The White House has asked the United States Congress $21 billion (19,000 million euros) in military aid for Ukraine. Of that amount, 61.9% (about 12,000 million euros) is in military aid, and the rest (about 7,300 million) for the reconstruction of the country. To date, the United States has entered Ukraine 70,699 million eurosof which 60.5% correspond to military aid, according to data from the German think tank Institute for the World Economy in Kiel.
The request comes just as the latest aid package, approved in January worth more than $35 billion, is about to run out. In reality, the Joe Biden government’s plan was for that budget to run out of funds in June or July, but the detection of an accounting error when valuing the weapons transferred from the warehouses of the US Armed Forces has made it possible to discover that the material given to Kiev was actually nearly €5.7 billion short of budget. That allows Washington to continue supplies until probably the end of September. Thereafter, if Congress does not approve more funds, the US will have to drastically cut military cooperation with Ukraine.
That’s where the request comes from. Joe Biden’s team is confident that this will be approved by Congress next month, so that the airlift to kyiv will be maintained. But the US government is also aware that popular support for Ukraine has eroded. Although he denies it to the public, behind closed doors the White House is very concerned about a survey by the CNN television network that reveals that 51% of Americans oppose the delivery of more aid a Kiev.
This lower support reinforces the positions of the most nationalist wing of the Republican Party, which sympathizes with Vladimir Putin. Thus, the main candidate of that party for the 2024 elections, Donald Trump, continues without saying if he wants Russia or Ukraine to win, and his coreligionist in the Senate, Tommy Tuberville, boasted on Thursday that he is going to vote “no” to the new aid. Tuberville is a conservative who has blocked the appointment of hundreds of top military commanders – including the commander in chief of the Marines – for his opposition to the Armed Forces paying for abortions or sex changes for soldiers, for which he is close to the Vladimir Putin’s policy on gender issues.
American weariness in Ukraine is also due to the absence of encouraging news from the front. Although the Biden government insists that the Kiev counteroffensive is making progress, the advances in the south of the country are only a few hundred meters per day. Until this step, it is impossible for them to achieve a break in the Russian defensive lines that would allow them to even get clearly close to the cities of Mariupol y Melitopolyour two targets in this operation.