HS analysis|Zelenskyi did not face any surprises in the White House, but the results were weaker than expected, writes HS foreign correspondent John Helin.
The summary is made by artificial intelligence and checked by a human.
Nothing unexpected happened in Zelensky’s meetings in the United States, but the results of the visit were still weaker than expected.
The debate surrounding Zelenskyi’s visit still emphasized the importance of the US elections for Ukraine.
There is a conflict between the administration of Ukraine and the United States. Ukraine wants significant decisions before the elections, while Biden fears that they will help Trump win.
Ukrainian presidential to Volodymyr Zelensky this week’s visit to the United States to meet the president Joe Biden could have started better.
At the very beginning of the visit, the president of Ukraine was drawn into the middle of US domestic politics, when representatives of the Republican Party criticized his visit to the Pennsylvania ammunition factory.
The core issue of the visit itself, i.e. the presentation of Zelenskyi’s victory plan to President Biden, was overshadowed by criticism from anonymous official sources. According to them, the plan was mostly a repackaging of Ukraine’s previous requests, which would not significantly change Ukraine’s situation.
Even the big performances of the visit did not offer any surprises. Zelenskyi’s speeches at the UN and the White House mostly contained familiar themes about a just peace and the importance of support from Western countries.
Did Zelenskyi finally achieve anything in New York?
As one the aid packages announced by President Biden totaling around 8 billion dollars can be considered an achievement. However, they were also quite expected. Approving the aid packages in Congress was behind the work and pain for the Democrats. Thus, it was almost impossible for Biden not to use it.
It can be said that Zelensky got quite a bit out of the visit. Instead, the visit showed what kind of contradictions are connected with the war and how important US domestic policy is for Ukraine.
To Zelensky meetings with both presidential candidates highlight how important the US election is for Ukraine. Zelenskyi organized the vice president Horrible Harris meeting with in the White House immediately after the joint meeting between Biden and Zelensky.
The timing of the meeting and Harris’s speech both signal that Harris intends to stick to the line chosen by Biden in supporting Ukraine as president. The vice president also used the opportunity to criticize the Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Trump, on the other hand, was originally not supposed to meet the president of Ukraine at all during this visit to the United States. However, after the White House press conference, the meeting was unexpectedly arranged for Friday morning.
Although Zelensky’s future depends a lot on which of the candidates wins the election, which party will control the Congress and the House of Representatives after the election may be more important than the presidential election.
This is also reflected in the uproar from the visit to the ammunition factory.
House of Representatives Speaker and Republican Representative Mike Johnson demanded Zelensky to fire his US ambassador and even accused Zelensky of influencing the election. The reason was that Zelenskyi mostly met with representatives of the Democratic Party.
It may be that if Harris wins the election, Johnson’s election influence accusations will be dug out of mothballs and the Republicans will once again put the brakes on aid packages in Congress.
Zelenskyi and Kamala Harris talk on the White House balcony before their private meeting.
The election is also likely to blame for the fact that the winning plan was hardly mentioned in the speeches of Biden and Harris. None of the known goals of the plan seemed to make much progress in the White House meetings.
The removal of restrictions on the use of long-range weapons was not announced, nor was Ukraine’s NATO membership mentioned. After all, the importance of security guarantees and the impossibility of territorial cessions were hinted at in Harris’s speech.
It seems that the larger discussion of the victory plan will be postponed to the meeting of countries supporting Ukraine to be organized in Germany in two weeks.
In white a conflict simmers between the parties of the meetings organized in the house.
For Zelensky, it would have been of the utmost importance to get clear promises from the United States about supporting Ukraine before the elections and Trump’s possible election victory. Then it would be more difficult for Trump to try to get rid of the decisions that have already been made.
Biden and Harris, on the other hand, want not to rock the boat. The support packages also mainly enable the defensive battle to continue. Major new decisions such as the removal of restrictions on long-range strikes or the push for Ukraine’s NATO membership could rain down on Trump in the elections.
That would be a bad outcome for Ukraine as well.
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