On Friday’s “CNN Newsroom,” Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) stated that President Joe Biden has constantly refused requests for weapons from Ukraine before eventually changing his mind and that has effectively resulted in America’s strategy not being for Ukraine to win.
Quigley said, “What’s frustrating, to be quite frank here, is that, since the first day of the war, I understand the President has been cautious about escalation, but the requests for anything coming from Ukraine [are] always first met with no…and then it gets to yes. And unfortunately, that puts Ukraine behind the schedule of dealing with this. And frankly, I think the Russians game for that.”
Later, host Jim Sciutto asked, “The criticism of the sort of slow-rolling of each of these weapons decisions over the last several months and two years is that the U.S. doesn’t have a plan for Ukraine to win this war, just, in effect, to hold the ground that it has now, hold the line, not lose too much territory, defend itself, etc. Do you agree with that criticism?”
Quigley answered, “I think it’s had the effect of having that result. I think that President Biden and those that support Ukraine always wanted them to win, and have certainly given them a tremendous amount of aid. The slow-rolling on some of the issues and the weaponry that we’re talking about has had that effect. I think it was valid to remember what President Zelensky said when he spoke to Congress. He said, help us win quickly. And I think there’s an extra reason to be concerned about that, and that’s the battle of attrition, Ukraine’s population is a third of Russia, and there’s a difference as well with Putin using conscripts and prisoners and being willing to use his people as cannon fodder in this battle, something Ukraine isn’t willing to do. That has a very dangerous effect that concerns me that Putin feels like he can just wait it out and game the U.S. and Western allies and what they are or are not willing to do to win the war.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
