Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, together with his wife Olena, for a summit with US President Joe Biden. who reiterated his support for the leader of Ukraine.
“I will make sure the world stays next to Kiev“Biden told Zelensky in the Oval Office, according to journalists present.
“Abrams tanks will arrive in Ukraine next week“, Biden announced to Zelensky in the second meeting, also extended to the staff of the two leaders, at the White House. “We are beside you and we will remain beside you”, added the American president. “There is no alternative to Congress voting in favor of sending aid to Ukraine“, he then highlighted.
Zelensky for his part thanked Biden and the United States for their support in the fight against “Russian terror”. “I want to thank the Polish people and Polish society for their support. That’s all,” Zelensky said in response to a question from journalists in the Oval Office on the Polish prime minister’s announcement, partially denied by President Duda, that Warsaw will no longer give weapons in Kiev.
However, the Stars and Stripes day was not easy for the Ukrainian president: Zelensky took a beating in Washington where, despite Joe Biden’s unconditional support and the announcement of a new arms package in Kiev, the House Republicans made a wall against indefinite support for Ukraine, freezing the expectations of the Ukrainian leader and the requests of the commander-in-chief.
“If we don’t receive aid we will lose the war”, was Zelensky’s heartfelt appeal to the approximately 70 senators he met together with the leader of the Democratic majority, Chuck Schumer, and that of the Republican minority, Mitch McConnell. The Ukrainian president, in military fatigues but wearing a shirt, thanked “the senators and deputies for their support”, but avoided answering journalists’ questions. “We keep the details of our conversations to ourselves,” he declared dryly, not hiding a certain disappointment. The balance in the American Congress has changed compared to nine months ago and, especially in the House, the front of aid skeptics is increasingly broader. Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy was responsible for freezing Zelensky’s expectations and Biden’s requests by excluding, or in any case not formally committing to putting the approval of the 24 billion dollar aid package on the agenda by the end of the year, as requested by the president. “We have our own fiscal problems to deal with. There are 10,000 people who just crossed the border and the president is only thinking” about Ukraine, McCarthy attacked. On the funds in Kiev the speaker is increasingly hostage to the handful of Trumpian deputies, and not only that, and on the very day of Zelensky’s visit he suffered another defeat when a handful of Republicans scuttled a procedural vote for the second time this week to advance the defense spending bill. Another step towards the shutdown that Donald Trump asked his men to implement to sink “the corrupt Biden” and take away his funds “for the trials against me”.
McCarthy also avoided being photographed with the Kiev leader and denied him a joint session of Congress on the excuse that there was no time. In short, a completely different welcome compared to December a year ago, when the Ukrainian leader was welcomed as a hero. As if that wasn’t enough, 23 Republican representatives and six senators wrote a letter to Biden criticizing the White House strategy on the war as “unclear” and lamenting the indefinite commitment to Kiev. After Capitol Hill, Zelensky moved to the Pentagon where he had a conversation with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin with whom he laid a wreath at the September 11 memorial and took stock of the state of the counteroffensive.
The Ukrainian president’s intense day in the American capital ended at the White House with the meeting with Biden, the sixth in person between the two. In the Oval Office, the commander in chief announced his intention to send the new weapons package, naturally subject to the approval of Congress, which today seemed very far away. While reiterating his support for Kiev “for as long as necessary”, Biden disappointed Zelensky again by not including the coveted Atacms, those long-range missiles that the Ukrainian army would need to defend itself against attacks, in the list of new weapons. Russians. In the announced package there are in fact “significant air defense systems” but, for the umpteenth time, not the Army Tactical Missile Systems. “
No decisions have been made yet, but they are not out of the question,” assured National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. Officially the Pentagon says that the United States does not possess enough to share with its allies and, furthermore, that they would not make a difference to the Ukrainians at this moment in the war. In fact, Washington’s real fear is that those missiles could be used to attack on Russian territory with unimaginable consequences for Ukraine and the world.
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2023-09-21 21:59:00
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