Senator Chris Coons said last week that U.S. officials need to start talking about whether they would send U.S. troops to Ukraine in response to a Russian chemical-weapons attack on the country or a strike that hits Americans in the region.
“We are in a very dangerous moment where it is important that on a bipartisan and measured way we in Congress and the administration come to a common position about when we are willing to go the next step and to send not just arms but troops to the aid in defense of Ukraine,” he said, during an event with the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy last Thursday. “If the answer is never then we are inviting another level of escalation in brutality by Putin.”
Coons clarified those remarks this afternoon on Twitter, writing that, “I’m not calling for U.S. troops to go into the war in Ukraine.
President Biden has repeatedly ruled out sending U.S. troops to Ukraine, citing the risk of a direct U.S.-Russia confrontation could start another world war. He has, however, deployed more troops to NATO countries since the Russian invasion began in February.
There has also been widespread bipartisan opposition to sending U.S. service members to Ukraine. Coons might be the first senator to publicly urge that Congress and the president consider doing so.
Delaware Public Media, the NPR affiliate in Coons’s home state, first reported on his remarks last Thursday. Those comments burst onto the national stage yesterday, when Margaret Brennan of CBS’s Face the Nation asked him if he was asking President Biden to “set a red line.”
Coons, who is known to be a close Biden confidant, answered Brennan’s question, first calling Biden’s leadership on rallying the West to counter the Russian invasion “steady and constructive.” He then urged a more forceful approach.
“If Vladimir Putin, who has shown us how brutal he can be, is allowed to just continue to massacre civilians, to commit war crimes throughout Ukraine without NATO, without the West coming more forcefully to his aid, I deeply worry that what’s going to happen next is that we will see Ukraine turn into Syria,” he said.
During a month-long occupation, Russian troops tortured, raped, and executed civilians in the Kyiv region, until the Ukrainian military forced them out in late March. Recent Ukrainian government estimates said last week that around 900 civilians had been executed by Russian forces in the area, according to the Associated Press.
The number of civilians executed by Russian forces is distinct from the number of deaths caused by Russian artillery attacks on civilian areas in the Kyiv oblast and military activities that killed Ukrainian civilians.
“The American people cannot turn away from this tragedy in Ukraine,” Coons continued. “I think the history of the 21st century turns on how fiercely we defend freedom in Ukraine and that Putin will only stop when we stop him.”
Reached for comment, a Coons spokesperson referred National Review to the senator’s tweet clarifying his position against sending U.S. troops to Ukraine.
Coons, in that statement, also called for “more sustained and broader sanctions,” in addition to “sending more advanced weapons” and ” being prepared to respond if [Putin] escalates further in his war crimes against Ukraine.”
A CBS-YouGov poll conducted between April 5-6 indicated that public support for a U.S. deployment to Ukraine is significantly low, with 25 percent responding that they would support such an action.
According to the poll, however, the share of people who would support “U.S. military action in Ukraine” is higher under different circumstances.
Just over 60 percent of respondents said they would support military action in response to a Russian chemical-weapons attack, while just over two-thirds of the poll’s respondents said they were supportive of U.S. military action after a Russian attack on NATO countries or a nuclear attack.