US lawmakers close to agreeing £49bn of long-delayed military funds for Kyiv
US lawmakers will try to push through a £49billion arms and aid package for Ukraine tonight, ending a seven-month deadlock as Russian troops make gains.
But the funds are threatened by America’s convoluted partisan politics, with isolationist Republicans voting against military support amid a bitter fight for control of their party.
America’s long-running failure to approve an aid package has hindered Ukraine’s ability to fight the Russian invasion, with dwindling ammunition and air defence missile supplies.
Abandoning Ukraine could also send a message to Russia and China that the US does not fulfil its promises to support allies, encouraging further incursions across the globe.
Aid for Ukraine has been a ticking time bomb since August 2023, when President Joe Biden called for Congress to renew its military and humanitarian support, only for Republican in-fighting to sabotage the deal.
A Ukraine aid bill that included provisions to strengthen US border security was killed in early February by Senate Republicans at the urging of former president Donald Trump.
He wanted to deny Mr Biden a victory on immigration and claimed he could do better if returned to the White House in the November election.
The US Senate in late February approved a £49billion spending bill for Ukraine as part of a £72billion package including aid for Israel and Taiwan, but only after 22 Republican senators defied Trump and voted with Democrats.
Despite multiple pleas for help from Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, above, the bill was not ratified by the House of Representatives, after Republican leaders there refused repeated calls to put the package to a vote.
Republicans’ traditional hawkish support for foreign involvement is increasingly ceding ground to Trump’s “America First” nationalism, concerned that billions are being spent on foreign aid rather than in bolstering US military readiness. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, led a group threatening to oust Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson if he approves the Ukraine aid. She called for mandatory conscription in the Ukraine military for any Congress member voting for the package. House Democrats have offered to protect Mr Johnson, but ironically Democrat support, which yesterday helped guarantee tonight’s vote goes ahead, may be a poison pill that dooms him in the eyes of Republicans.
“I am not resigning,” he insisted on Tuesday, after a heated meeting with fellow House Republicans. Mr
Johnson’s solution to the impasse was to split the Senate’s £72billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan into three bills to be voted on separately tonight. This cobbles together bipartisan support with different factions of Republicans and Democrats on each measure.
Yet opposition to Ukraine aid remains strong. Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Scott Perry said: “While we always want to help our allies, what are we doing for the American citizens?” But Connecticut Democrat Rosa DeLauro urged: “We cannot retreat from the world stage under the guise of putting ‘America First’.”
And Oklahoma Republican Congressman Tom Cole warned: “If we don’t help our friends in time of need, soon enough, we won’t have any friends at all.”
Russian strikes overnight killed eight people, including two children, and injured 18 in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.
Fire crews battled a blaze caused by the missile attack in Dnipro.