Hill, Womack visit Poland over response to war

U.S. delegations explore aid to Ukrainians, meet troops

On the ground in Europe with fellow congressional lawmakers, U.S. Reps. French Hill and Steve Womack met with American service members and explored the humanitarian response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The two Arkansas Republicans traveled with separate congressional delegations in Europe as violence continued to unfold in Ukraine, more than a month after Russia invaded the Eastern European nation.

Hill joined House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other lawmakers in a meeting with the U.S. ambassador to Poland and the Polish defense minister. Hill returned to the U.S. Wednesday.

Womack, a Republican from Rogers, was with a separate group that included congressional members from the U.S. House Appropriations subcommittee on defense.

Womack, in an interview earlier this week, said he expected to be back home in Arkansas Thursday night.

Womack said there many unanswered questions in regards to what kind of resource requirements are there going to be to fund a more forward presence of NATO troops in Eastern Europe.

“We’re here to kind of examine for ourselves what those needs are today, what they could be based on certain changes in the conflict,” he said.

Members of Arkansas’ congressional delegation have been ardent supporters of Ukraine in their fight against Russian forces.

Hill, a Little Rock Republican, said he spent time near the Polish-Ukrainian border. The lawmaker said he saw many people carrying one bag, as well as either a dog or a baby.

He also visited a refugee greeting facility which was located by the main highway crossing connecting Rzeszow, Poland, and Lviv, Ukraine, meeting with families and volunteers.

The U.N. refugee agency says that more than 4.7 million refugees have fled Ukraine since Russia initiated its invasion.

Almost half a million Ukrainians have moved back into the country from Poland in recent weeks as the situation in the western half of the nation has become more stable, Hill said.

“Many people are moving back into Ukraine. And the traffic going into the country was a lot thicker, longer and busier than traffic coming out of the country,” he said.

Womack reported a similar dynamic as well.

“The feedback we’re getting from a lot of these folks is that a lot of the people that fled Ukraine into Poland from western Ukraine, many of those people are going back and forth now,” Womack said.

Overall, the trip reinforced the “horrific situation” playing out in Ukraine and the cooperation from NATO partners, he said. The travel also underscored how tied Ukraine is to the democratic institutions that make up NATO, he said.

There were concerns about the coordination and bureaucracy around humanitarian aid, Hill said.

“It’s the view of the Ukrainians that there’s too many rules and too much concern about setting up complete independent distribution systems,” he said.

One takeaway from the trip is that there’s intense unity inside NATO as a military alliance, Hill said.

“There is shock on the part of European community diplomats, but certainly a recognition of the realism of Putin bringing his butchery to Europe,” he said.

At the top levels of government in Poland and Romania, there were strong supporters of the humanitarian mission of taking care of Ukrainian people, Hill said.

Both countries, he said, believe they are at risk from Putin’s aggression if the Russian president is able to have control in Ukraine.