US President Joe Biden has launched an urgent appeal to Congress to approve new aid funds for Ukraine. That supply “cannot wait,” he declared in a televised message from the White House. The senators are preparing to decide this Wednesday whether they accept to vote on the Government’s request for 105,000 million dollars (about 97,000 million euros) in assistance to the invaded country, Israel, Taiwan and the border with Mexico, but the deep divisions between Republicans and Democrats make a “no” to the measure foreseeable.
The failure of the vote would be “the best gift” that Russian President Vladimir Putin could receive, according to Biden. Without American support for Ukraine, the Kremlin’s tenant could dominate the invaded country and “would not stop there,” he explained. Russia could harass countries on NATO’s eastern flank to the point of forcing the application of Article 5, which requires the nations of the Atlantic Alliance to intervene militarily in the event of an attack against one of its members. “We would be faced with a situation that we neither desire nor seek: that American troops would have to fight against Russian troops” on European soil, the American president has stressed.
Biden’s intervention is part of an intense campaign by the White House in recent days to obtain approval of these funds, which include $61 billion to help Ukraine repel the Russian invasion. The president of the United States met by videoconference this Wednesday with the leaders of the rest of the G-7 countries to reiterate his government’s support for kyiv. On Monday, the presidential office warned that the funds available to Ukraine will run out this month and, without new weapons and ammunition, the invaded country risks losing what has been achieved in almost two years of fighting. Senior Ukrainian officials visiting Washington have reiterated the same peremptory call: if assistance is not renewed, Ukraine risks losing the war.
To approve the provision of funds, Republicans – including those who support aid to the invaded country – demand that measures be included to tighten US immigration policy. Democrats assure that they are willing to address immigration reforms—an issue on which the two parties have not been able to agree for decades—but not to make concessions with the level of toughness demanded by the opposition.
The leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, Charles Schumer, has offered to present simultaneously in the plenary session the request for funds from the White House and a bill to combat fentanyl trafficking. Schumer has declared himself willing for Republicans to include an amendment, drafted by them, on border security, to further control arrivals from Mexico.
The intensity of the dispute had become clear a day earlier: a closed-door briefing in which the White House was going to explain to senators from both parties the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine degenerated into a fight over shouts among parliamentarians about the security of the border with Mexico. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was also scheduled to intervene in that same session by videoconference from his country, although his participation was canceled at the last minute for unclear reasons.
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The leader of the Republican minority in the upper house, Mitch McConnell, one of the great defenders of aid to Ukraine – which he considers essential to protect American national security – has urged the parliamentarians in his caucus to reject the request. “I hope all of our members will vote no on the motion (for the Senate to debate and vote on the funding request) to make clear, hopefully for the last time, that we insist on meaningful reforms to border policy.”
Both parties are slaves to their voters in this debate. Republicans demand toughness on the border in the face of the drastic increase in entries of irregular immigrants seeking asylum during Biden’s mandate, one of the issues that most concern his supporters. And they also seek to respond to the growing unpopularity of the Ukrainian cause among their supporters, when the campaign for the US elections next November is about to formally begin. The United States is the main supporter of Ukraine, to which it has allocated $67 billion, but Republicans consider that kyiv has already received enough assistance for a war to which there is no end in sight.
For their part, the Democrats, who almost unanimously support aid to the allied country, must exercise a delicate balance. Its progressive wing resists imposing measures that restrict immigration, and demands, on the contrary, steps to normalize the situation of irregular immigrants within the country. But at the same time, legislators from the moderate wing who are running for re-election next year in hinge or Republican-leaning states demand that initiatives be taken to control entry into the country, under penalty of losing their seats in the elections.
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