White House Announces Plan To Welcome Ukrainian Refugees

The White House announced Thursday that the U.S. will welcome 100,000 Ukrainian refugees and provide an additional $1 billion in food, medicine, water and other humanitarian aid.

At the same time, the Biden administration will expand its sanctions on Russia, targeting members of the country’s parliament, along with defense contractors.

The announcements come as President Biden and European leaders hold a series, or extraordinary emergency summits, in Brussels that was called in response to Russia’s ongoing and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

The military onslaught, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has termed a ‘special military operation’, began exactly one month ago.  

The gathered world leaders heard an impassioned plea Thursday from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for more military aid to defend his country.

He urged NATO to provide Ukraine with “1% of all your planes, 1% of all your tanks.”

“We can’t just buy those,” Zelenskyy said.

The President said more aid was on its way, but so far, the U.S. and NATO have declined to provide Ukraine with fighter planes.

They are reportedly considering providing Zelenskyy with anti-ship weaponry, out of concern Putin might be planning an amphibious assault from the Black Sea.

 “Every decision based around anything with a war going on is not simple,” said Oklahoma Senator James Lankford (R) in an interview Wednesday, “all of these are hard decisions.”

 But Sen. Lankford and other GOP Senators don’t agree with the administration’s decision not to facilitate the transfer of Soviet era MiG-29 jets from Poland to Ukraine.

“This conversation about, ‘If we add MiG-29‘s, that’s a step too far’ seems irrational to me,” said Lankford.