T. Belman. Biden invited Zelensky to address Congress as he thought it would help get the $1.7 T Omnibus Bill passed. Afterwards, Putin said that he had given up all hope of a peaceful settlement. The $45 B that was approved for 2023, was for economic and security assistance only. It will do nothing to change the outcome of the war. Watch this Video.
Ukrainian president’s address to Congress highlights splits in GOP over financial support for the country
By Natalie Andrews and Lindsay Wise, WSJ 22.12.22
WASHINGTON—Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s address to Congress in a joint meeting showcased the divide between Republicans who want to support the beleaguered nation’s fight against Russia and those who have become critical of the billions in aid money the U.S. is sending.
Making a direct appeal to lawmakers Wednesday in his first trip outside his country since Russia invaded last February, Mr. Zelensky said that aid to Ukraine wasn’t charity, but “an investment in the global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way.”
President Biden said at a news conference with Mr. Zelensky that the U.S. would continue to support Kyiv in the fight. Part of Mr. Zelensky’s purpose was to reach Republicans who are critical of sending what they have called a “blank check” to Ukraine through supplemental appropriations bills. The latest, set to be approved this week, would provide $45 billion to Kyiv for economic and security assistance.
While there are several Republicans who praised Mr. Zelensky for his speech on Wednesday night and would continue to support him, many others said they were wary of sending more assistance.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.), the Republicans’ top pick for House speaker, is trying to win backing from conservatives who have grown wary of continued support. After Mr. Zelensky spoke, Mr. McCarthy said it was a “good speech” and added: “I support Ukraine, but I never support a blank check.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed a joint meeting of Congress on Wednesday.PHOTO: WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES
“We would want to have a stand-alone bill, that you could talk about, what is the strategy? Where’s the audit?…We want to be able to have input” in how the money is spent, Mr. McCarthy told reporters about what it would take for House Republicans to pass more aid money.
In Mr. Zelensky’s meeting with top Congressional leaders, Mr. McCarthy asked Mr. Zelensky how the fighting was on the ground and how the winter would affect the war. He also inquired about the use of Iranian drones and Russia’s weaponry, according to a person familiar with the conversation.
Next year, a Republican-led House would have to negotiate with a Democratic-led Senate and Mr. Biden on spending bills. Republicans are set to have a narrow majority, holding 222 seats to 212 for Democrats, with one vacancy, so Mr. McCarthy will need near-unanimous support from his party to be elected speaker.
“Hemorrhaging billions of taxpayer dollars for Ukraine while our country is in crisis is the definition of America last,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.), a McCarthy critic, who attended the speech on Wednesday evening.
House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, right, with House Minority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise at Mr. Zelensky’s address to Congress on Wednesday.PHOTO: WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES
Others who have said they don’t support more money for Ukraine, such as Rep. Thomas Massie (R., Ky.) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.), didn’t.
“This is a very expensive proposition, and Americans are always reluctant to get ourselves engaged over a long period of time and other people’s circumstances,” said Sen. Jerry Moran (R., Kan.). “So for the president of Ukraine to be here to tell us the difference that we’re making, I think is very useful.”
Oleksiy Arestovych, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, said one of Mr. Zelensky’s main goals was to show Republicans “that Ukraine is fighting for Western values. We’re fighting for values which were always the calling cards of the Western World.…Putin does not represent conservatism.”
Many lawmakers are worried that after this week’s spending bill, the path for passing additional aid through Congress will get more difficult.
“I’m concerned that House Republicans are going to split hairs and are going to be willing to only support certain kinds of assistance,” such as weaponry but not economic aid, said Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), who noted the money should last Kyiv through the better part of next year.
Several Republicans have called for an audit on where the money that Congress has approved so far has been spent.
Reps. Lauren Boebert (R., Colo.) and Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) attended Mr. Zelensky’s address to Congress on Wednesday. PHOTO: ERIC LEE/SHUTTERSTOCK
Rep. Victoria Spartz (R., Ind.), a Ukrainian-born congresswoman, said she thought Republicans would continue support to Ukraine, but echoed the call from others in her party that there needed to be more accountability from the Biden administration in how the money Congress allocated was being spent.
“If Congress can audit President Trump, then it can audit Ukraine funding,” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R., Ariz.) on Twitter.
Bipartisan calls in recent months to create a special inspector general aimed at overseeing future aid packages to Ukraine have drawn some resistance from the Biden administration.
A number of lawmakers, including Rep. Jason Crow (D., Colo.), said the creation of a special watchdog for Ukraine aid would increase transparency, accountability and oversight of U.S. military activities that resulted in civilian harm during overseas military operations.
However, U.S. officials and congressional staffers said the proposal from a handful of lawmakers has received pushback from the administration, which believes the additional oversight is unnecessary. There is currently a joint effort between the inspectors general at the Pentagon, State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development to oversee and track Ukraine funds, both military and otherwise.
—Vivian Salama and James Marson contributed to this article.
Hi, Sebastien
It’s the UN that gave legitimacy to Ukraine’s 1992 border, and the Great Powers that gave legitimacy to the UN. Arguments about the ethnicity of inhabitants are games, which I don’t find it worth my time to play here.
You are correct, that US taxpayers are bearing an enormous burden for the Ukrainian War and other adventures. So? Is supporting the mega-criminal Putin and criticizing the puppet Zelenskyy going to somehow stop this corruption in DC? It is not.
The WEF, CIA, FBI and others effectively control the US, the Ukraine, China, Putin, Israel and the world. No matter how you, Ted or anyone try to reshuffle the sock-puppet figurehead leaders in these countries, or shift international boundaries back and forth, the misery will continue (and increase, it seems).
God is the only one who can address this mess. Do you think God cares about all the abominations of transgenderism, adultery, abortion, etc.? If you do (and I do), then can you honestly think He will call for a “pass” on our political, health and economic problems while we turn a blind eye to these things? Every country on the planet is corrupt from bottom to top, and we are all ripe for judgment. We will be judged for our own deeds, not Zelenskyy’s, Netanyahu’s or Putin’s.
Turbulence ahead. Buckle your seat belt.
@Michael
I am in complete agreement. We should tend our own garden by which I do not mean continued subsidies to the military industrial complex and American politicians and associated entities notably the Clinton Fund.
They are throwing people off Medicaid to pay for this war.
@Michael The people of Eastern Ukraine are Russians. The Soviets moved peoples and borders about like chess pieces. When it was all part of the Soviet Union it hardly mattered. You are seriously citing them as an authority? This war went on for 8 years before Russia finally got involved.
The Ukrainian Constitution of 1992 granted them cultural autonomy. .The Maidan fascists threw that out the window.
Hi, Sebastien.
I don’t seriously think Ukraine will be annexed by Turkiye (though the part currently claimed by Russia is historically Ottoman territory). I just threw it in the mix. Literally, God knows what will happen there; but from what I see, the American people have no vital interests in the former USSR.
Sebastien, Ukraine’s 1992 borders exactly correspond to those of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic that preceded it — when the Ukr. SSR was recognized as a sovereign state member of the UN. Except in fantasy, it’s hard to find anything more legitimate than that.
Hi, Tanna
Zelenskyy can only do what his CIA masters tell him to do. If he disobeys, he’s toast.
@Michael
@Michael S. Ukraine’s 1992 borders are illegitimate. Russia doesn’t want Western Ukraine which is to say, actual Ukraine which is completely intolerant of Russian, and I might add Hungarian majority areas and resorted to genocide in the case of the former. They might not be coming for the Jews yet, this time around, but otherwise they have been behaving like Nazis towards Russians. 14,000 dead in 8 years. I went back and forth on this but I’m rooting for Russia now.
And you are wrong about Russian withdrawal ending the war. The Goal of Zelensky and the US uniparty led by Biden is regime change in Russia because, believing their own propaganda, they blame Putin and Russia for Trump winning in 2016.
It’s like the McCarthy era morphing into the Vietnam War.
Michael,
one thing you forgot.
Zelensky could stop fighting and take our 47 billion + and rebuild his country. Then Putin, would have no reason to keep fighting. Zelensky, Nato and the west started it.
Just more speculation, for what it’s worth. Let’s look at someo scenarios:
1. Status quo. Continuing war; Probable world-wide economic collapse in 2023, if not nuclear war.
2. Zelenskyy flinches: He is replaced by the CIA, and the war continues.
3. Putin flinches: Ukraine becomes a NATO member, and is subsequently abandoned by the US. Russian-backed insurgency in the Ukraine.
4. Turkey annexes Ukraine. This has possibilities!
Sebastien,
As a matter of pure intellectual curiosity, which everyone here seems to be engaged in anyway, Zelenskyy has no territorial ambitions beyond Ukraine’s 1992 borders. Putin, on the other hand, wants to restore the Soviet Union. What Biden wants is immaterial — he wants the whole world, so nothing will satisfy him. All that said, there is no profit in this war, no matter who wins, for the American taxpayer. If they come to some agreement there, fine! If they eat each other up, possibly better! We have more pressing problems to deal with.
Sebastien,
Nothing that you said negates what I said. If Putin quits Ukraine, the war ends — period.
@Sebastien
I would suggest that their war aim has never changed, as this was the reason why both the conflict in the Dombas and the Russian invasion was so obstinately provoked. There was no chance that NATO did not know the ultimate repercussions of vitiating the Bucharest Memorandum with the overthrow of the legitimate govt in Kiev and replacing it with a Western puppet govt. There is likewise no chance that they did not know the ultimate repercussion of placing a NATO trained, armed and funded army of over 120K troops on Russia’s border actively slaughtering ethnic Russians. They knew the obvious repercussions of both of these actions, because Russia warned them of the result of such actions, not in 2022, and not in 2014, but in 2008. NATO knew what they were doing, and they did it in any event because regime change and open conflict has always been their goal.
In his speech, Zelensky said Americans would operate the requested systems. This is like the beginning of Vietnam.
@Michael S. The NATO war aim has changed. Now Biden, Zelensky, and various Dems and Republicans in Congress have declared that destroying Russia and overthrowing Putin is the goal. And the Ukrainian shelling of Donbass continues. They’ve killed more than 14,000 people since the 2nd NATO-backed coup 8 years ago. The Senate just passed a 1.7 trillion spending bill that includes another 45 billion for Ukraine. Unless the Republicans can filibuster – leading to a government shut down – it will go through before the House changes hands. Without a decisive Russian victory, there is no end to this war on the horizon. It could conceivably go on for years or lead to nuclear conflict and WW3. Or a global depression.
Every day Putin refuses to withdraw, prolongs the conflict.
The split among the Reps should be recognized as significant, and not based on funding Ukraine’s anti-Russian war. Rather, it should be recognized as being the split over the support for the money laundering grift which is the West’s main interest in the Ukraine. The Uniparty Reps actually have more in common with the Dems than they have with their MAGA colleagues. This is why the leadership manipulated funding to help undermine MAGA candidates and actually supported the fraud which cost them a majority in the Senate and a super majority in the House.
The three Mc’s have to go – McConnell, McDaniels, and McCarthy. They are the arbiters of power and financing in the Rep party, and they are the source for the lack of any legislative success by the Rep party. As the Dems use money to buy power and create legislative successes for their corrupting policies, the Reps use power to simply raise money and maintain a slim to no margin of majority to excuse their policy of political failure, which in turn keeps the Rep voters desperate to raise more money for their never achieved victories. These are the two wings which allow the Uniparty to run roughshod over the American people. Their common interersts are why the corruption is so deeply vested throughout all the US institutinons and why it has been so difficult to address the well exposed corruption.
In any event, though, Ukraine is but the most recent rendition of a long held policy of money laundering wars, and its continued funding must be blocked just as McCarthy must be removed from office.
LIAR! Ukraine supports Nazi ideology. They train and maintain Nazi battalions. They have suborned kidnapping, rape, torture and ransoming by the SBU, their state police, and their radicalized Battalions, and not just Azov. Ukraine still permits the publication of a Kill List in which a number of journalists and politicians names are listed and many have been successfully executed – among recent additions was Kissinger’s nameafter he called for peace negotiations, along with numerous other Western polititians (including Rand Paul) and Western journalists. Are these the Western values for which Ukraine fights? Whereas the West has overthrown, supported, trained, funded and armed Ukraine, Ukraine does not fight for Western values, even as they are fighting a war of the West’s making.
In the US, street beggars have signs saying things like,
“HUNGRY. Anything helps”
It’s not often, that we see them begging for $100,000,000.
Freudian typo. I meant to type, “pitches,” as in advertising, but the clock was running out. 😀
For flag, motherhood, and apple pie. In America.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/flag,_motherhood_and_apple_pie
In Israel, it was for gratitude for all The Ukrainians who saved Jews during the Holocaust (which is also what Ilhan Omar said about the Southern Syrian, sorry, Palestinian Arabs.)
Be funny if somebody did a survey of all his putches country by country. 😀