Rep. Moulton on Ukraine War: “We Need to Move More Quickly”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: So, Congressman, it’s very clear that he obviously still wants to no-fly zone. You’re not going to give it nor is NATO. But it’s the last paragraph that’s the issue, right? He wants much more sophisticated anti-aircraft, including the S-300s. And I understand that debate is under way in Congress. Would you support that?

REP. SETH MOULTON (D-MA): Yes. This is an alternative that I fully support. And in many ways, the United States has been supporting this all along. We have been giving them Stinger anti-aircraft missiles since the very beginning. There are different, more advanced anti-aircraft systems that we can give them in addition. In essence, there are different ways to enforce a no-fly zone. Zelenskyy has always is asked for American pilots to be flying over Ukraine. I do not support that, because it will put Americans in direct conflict with Russians. And that does absolutely raise the risk of escalating the war, of this perhaps turning into World War III. In some ways, that’s exactly what Putin wants. Escalating the war will play into his hands. His war in Ukraine is going badly. He wants to turn this into a Russia vs. NATO war. We should not let that happen. But there’s a lot more that we can do to get Russian planes out of the sky. There’s one other thing, Christiane. A lot of the danger — a lot of the damage that we’re seeing in Ukrainian cities right now is not due to bombs dropped from aircraft, although that’s a problem. It’s due to artillery. And there are counterartillery. They’re called counterbattery systems that we can provide the Ukrainians to take out this Russian artillery when it fires on Ukrainian cities. Those are additional weapons that we should provide to the Ukrainians today.

AMANPOUR: Indeed. And, I mean, look, you’re a former Marine. You get it. You understand the battle zone. We do understand that a lot of that damage to the civilian infrastructure has been long-range artillery, but, in the recent days, aircraft have played an increasingly and devastating role. So you say we can do this and that. Why aren’t you doing it, then? Why isn’t more of those anti-missile batteries getting there? And, specifically, what you just said, why aren’t more of the more sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles not being deployed?

MOULTON: Those are great questions. And I think the answer is that, all along here, we have been doing the right things, but we have been doing them too slowly. I think there’s interest in Congress and there’s probably interest in the administration in providing these systems. But from the very beginning, we have just moved too slowly to provide the support to Ukraine. When I was last in Kyiv in December, I came back and I wrote a private memo to the administration, then published an op-ed in “The Journal” saying exactly this. We need to move more quickly. You win wars by moving more quickly than your opponent, by outfoxing your opponent, by making decisions more quickly than the opponent can respond. We can’t be playing defense here. We can’t be always responding to what Putin does. We need to take the initiative. And I think weapons delivery is one example of a way in which we can move more quickly to support the Ukrainian cause.