Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko recently advocated building intermediate-range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles to target and presumably use against Russia. No doubt Poroshenko calculated that he might gain a political advantage during the final days of a tough campaign for reelection by adopting this hawkish stance. And he may have also thought it made military sense as well. It appeals emotionally to a population that has been fighting Russia for five years with little overt progress. And since this advocacy casts Poroshenko as an aggressive patriotic defender of Ukraine, this posture might conceivably yield him political dividends.
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This handout picture taken and released by the Ukraine presidential press-service on March 14, 2019 shows Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko visiting the position of the volunteers regiment of "Azov" on the front line with the Russia-back separatists in the Donetsk region.
