Zelensky arrives at the US Congress to press for military aid to Ukraine

2023-12-12 20:20:11

The Ukrainian president Volodimir Zelensky arrived at the White House for talks with President Joe Biden on Tuesday while making a last-minute tour of Washington to continue U.S. military aid.

After conversations with congressional leaders, Zelensky emerged from a black van with flashing red and blue lights and was driven inside the West Wing, where he will meet Biden in the Oval Office.

Zelensky had gone to Congress to press for more U.S. military aid to combat the Russian invasion, but the Republican Party shows little sign of listening to his increasingly desperate pleas.

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For much of the nearly two years that Ukraine withstood President Vladimir Putin’s attack, the United States has led a Western coalition that has sent billions of dollars in weapons and ammunition.

But Republicans increasingly reject the need to finance Ukraine.saying President Joe Biden must devote more attention to homeland security, particularly stopping illegal migration across the US-Mexico border.

Republicans also question whether Ukraine should continue fighting.

Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington

Biden is a key Zelensky supporter and frames Ukraine’s war effort as part of a global fight between democracies and aggressive autocracies. But on Capitol Hill, Zelensky will face his true test when he addresses Republican and Democratic senators and meets with new Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson.

In a speech Monday at the National Defense University in Washington, Zelensky said politics should not “betray” Ukraine’s soldiers and echoed Biden in saying the fighting had global implications.

“When the free world doubts, that is when dictatorships celebrate and mature their most dangerous ambitions,” he said. “They see their dreams come true when they see delays.” “Putin must lose,” he said.

Zelensky also met with the heads of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank as he seeks to shore up his nation’s beleaguered economy.

Republicans are angry at Ukraine

Last week, Republican senators blocked a White House request for $106 billion in emergency aid, primarily for Ukraine and Israel.

Conservatives said they would reject the package for these close foreign allies unless Democrats and the White House also agreed to far-reaching immigration reforms.

A key Republican senator, James Lankford, was quoted by US media on Monday as saying that “we’re not going to be able to” reach a deal by the end of this week.

But the Republican right, led by former president and 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump, has soured dramatically in a much broader sense against the Ukraine cause.

Influential Republicans are increasingly questioning why the United States supports what they describe as Ukraine’s impossible ambition to drive back all of Russia’s invading forces.

“It is in the best interest of the United States to accept that Ukraine will have to cede some territory to the Russians and that we need to end the war,” Senator JD Vance, a close Trump ally, said on Sunday.

He dismissed as “absurd” White House warnings that allowing Russia to win in Ukraine would put other Eastern European countries, including NATO members, at risk.

There should be no “blank check” for Ukraine, Vance said.

“It is necessary to articulate what the ambition is. What are they going to achieve with 61 billion dollars that have not been achieved with 100 billion dollars?”