A package bill including assistance to Ukraine and Israel passed a second procedural vote in the US Senate. Provisions on tightening control measures at the southern border of the United States were previously excluded from this document. For further consideration of the initiative in the upper house, the support of at least 60 legislators was required. As a result, 67 senators voted for the bill, 27 opposed it.

The timing of the final vote on this document in the Senate has not yet been determined. But Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer expressed confidence that work on it will be completed.

“We will continue to work on this bill until it is completed,” he said.

Schumer also thanked Republicans who supported the bill for "faithfully working on it," noting that its passage by the upper chamber is "vital." The senator emphasized that for several decades Congress has not considered a bill that “so significantly affects” not only the security of the United States and its allies, but also “the security of Western democracy itself.”

According to Democratic Senator Christopher Murphy, if the Senate fails to pass this bill, the United States will be “on the verge of disaster,” as a result of which Russian President Vladimir Putin could allegedly begin to threaten US NATO allies. 

“It was not easy to secure Republican votes to support Ukraine (including

- RT

) due to serious opposition to the financing of Ukraine from (former head of the White House 

- RT

) Donald Trump, but I think we will achieve a result," Murphy said on CBS' Face the Nation.

Republican opposition

Let us recall that on the eve of the second procedural vote on the bill, which included assistance to Ukraine, Republicans opposed providing support to the Kyiv regime.

Thus, during a meeting of the upper house on February 10, Republican Senator Mike Lee argued from the podium for four hours that the issue of financing Kyiv should be removed from the agenda.

“Can anyone tell me when Ukraine was admitted as the 51st state? I must have missed this day,” Lee noted.

According to him, the Republicans do not want to “finance Kyiv again,” since not only representatives of the Republican Party, but also “many hundreds of millions” of Americans are concerned about the situation on the southern borders of the United States due to the “full-scale invasion” of illegal immigrants.

“We cannot send billions of dollars to Ukraine while America’s borders are like a sieve... The American people should not be watching us every day and every hour so that their own government does not stab them in the back. What did he do to deserve such unreliable civil servants? What kind of grudge does our body harbor against the very people who elected us and pay our salaries?” - Lee said.

According to the senator, providing assistance to Kiev looks wrong in relation to American citizens who “live from paycheck to paycheck” in conditions where the cost of living is rising, and the United States is threatened with being drawn into a full-scale conflict with a nuclear power that could “destroy” the United States many times over .

Another reason for the senator’s indignation was the transfer of American weapons to Ukraine from the country’s military reserves, which may take “a decade or more” to replenish.

On the same day, U.S. Republican Senator Rand Paul called the bill, which he said would help the “patently corrupt regime” in Ukraine, “a direct insult to every American.”

  • US Senate meeting

  • © Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images

His indignation was caused by the fact that a number of legislators in the Senate believe that American dollars saved by abandoning the security of American borders “can be redirected to the salaries of Ukrainian officials.”

Throwing in Congress

Let us remind you that initially funds for the resumption of aid to Ukraine, as well as for support for Israel, came in one package with funding for measures to limit migration on the southern border of the United States. This document was supported by the White House, but Republicans in the lower house of Congress opposed it, promising to block approval of the bill.

House Speaker Michael Johnson called it a "failure" because it would lead to "an increase in illegal immigration." Former US President Donald Trump regarded this document as a “catastrophe.” In response to this, the head of the White House, Joe Biden, accused Trump that the billionaire was allegedly trying to prevent the approval of the initiative, using it “as a weapon” against the current administration. 

As a result, a bill to provide assistance to Israel and Ukraine, as well as to tighten control measures on the southern border of the United States, did not pass the first procedural vote in the US Senate.

After this, the Democratic majority in the upper house decided to separate the issue of providing assistance to its allies from the issue of funding US border security. As Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters on February 7, because Republicans did not agree with the wording of the bill, which would approve aid to Ukraine “along with the border provisions,” he decided to “give them a choice.”

Subsequently, on February 8, senators in the upper house overcame their differences and, by a majority vote, decided to consider a separate document related to the provision of funds to Kyiv and Tel Aviv. The initiative provides for additional budget allocations of more than $95 billion, which will go, in particular, to an aid package for Ukraine (about $60 billion) and assistance to Israel (more than $14 billion).

"No way"

As Konstantin Blokhin, an employee of the Center for Security Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, noted, Democrats in the Senate divided the issue of assistance to Ukraine with Israel and provisions on protecting the southern borders of the United States and will now “try to push through” the bill in this form. 

“The fact that this document has passed the second procedural round in the Senate is confirmation that representatives of the Democratic Party are following the trajectory of the White House’s foreign policy, aimed at supporting the Kyiv regime as part of the confrontation with Russia,” Blokhin said in a commentary to RT.

However, there is still a final vote ahead in the upper house, which the bill will be able to pass if it overcomes the protests of Republicans who do not agree with the current version of the document and oppose support for Ukraine, the expert added.

“This position of theirs is connected with the internal political struggle in the United States, the essence of which is to create problems for the Democrats, spoil Biden’s image, and accuse him of inefficient spending of American taxpayers’ money,” the analyst explained.

In his opinion, the task of many Republicans in both the upper and lower chambers is to show that the project to support Ukraine under Biden does not actually justify the colossal financial resources allocated for it. 

In turn, as Dmitry Evstafiev, a professor at the Institute of Media at the National Research University Higher School of Economics and candidate of political sciences, noted, the Republicans are clearly aware that the issue of financing Ukraine is the most vulnerable point of the current democratic administration, which will not refuse to support Kyiv “under any circumstances.”

  • Delivery of US military aid to Ukraine

  • © AP Photo/Alex Brandon

“So members of the Republican Party, including in the Senate, will hit this point. In addition, the emphasis is now placed not only on the topic of corruption in Ukraine, but also on the argument about the threat of the US being drawn into a war with Russia without complying with constitutional procedures. In fact, the Republicans are bringing the White House to discuss the constitutionality of the decisions taken by the administration. Thus, they are already laying a very serious basis for the Biden impeachment process,” Evstafiev expressed his position in a commentary on RT.

However, as the expert noted, the final vote in the Senate on the bill on aid to Ukraine and Israel will be influenced not by the arguments of Republican legislators, but by the general party discipline in the upper house.

“The most important question is whether the leaders of the democratic majority in the Senate will be able to maintain this party discipline,” Evstafiev noted.

But if in the Senate there are chances for the adoption of Biden’s “torn package” to help Ukraine, then in the lower house the document faces “bleak prospects,” Evstafiev is sure.

This view is echoed by The New York Times, which writes that the bipartisan coalition that has so far pushed the bill through the Senate “will need to hold its own for several more votes.”

“However, even if it passes the Senate, the Republican-majority House is unlikely to pass a Ukraine-Israel aid bill without provisions for the southern border, since the topic of providing additional funds to resolve the border crisis is something of an untouchable issue for Republicans. They will stand by her like a mountain. Therefore, the more likely option is that the Senate will vote for and the House of Representatives will vote against,” Evstafiev concluded.