FRANKFORT — U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that President Joe Biden should allow Ukraine to use U.S. weapons to launch attacks inside Russia.
McConnell said he’s “consistently argued” with the administration that its restriction against Ukraine launching U.S. weapons across the border into Russia “doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“I think they should be allowed to hit the Russians in Russia.”
McConnell was speaking to media at a Kentucky National Guard hangar after an event in which Gov. Andy Beshear and General Haldane Lamberton, Kentucky’s adjutant general, thanked the state’s longest-serving U.S. senator for his role in bringing federal funds to military projects in Kentucky.
U.S. Congress in 2024 has appropriated:
- $38M for Ft. Campbell to construct a large-scale vehicle/aerial gunnery training range.
- $5.5M for Ft. Campbell to construct a new airfield fire and rescue station.
- $3.15M for Ft. Campbell to construct an equipment staging area to support overseas deployment operations.
- $1.7M for Ft. Campbell to conduct the design and engineering of a runway extension project.
- $7.7M for Ft. Knox to construct a new fire station.
- $16.4M for the Kentucky National Guard to construct a vehicle maintenance facility in Burlington.
- $7M for the Kentucky National Guard to construct a new machine gun training range at Wendell H. Ford Regional Training Center in Greenville.
- $2M for the Kentucky National Guard to complete a state administrative building in Frankfort.
- $3.3M for Blue Grass Army Depot in Madison County to conduct engineering of a new ammunition warehouse to help expand its mission following closure of the chemical-weapons demolition site.
Source: McConnell office
During his remarks to a crowd that included about 40 uniformed Guard members, McConnell renewed his warnings that Russia, China and Iran pose dangers to democracy. He likened today’s international challenges to the period before World War II.
“We thought it would all go away if we just ignored it. That’s clearly not going to happen again this time, at least not without me making the contrary argument.”
McConnell called for increased defense spending as a deterrent to aggression and thanked the National Guard members for their service.
McConnell is stepping down at the end of the year as his party’s leader in the U.S. Senate but will continue to serve as a senator from Kentucky. His term ends in 2026.
Speaking briefly to media after the event, McConnell noted that the Biden administration is considering lifting its restriction to allow Ukraine to use U.S. weapons to launch counterattacks on installations and military personnel inside Russia. The restriction is intended to reduce the risk of the war escalating into other countries.
McConnell said the Ukranians should be free to defend themselves with U.S. weapons, calling Ukraine’s self-defense “a way to stand up to the Russians without losing American personnel.”
In response to questions, McConnell said the rising isolationism among Republicans in Congress also is similar to before World War II and even after the war when Republicans opposed NATO and the Marshall Plan. The election of Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a general and leader of Allied forces in World War II, changed that, McConnell said.
“What China, North Korea, Russia and Iran have in common is they are authoritarian dictators. It’s sort of a potential war between the authoritarians and the democracies. All of us who are threatened elect our leadership and so authoritarians are the people that we’re standing up to and we have to convince them the price of taking us on is too big a price for them to pay.”
McConnell said the U.S. and its many democratic allies from Europe to the Indo-Pacific are “all in this together.”
“The whole democratic world needs to stand up and they look to us for leadership.”
McConnell also said, “The cheapest way to be ready is to have your defense budget high enough and industrial base built enough that you never have the conflict in the first place.”
This article is republished under a Creative Commons license from Kentucky Lantern, which is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com. Follow Kentucky Lantern on Facebook and Twitter.
Jamie Lucke is editor in chief of Kentucky Lantern. She has more than 40 years of experience as a journalist. Her editorials for the Lexington Herald-Leader won Walker Stone, Sigma Delta Chi and Green Eyeshade awards. She is a graduate of the University of Kentucky.
