but needed to be smart about it.
“We can’t make decisions based on emotion,” he said. “We’ve got to make decisions that make sense and don’t escalate this thing beyond, you know, where it is already, which is just almost incredible.”
Durant explained what’s he’s currently hearing from his sources about what Ukraine really needed right now.
“We need to give them what they’re asking for,” he explained. “They are the ones who know best what they need, and what I’m hearing, I mean I get involved with some conversations that are pretty close to folks on the ground there, they want more stingers, they want more Javelins, they need radio communications, they need UAVs.”
The Senate candidate expressed some concern about sending them MiG fighter jets but didn’t rule it out completely.
“Are these old generation MiGs that, ya know, they get up in the air and they’re up against more advanced version of that aircraft, they’re just going to get blown out of the sky?” he asked.
He reiterated why it’s important to be specific on the kind of aid the United States was sending to the country.
“We need to give them our full support, but it has to be systems that will make a difference to them, that they already know how to use, they have the logistics for, parts, training, all of that,” he said.
Durant also expressed how Ukraine has done much better fighting back against Russia than most people expected.
“They have far exceeded anyone’s expectations in holding their ground at this point,” he said. “The Russians have taken much more heavy losses than I think anyone thought, certainly than they thought.”
The Army veteran added he hoped they could force Russia to agree to reasonable peace terms.
“We need to do everything we can to continue that and try to get them to at least stop, so that we can get them to the negotiating table and try to bring an end to this,” he concluded. “That is the best scenario at this point to resolve this, to find a way to, you know, come to terms to stop the fighting.”
Michael Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” Weekdays 9-11am on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee
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