Should the U.S. Send More Weapons to Ukraine? A Debate on Funding & Ways to End Two-Year-Old War

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It has been two years since Russia invaded Ukraine, sparking a brutal war in which tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians have died. With Ukraine running low on both weapons and new recruits, and with more U.S. funding stalled in Congress, we host a discussion on the future of the conflict with peace activist Medea Benjamin of CodePink and Oberlin professor Stephen Crowley, an expert on Russian and Eastern European politics. While both agree on the need to end the war, Crowley says the $60 billion U.S. funding package should be passed in order to give Ukraine a stronger negotiating position. "The only reason to fund Ukraine right now is to get both sides to the negotiating table to end this war," he says. Benjamin, however, says more funding will inevitably be used to continue the fighting. "It will only give the impetus for Zelensky to keep trying to fight a war that is not winnable," she says, adding that progressives are making a mistake to cede the antiwar position to "the extreme right of the Republican Party."

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