Senator: U.S. 'obsessed' with giving lethal arms to Ukraine

© AP Photo/ Chairman of the Joint Chiefs

The United States has become engrossed in the debate over providing lethal arms to Ukrainians, US Senator Chris Murphy said at a US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.

"We are obsessed with this question of providing arms to the Ukrainians," Murphy stated on Wednesday. "It matters, but it is obsessive within the American context because [providing weapons] is one of the few tools we have to try to blunt and combat Russian aggression in the region."

The democratic Senator generally supports efforts to provide the Kiev government with weapons, but still has reservations as such US action would be "relatively unprecedented" in the history of US relations with Russia.

Murphy explained that a decision on the part of the United States to arm Ukraine "would be a change in the policy we have traditionally observed over the long course of the past 100 years" toward Russia.

"Let's just acknowledge that during the Cold War... we didn't do this," Murphy noted, referring to US restraint in providing "overt arms" to opponents of the Soviet Union during the Hungarian uprising and the war in Afghanistan.

In December, the US Congress authorized $350 million to arm Kiev. However, US President Barack Obama has not enacted the legislation. Other pieces of legislation are currently pending in the US Congress aimed at putting additional pressure on the Obama administration to provide arms.