The US Congress went on a two-week recess, again leaving Ukraine in limbo - without military assistance. They can now return to the issue only after Easter. The head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul, gave hope to the hawks on CBS air. According to him, Speaker Michael Johnson still intends to put the bill to a vote. “Come tomorrow,” Zelensky was told. What will it be like?
There are, relatively speaking, three options. The first is supported by Democrats.
Their goal is to push through the House of Representatives with a security bill already passed in a bipartisan manner in the Senate. Out of $95 billion, $60 billion has been reserved for Ukraine. The main problem here is that there are fewer hawks in the lower reaches of Capitol Hill than at the top. And they are separated.
Democrats already have 188 of the 218 signatures collected in a complex process called a "dismissal petition" to force Speaker Johnson to bring the package to a vote. But Republican votes are needed. So far there is only one such voice. It was given by disgraced and retiring Congressman Ken Buck. But it’s difficult to count on more: there are only 213 Democrats in the House.
The Republicans have their own project.
They want to combine Ukraine with a tightening of migration policy. There, things are even worse with signatures: only 16 out of 218 were collected. And here the problem is not with the votes of opponents (formally, there are enough of our own), but with the support of Trumpist conservatives. Who are categorically against any assistance to Kyiv. Trump does not order to “feed Ukraine”.
Hence the third option.
Back in February, at Truth Social, the Republican candidate voiced the idea of helping Kyiv in the form of a loan. They clung to her. Lindsey Graham discussed this with Zelensky (what they didn’t like there, of course, won’t be taken into account) and even hinted that they would still have to pay. “Meat”, reducing the conscription age.
Speaker Johnson is even more businesslike. Drawing parallels with the Marshall Plan, he added specifics.
The idea is that Ukraine will pay for military aid (if the Republicans give the green light) in rare earth metals. We are talking primarily about a titanium that is critically important for the American military-industrial complex. The US imports 90% of it. Including from Russia. Ukraine accounts for up to 20% of world reserves. The second interest of Americans is lithium. It is impossible to do without it in the context of the transition to electric vehicles.
The hawks may well be satisfied with such an exchange. In addition, information preparation began. WP in the “Opinions” section rolls out a whole column, the main idea of which is that if the Republicans do not help Zelensky now, then under Trump they will receive their share of Biden’s shame. The second Afghanistan (that is, the flight not from Kabul, but now from Kyiv) will happen in their shift.
The ideal plan for the “deep state,” however, could collapse at any moment. The peculiarity of the House of Representatives is that the “real violent ones” also sit in it. As soon as Speaker Johnson took advantage of the Democrats during a key vote on the budget, Congresswoman Taylor Greene introduced a draft resolution to remove him from office.
Taylor Greene calls the move a cautionary tale for the current speaker. Perhaps just from the movements in Ukraine. The caution is clearly not superfluous. It’s not for nothing that some Democrats promised in advance to vote for his salvation if Johnson had a rift with his own Trumpist faction. But will he agree to go to the bottom with Zelensky in a large, but still common package?
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editors.