KIEV — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis vowed Thursday to help Ukraine stand up to Russian violations of its sovereignty and signaled that the Trump administration was considering providing defensive weapons to the Ukrainian military.
Former President Obama had resisted such a step, fearing it would be seen as a provocation by Russia. In the first visit to Ukraine by a US defense secretary in nearly a decade, Mattis seemed to be anticipating that argument.
“Defensive weapons are not provocative unless you are an aggressor, and clearly Ukraine is not an aggressor since it is their territory where the fighting is happening,’’ Mattis said at a joint news conference with Ukraine’s president, Petro O. Poroshenko.
State and Defense department officials have recommended that the United States provide Javelin anti-tank missiles and other defensive weapons to Ukraine to strengthen its forces and raise the potential cost to the Kremlin of a Russian attack.
But President Trump, who has consistently taken a more conciliatory position toward Russia than have his top national security advisers, has yet to take up the matter.
Mattis declined to disclose what he planned to recommend to Trump. Nor did he indicate any timetable for deciding the matter. But his comments suggested that he was sympathetic to supplying defensive weapons — long a topic of enormous interest in Ukraine.
“On the defensive lethal weapons, we are actively reviewing it,’’ he said. “I will go back now having seen the current situation and be able to inform the secretary of state and the president in very specific terms what I recommend for the direction ahead.’’
While the Obama administration had rejected providing the Javelin anti-tank system to Ukraine, the context has shifted in recent years.
The failure of the Minsk Protocol, which was negotiated by Russia, Ukraine, and European nations in 2015, and Russia’s active military posture in the region, have combined to bring the issue to the fore, as has the change of administrations in Washington.
Poroshenko sought to buttress Ukraine’s case by saying that it had responsibly used the nonlethal systems it had received from the United States, and asserting that the anti-tank weapon would be used to deter Russian aggression.
“Any defensive weapons would be just to increase the price if Russia makes a decision to attack my troops and my territory,’’ he said.
Not all European nations necessarily agree. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, strongly opposed the provision of such weapons when it was considered by Obama in 2015, saying that they would merely inflame the military situation.
Mattis met with Poroshenko after participating in the commemoration of Ukraine’s 1991 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. The American also held separate talks with Ukraine’s defense minister, Stepan Poltorak.
The previous US defense secretary to visit Kiev was Robert M. Gates in October 2007. Mattis stood on a parade-reviewing stand to the left of Poroshenko as the Ukrainian president awarded medals, one posthumously, to two Ukrainian soldiers who fought against separatists and their Russian allies in eastern Ukraine.
