The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Visiting Ukraine, Schumer pressures GOP on aid bill
Sen. Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, used a trip to Ukraine on Friday to issue a dire warning to Republicans in Congress who are blocking tens of billions of dollars in military aid to the war-torn nation, saying their continued opposition would lead directly to Ukraine’s defeat in its fight against a Russian invasion.
“Everyone we saw, from Zelenskyy on down made this very point clear: If Ukraine gets the aid, they will win the war and beat Russia,” Schumer said in an interview as he wrapped up his first official trip to Ukraine, including a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “But if they don’t get the aid, they will surely lose the war.”
Schumer, D-N.Y., and
other senators in his party met in Lviv with Zelenskyy, his newly appointed military commander, Oleksandr Syrsky, and U.S. Embassy officials. The trip was organized as an opportunity
for the lawmakers to collect on-the-ground evidence of Ukraine’s wartime needs, at a time when its military has been suffering setbacks on the battlefield.
But the political stalemate
in Washington over a new round of U.S. aid for Ukraine occupied a central role in their conversations. Ukrainian officials stressed that the more than $60 billion in military assistance that is stalled in Congress amid opposition from rightwing Republicans would make a critical difference in the outcome of the war.
Schumer promised Zelenskyy to do his utmost to persuade House Speaker Mike Johnson to drop his opposition to allowing a vote in the House on the foreign aid package.
But there is little evidence that Republicans are softening their opposition, even though Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities show no sign of abating.
On Friday, the Ukrainian air force said it had shot down 23 of 31 Russian drones launched overnight. The drones that breached Ukrainian air defenses badly damaged residential buildings, with at least three civilians found dead under the rubble of a building in the southern port city of Odesa, local authorities said.
Schumer argued that such setbacks might have been avoidable, had Ukraine already been in possession of the U.S. aid they are awaiting.
“The war has turned against them for only one reason: lack of ammunition and air cover,” Schumer said.
He noted that all the battlefield needs that Ukrainian officials named — including long-range ammunition and missile systems like ATACMS and HIMARS — were part of the foreign aid package the Senate passed earlier this month with a resoundingly bipartisan vote. And Schumer said a U.S. official he met with in Ukraine told him the Ukrainian military would not have had to abandon the town of Avdiivka earlier this month had they had that equipment.