Correspondent in Washington
Zelensky is back in Washington to convince Congress not to abandon Ukraine. The Ukrainian president’s third visit is also the most desperate. American aid, crucial for Ukraine’s defense against Russia, is suspended by a vote in Congress, so far blocked by some elected Republican officials.
The White House last week called on both chambers to pass an emergency budget extension, warning that military aid to Ukraine risked stopping due to lack of funding. “Without action from Congress, by the end of the year we will run out of resources to purchase more weapons and equipment for Ukraine and to supply equipment from U.S. Army stockpiles , warned the budget director. We have no more money – and almost no time.” But American support for Ukraine has become a partisan issue between Republicans and Democrats. Even if a majority of Republican elected officials remain in favor of military aid to Ukraine, a wing of the party, aligned with the isolationism of Donald Trump, is now openly opposed to it. The two currents are coming together to try to obtain from Biden and the Democrats increased immigration control measures along the Mexican border.
Zelensky was welcomed as a hero during his first visit to Washington, in December 2022, after his country resisted the Russian invasion. He had been acclaimed by the assembled Congress, and few dissenting voices were raised at the time. For his second visit, last September, the political climate had begun to change. The Republican Speaker of the House at the time, Kevin McCarthy, met Zelensky, but avoided being photographed alongside him, aware of the growing opposition of some Republican elected officials to the continuation of the aid to Ukraine. McCarthy was removed from office in a vote of no confidence a few weeks later.
Zelensky’s third visit comes as funding for military aid is blocked by the Republican opposition. The White House is asking Congress to pass an additional $110 billion for national security, which includes about $61 billion for Ukraine, but also funds for Israel and Taiwan, humanitarian aid for Gaza, and the financing of measures intended to strengthen control of the border between the United States and Mexico. But Republicans are demanding more. In exchange for their vote, they are demanding radical changes to immigration policy, and in particular a tightening of political asylum procedures, currently exploited by illegal immigration networks to massively enter American territory. Biden has said he is willing to discuss the issue, but he risks alienating some Democrats if he makes too many concessions.
Zelensky and the Ukrainian cause continue to benefit from support in Washington. First that of Biden, whom the Ukrainian president is due to meet on Tuesday at the White House. Even if the American president could sometimes, according to the American media, be annoyed by his Ukrainian counterpart, demanding new military equipment without always expressing his gratitude for those already provided, Biden remains Zelensky’s best ally. The US president warned congressional Republicans against the consequences of their political games on security. “It’s staggering that we’ve gotten to this point,” Biden said, accusing them of being “prepared to give Putin the greatest gift he could hope for and abandon our global position, not only in Ukraine, but elsewhere “Extremist Republicans are playing with our national security, taking Ukraine’s funding hostage to their partisan border policies,” Biden also warned, “history will harshly judge those who turn their backs on the cause of freedom.”
The Senate remains overwhelmingly supportive of Ukraine, even if divisions are now more acute. The Ukrainian president must speak before senators, at the joint invitation of the leader of the Democratic majority, Chuck Schumer, and the leader of the Republicans, Mitch McConnell. But some Republican senators are no longer on the same line. Last week, an American intelligence briefing before the Upper House turned into an exchange of invectives between senators, and several Republican elected officials left the room. Senator J.D. Vance, who has become one of the voices of this isolationist movement in the Senate, criticized the visit of the Ukrainian president, taking up the main argument of the critics of aid to Ukraine, which according to them would be to the detriment of the U.S. Homeland Security: “Amid a historic border crisis, Zelensky comes to Washington to ask Congress to care more about his border than ours.”
But the main obstacle to financing Ukraine comes from the House of Representatives, controlled by a narrow majority by Republicans, and where opposition to Ukrainian aid is strongest. New House Speaker Mike Johnson recently rallied to support Ukraine, after voting against it twice. But he knows that he cannot afford to alienate a significant part of his majority, less and less inclined to help Ukraine, either by pure and simple opposition to aid to this country, or by refusal to offer a political victory to Joe Biden and the Democrats. “America has sent enough money to Ukraine. We should tell Zelensky to seek to negotiate peace,” wrote Matt Gaetz, the Republican representative from Florida, one of the opponents of assistance to Ukraine, and the main architect of the fall of the previous president of the House, Kevin McCarthy.
The annual session of Congress is scheduled to end at the end of the week. Barring a surprise, the vote for emergency military aid proposed by Biden appears unlikely. According to CNN, the Biden Administration only has about $2 billion left to help Ukraine, which depends on the United States for half of its military aid. American aid is particularly crucial for artillery ammunition, whose stocks are dangerously low.
