Biden seeks $33B to bolster Ukraine
Request to Congress made as attacks are renewed in capital
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden asked Congress on Thursday for $33 billion to bolster Ukraine’s fight against Russia, signaling a burgeoning and long-haul American commitment as Moscow’s invasion and the international tensions it has inflamed show no signs of receding.
Russia escalated its pressure on Thursday, pounding targets from practically one end of Ukraine to the other, including Kyiv, bombarding the city while United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was visiting in the boldest attack on the capital since Moscow’s forces retreated weeks ago.
Several people were wounded in the attack on Kyiv, including one who lost a leg and others who were trapped in the rubble when two buildings were hit, rescue officials said.
Meanwhile, explosions were reported across the country, in Polonne in the west, Chernihiv near the border with Belarus, and Fastiv, a large railway hub southwest of the capital. The mayor of Odesa in southern Ukraine said rockets were intercepted by air defenses.
Ukrainian authorities also reported intense Russian fire in the Donbas the eastern industrial heartland that the Kremlin says is its main objective and near Kharkiv,
a northeastern city outside the Donbas that is seen as key to the offensive.
In making the request to Congress, Biden acknowledged the stakes of thwarting Russia’s ambitions.
“The cost of this fight is not cheap, but caving to aggression is going to be more costly,” Biden said. “It’s critical this funding gets approved and as quickly as possible.”
The request has about $20 billion in defense spending for Ukraine and U.S. allies in the region and $8.5 billion to keep Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government providing services and paying salaries.
There’s $3 billion in global food and humanitarian programs, including money to help Ukrainian refugees who’ve fled to the U.S. and to prod American farmers to grow wheat and other crops to replace the vast amounts of food Ukraine normally produces.
The package, which administration officials estimated would last five months, is more than twice the size of the initial $13.6 billion aid measure that Congress enacted early last month and now is almost drained. With the bloody war dragging into its third month, the measure was designed to signal to Russian
President Vladimir Putin that U.S. weaponry and other streams of assistance are not going away.
“The world must and will hold Russia accountable,” Biden said. “And as long as the assaults and atrocities continue, we’re going to continue to supply military assistance.”
Zelenskyy thanked the U.S. in his nightly video address to his nation. “President Biden rightly said today that this step is not cheap,” he said. “But the negative consequences for the whole world from Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and against democracy are so massive that by comparison the U.S. support is necessary.”
The U.S. and others have pledged to step up deliveries of long-range and offensive weapons that Zelenskyy has pleaded for, and summaries of Biden’s plan mention artillery, armored vehicles and anti-air and anti-tank weapons and munitions.
The proposal comes as Russia has halted gas supplies to two NATO allies, Poland and Bulgaria, increasing anxieties that the war and its repercussions, in one form or another, could spread elsewhere.
Biden promised that the U.S. would work to support its allies’ energy needs, saying, “We will not let Russia intimidate or blackmail their way out of the sanctions.”
Bipartisan support in Congress for Ukraine is strong, and there is little doubt that lawmakers will approve the aid request. But Republicans said they were examining the proposal’s details, including its balance between defense and other expenditures, and would not reflexively rally behind Biden’s $33 billion figure.
South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Senate GOP leader, said that while Republicans are committed to helping Ukraine, “It’s a pretty eye-popping number.”
The $20 billion defense portion of Thursday’s package amounts to about one third of Russia’s entire military budget and is well over Ukraine’s $6 billion defense expenditures.
Both figures are for 2021 and were compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Institute, a Swedish organization that studies defense issues.
Meanwhile, in the ruined southern port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian fighters holed up in the steel plant that represents the last pocket of resistance said concentrated bombing overnight killed and wounded more people. Authorities warned a lack of safe drinking water inside the city could lead to outbreaks of deadly diseases such as cholera and dysentery.
Ukraine’s military also said that in the Donbas region, Ukrainian forces had repelled six attacks by Russian forces over the past 24 hours.