Florida Representative Matt Gaetz may have left Tuesday’s House Armed Services Committee hearing more than a bit chagrined after a top Pentagon official called him out for an attempt to cite a Chinese propaganda outlet’s reporting as a reason to cut defence assistance to Ukraine.
Mr Gaetz, who has repeatedly called for the US to stop assisting Ukraine’s defence against the now year-long war against their country waged by Russian forces, was questioning Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Colin Kohl at the Tuesday morning hearing when he began asking whether the US has allowed American-made weapons to be wielded by the Azov Assault Brigade, a formation of the Ukrainian defence forces which Russian officials often claim to be a neo-Nazi militia for its use of runic symbols that were also used by the Third Reich. A provision in a 2018 spending bill actually prohibits US weapons from being used by that particular regiment.
