No new American funds for Ukraine in 2023: the heads of the United States Senate noted on Tuesday the fact that Congress would end the year without validating the envelope of 61 billion dollars insistently demanded by kyiv and the House -White.
Republican and Democratic negotiators have not reached an agreement, despite repeated pressure from US President Joe Biden and calls from his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.
The leaders of the Senate, Democrat Chuck Schumer and Republican Mitch McConnell, said they hoped to be able to vote on this aid “early next year”.
This is one more disappointment for the Ukrainian president, in a year marked by the disappointed hope of a major counter-offensive, the increased pressure from Russia on the front and the failure to release aid of 50 billion euros by the European Union.
And the White House has already warned that it will “run out of resources” for Ukraine “by the end of the year”.
Volodymyr Zelensky came to Washington in person – his third trip to the American capital in a year – in mid-December to try to increase the pressure. The United States “will not betray” Ukraine, he hoped during a press conference on Tuesday.
“As long as it takes”
It is also a severe snub for Joe Biden, who has made support for Ukraine and the strengthening of the Atlantic alliance two major markers of his foreign policy.
To illustrate this commitment, the Democratic leader, candidate for re-election in 2024, even went to kyiv in February – the first trip by an American president to a territory at war not controlled by the United States.
But almost two years after the start of a war which is getting bogged down – and more than 110 billion dollars already released by Congress – the question of the continuity of this support, “as long as it takes”, to Ukraine, arises with more and more insistence.
Republicans in particular began to find the bill too steep. And they had conditioned their support for this new package on a drastic tightening of American migration policy. Negotiations on this explosive issue, however, did not end in time.
Aware that the sense of urgency has faded in Washington since the start of the war in 2022, President Biden had asked Congress to combine his request for aid for Ukraine with another of around 14 billion for Israel, ally of the United States in war against Hamas.
So far, in vain.
See you on January 8
Since the start of the conflict, the Kremlin has been banking on the decline in Western aid, and any hesitation from kyiv’s allies reinforces Russia’s belief that its bet will be a winner.
The failure of Congress to pass this envelope does not, however, signal the end of United States support for kyiv.
American parliamentarians return to school on January 8, and the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate have only stated their intention to validate this envelope, which includes a military, humanitarian and macroeconomic component.
It is in the House of Representatives, which must also approve these funds, that things become complicated.
Its new president, Republican Mike Johnson, is not opposed, in principle, to extending American assistance, but claims that it is not sufficiently regulated.
“What the Biden administration seems to want is billions of additional dollars without adequate supervision, without any real victory strategy,” he asserted after his interview with Volodymyr Zelensky in mid-December.
The conservative speaker also has to deal with the hard right of his party, parliamentarians who no longer want to send a single cent to Ukraine.
These elected officials, close to former President Donald Trump, dismissed the last speaker only a few months ago, accusing him, among other things, of having concluded a “secret deal” on Ukraine with the Democrats.
During his press conference on Tuesday, Volodymyr Zelensky also warned that a return of Donald Trump to the White House could have a “strong impact” on the war in Ukraine.