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There is an abundance of outrage in the United States about Russias alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Multiple investigations are taking place, and Moscows conduct was a major justification for the sanctions legislation that Congress just passed. Some furious political figures and members of the media insist that the Putin governments interference constitutes an act of war. One especially agitated House member even compared it explicitly to the Pearl Harbor and 9/11 attacks.

Such umbrage might be more credible if the United States refrained from engaging in similar conduct. But the historical record shows that Washington has meddled in the political affairs of dozens of countriesincluding many democracies. An egregious example occurred in Ukraine during the Euromaidan Revolution of 2014.

Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was not an admirable character. After his election in 2010, he used patronage and other instruments of state power in a flagrant fashion to the advantage of his political party. That high-handed behavior and legendary corruption alienated large portions of Ukraines population. As the Ukrainian economy languished and fell farther and farther behind those of Poland and other East European neighbors that had implemented significant market-oriented reforms, public anger at Yanukovych mounted. When he rejected the European Unions terms for an association agreement in late 2013, in favor of a Russian offer, angry demonstrators filled Kievs Independence Square, known as the Maidan, as well as sites in other cities.

Despite his leadership defects and character flaws, Yanukovych had been duly elected in balloting that international observers considered reasonably free and fairabout the best standard one can hope for outside the mature Western democracies. A decent respect for democratic institutions and procedures meant that he ought to be able to serve out his lawful term as president, which would end in 2016.

Neither the domestic opposition nor Washington and its European Union allies behaved in that fashion. Instead, Western leaders made it clear that they supported the efforts of demonstrators to force Yanukovych to reverse course and approve the EU agreement or, if he would not do so, to remove the president before his term expired. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, went to Kiev to show solidarity with the Euromaidan activists. McCain dined with opposition leaders, including members of the ultra right-wing Svoboda Party, and later appeared on stage in Maidan Square during a mass rally. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Svoboda leader Oleg Tyagnibok.

But McCains actions were a model of diplomatic restraint compared to the conduct of Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs. As Ukraines political crisis deepened, Nuland and her subordinates became more brazen in favoring the anti-Yanukovych demonstrators. Nuland noted in a speech to the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation on December 13, 2013, that she had traveled to Ukraine three times in the weeks following the start of the demonstrations. Visiting the Maidan on December 5, she handed out cookies to demonstrators and expressed support for their cause.

The extent of the Obama administrations meddling in Ukraines politics was breathtaking. Russian intelligence intercepted and leaked to the international media a Nuland telephone call in which she and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffey Pyatt discussed in detail their preferences for specific personnel in a post-Yanukovych government. The U.S-favored candidates included Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the man who became prime minister once Yanukovych was ousted from power. During the telephone call, Nuland stated enthusiastically that Yats is the guy who would do the best job.

Nuland and Pyatt were engaged in such planning at a time when Yanukovych was still Ukraines lawful president. It was startling to have diplomatic representatives of a foreign countryand a country that routinely touts the need to respect democratic processes and the sovereignty of other nationsto be scheming about removing an elected government and replacing it with officials meriting U.S. approval.

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America's Ukraine Hypocrisy - The National Interest Online (blog)

The U.S. Defense Department has recommended sending a package of lethal military aid to Ukraine worth about $50 million, the U.S. NBC television network has reported.

NBC published the report on August 4, citing three unnamed officials who said the recommendation has been forwarded to the White House for consideration.

A Pentagon spokesperson refused to confirm the report, but told NBC that "we haven't ruled anything out."

The reported weapons package purportedly would include Javelin shoulder-launched antitank missiles.

Russia annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea in early 2014 and has provided extensive military, economic, and political to separatist militants in eastern Ukraine.

During a visit to Kyiv last month, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg asserted that Russia has "thousands" of troops on Ukrainian soil.

Although Russia denies military involvement in the conflict, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in November 2016 determined the conflict to be "an international armed conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation."

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Pentagon Reportedly Recommends Lethal Aid Package For Ukraine - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

When they have command of their senses, U.S. policymakers tend to think better of involving our nation deeply in Ukraine. So this weeks calls from lawmakers and policy wonks to arm Ukraine are a sign that the Trump and Russia scandals have concussed our political class.

Sending weapons to Kiev makes no more sense today than it did two years ago. You may recall the last time arming Ukraine was floated. In 2015, fearing a Western-backed putsch would permanently pull the country from Russias sphere of influence, Vladimir Putin took a gamble to preserve the Kremlins access to the Black Sea Fleet and annexed Crimea. Contrary to popular perception, this was not a demonstration of Kremlin strength, but a last resort. A truly strong Russia would have been able to keep Kiev under its influence and preserve its access to the Black Sea without force. In fact, in 2010 Putin used his popularity in Ukraine and Russias diplomatic might to help his preferred candidate, the fantastically corrupt grifter, Viktor Yanukovych, over the line in presidential elections.

Ukraine is a deeply divided country. Its most-recent presidential elections revealed astark conflict between the agrarian, Ukrainian-speaking north and west on one hand and the Russian-speaking south and east on the other. It is also not a particularly admirable state. Successive governments in Kiev have turned out to be ineffective and/or hopelessly corrupt. Even the Western-supported Viktor Yushchenko arguably usurped the role of Ukraines courts when dissolving Parliament in 2007. This is not a stable democracy.

It isalso a country many Russians see as deeply woven into their own history. Anti-Communist dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn summed up some of the Russian attitude toward Ukraine when he wrote in 1990 that, All talk of a separate Ukrainian people existing since something like the ninth century and possessing its own non-Russian language is a recently-invented falsehood.

Poland ceded Kiev to Peter the Great in the 1690s. Needless to say, Russia has a much longer history with Ukraine than the United States can claim. Ukrainian membership in NATO periodically comes up, but Ukraine would be one of the most difficult countries for NATO to defend, while contributing little to the alliance, partly because its government is so indebted to the Russian state.

Yes, Putins government continues to foment pro-Russian unrest and separatism in the Donetsk region. But giving Ukraine some anti-tank weaponry would not meaningfully deter Moscows aggression. Russia is a massive land power, with over 20,000 tanks. The Russian state and the Russian public have both proven willing to lose troops in battle over the last two decades of vicious wars in Chechnya. Russia has many economic levers of influence over Ukraine, ones that the West could not help to match without now-unthinkable commitments of political will and ready cash. And sending arms to Kiev would play right into Putins narrative of Western meddling, which has been hugely effective in swaying its target audience: Russian-speaking Ukrainians see the U.S. as complicit in overturning a democratic result in 2015, even if their defense of the result is that they cheated to get it fair and square.

Ultimately, Ukraine is of peripheral interest to the United States and Western Europe even if annoying Russia has incredible appeal right now. Giving it arms, or extending to it a kind of quasi-membership in NATO might irritate Russia, but it would also create a new dependent for the U.S. And it could embolden Ukrainian nationalists to do something foolish, the way that Mikhail Sakashvilli jeopardized Georgia in 2007 by acting provocatively once he thought he had the backing of the West.

Punishing Russia is obviously at the top of our leaders minds. But arming Ukraine would mean escalating tensions precisely where American commitments can do the least good and are not at all credible. There are better ways to get Vladimir Putins goat. We should consider them, instead.

READ MORE: Trump and Putins Art of the Ukrainian Deal Ukraines Independence Is Under Threat Trump and Russia

Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior writer at National Review.

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Don't Arm Ukraine - National Review

The U.S. government has reportedly sought to send Javelin antitank missiles to Ukraine.But its an idea two years too late for todays battlefield, an expert on the conflict said.

As tensions mount overthe order by Russian President Vladimir Putin to expel U.S. diplomatic and technical stafffrom Russia, Defense Department and State Department officials have pushedto arm Ukrainian troops with lethal aid to counter Russian-backed separatists fighting for the self-proclaimed Donetsk Peoples Republic and Luhansk Peoples Republic.

But it remains unclear what, if anything, the delivery of an unknown number of Javelins could do to alter a battle that has mostly been relegated to artillery bombardment and nighttime skirmishes in no mans land.

This idea doesnt flow from a policy or strategy and may point to a political decision rather than military necessity, said Michael Kofman, an expert on the Ukrainian conflict and a senior fellow at the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon and State Department are looking to the White House to authorize the delivery of Javelin antitank missiles and other lethal aid to Ukrainian allies,a new wrinkle in a conflict that the United Nations has said cost about 10,000 lives since 2014.

The State Department told The Washington Post that it has not provided Ukraine with what it calls defensive weapons, a characterization not typically assigned to antitank missiles like the Javelin, but it has not ruled out the option to do so.

We are examining how to best use our security assistance going forward to bolster Ukraines ability to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity, a senior State Department official said.

Army Lt. Col. Michelle Baldanza, a Pentagon spokeswoman, offered a similar statement.

The Journal reported officials in Kiev are confident the weapons would be used in emergency defensive situations away from the front.

[On Ukraines front lines, U.S.-supplied equipment is falling apart]

A delivery of weapons, which the Journal said could also include antiaircraft weapons, aligns with Pentagon plans earmarked in the 2018 defense budgetto deliver half a billion dollars of equipment to Ukrainian troops, itself an escalation over the mostly nonlethal aid, such asHumvees, night vision goggles and surveillance drones, it has sent in previous years.

U.S. soldiers have trained alongside Ukrainian counterparts since the conflict began.

The Javelin is a shoulder-fired antitank guided missile system that uses infrared to lock on and track its targets at an effective range of just under three miles. At about 50 pounds, the warhead is light enough for a soldier to carry.It canacquire a target after parsing heat signatures by as little as a few degrees.

The Javelin fires a missileat a steep angle to rain down on top of a target, which is especially valuable when targeting tanks, Kofman said, due to relatively thinner armor at the top of the vehicles.

But tank skirmishes are relatively rare and have been since the height of fighting in 2015, Kofman told The Post. Tanks provided to separatists by Russia are now typically used as mobile artillery, far from where Ukrainian troops could feasibly infiltrate and target with Javelins, Kofman said, though they can also be used against other vehicles and fortified positions.

There is also another befuddling issue the cost, he said. There are a host of antitank weapons already in Ukraine, like the locally made Stugna-P laser guided missile launcher, or the 9M119 Refleks.

Those are acquired at a lower cost than the Javelin, Kofman said, which had a unit cost of $246,000as late as 2015.

[U.S. shifting forces to monitor large Russian military exercises, officials say]

The high cost and doubtful utility on the current battlefield suggest the Javelin procurement is about sending a message of strong deterrence from Washington.

The Ukrainians want the U.S. to provide them with a weapon as a meaningful signal in Kiev and the Kremlin, he said.

Otherwise, Kofman said, there are other urgent priorities such as encrypted communications systems and surveillance drones which would shore up the U.S.-provided aid already in the hands of Ukrainian troops, but is less advanced than the equipment used by Russian-backed separatists.

Russia has emphatically denied it lends support to the separatists.

The Russians provide equipment, some of their most modern equipment, and they provide proxy forces with advisers, said Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the top U.S. and NATO military commander, according to the Journal.

Russias response to scattering Javelins among Ukrainian ground forces should factor into the decision, Kofman said.

The Russians have a very clear policy of reciprocity, as we saw in the recent diplomatic purge. They see this as a premise of the U.S. wanting to kill Russians, Kofman said.

The answer to this wont come in Ukraine.

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The Kremlin is done betting on Trump and planning how to strike back against U.S. sanctions

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US reportedly mulls sending antitank missiles to Ukraine. It may be two years too late. - Washington Post

Ukrainian prosecutors have begun legal proceedings against the German techno band Scooter, and it faces significant legal consequences for performing at a festival in Crimea on August 4, the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany said.

Ukrainian envoy Andriy Melnyk said on Facebook and in an interview with the Funke Mediengruppe newspaper chain that the band's decision to enter Crimea, which Russia annexed illegally in 2014, was "not only a scandal, but also a crime with serious legal consequences."

The band appeared at the ZBFest rock festival in Balaklava.

"This isn't some minor infraction, but a serious crime that will be punished," Melnyk told the newspaper chain.

Ukrainian prosecutors said the band's members were warned against going to Crimea and could face up to eight years in prison.

"Such illegal actions committed by foreign citizens and world celebrities, who can...influence the opinion of their fans, impede Ukraine's efforts towards restoring its territorial integrity," the prosecutor's office said.

Scooter front man H.P. Baxxte said last month the band was going to Crimea to perform music for its fans there, not to engage in politics.

No comment was immediately available from the band on the prosecutor's charges.

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Ukraine Taking Legal Action Against German Band Over Crimea Concert - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty