that this is a country that is defending itself against Russian aggression. They had their military largely destroyed by Russia in 2014 and '15 and needed the help. And humanitarian assistance is great, and nonlethal assistance, you know, MREs and blankets and all, that's fine, but if you're being attacked with mortars and artilleries and tanks, you need to be able to fight back.
The argument against this assistance being provided, the lethal defensive assistance, was that it would be provocative and could escalate the fighting with Russia. I had a fundamentally different view that if we did not provide it, it's an inducement to Russia to keep up the aggression, and there's no deterrence of Russia from trying to go further into Ukraine. So I believed it was important to help them rebuild their defensive capabilities and to deter Russia. It's also a symbol of U.S. support.
So I argued very strongly from the time I was appointed by Secretary Tillerson that the rationale for why we were not providing lethal defensive assistance to me doesn't hold water and that is a much stronger rationale that we should be doing it.
That eventually became administration policy. It took a while, but Secretary Tillerson, you know, he wanted to think it through, see how that would play out. How would the allies react to this? How would Russia react to this? How would the Ukrainians handle it? And we managed those issues. Secretary Mattis was very much in favor. And they met. I did not meet with the President about this, but they met with the President and the President approved it.[1]
5. Although security assistance to Ukraine was paused in July 2019, several witnesses testified that U.S. security assistance was not linked to any Ukrainian action on investigations.
Several witnesses testified that U.S. security assistance was not linked to or conditioned on any Ukrainian action to investigate President Trump's political rival.Even after U.S. officials learned in early-to mid-July that the security assistance had been paused for unknown reasons, evidence suggests that there was not a link between U.S. security assistance and Ukrainian action to investigate President Trump's political rival.
LTC Vindman testified that he learned about a pause on security assistance on July 3.[2] Morrison said he learned of the pause around July 15.[3] According to Ambassador Taylor, he learned via conference call on July 18 that OMB had paused the security assistance to
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