Biden seeks $33B for Ukraine, signaling long-term commitment
WASHINGTON • President Joe Biden asked Congress on Thursday for $33 billion to bolster Ukraine’s fight against Russia, signaling a burgeoning and long-haul American commitment as Moscow’s invasion and the international tensions it has inflamed show no signs of receding.
The package has about $20 billion in defense spending for Ukraine and U.S. allies in the region and $8.5 billion to keep Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government providing services and paying salaries. There’s $3 billion in global food and humanitarian programs, including money to help Ukrainian refugees who’ve fled to the U.S. and to prod American farmers to grow wheat and other crops to replace the vast amounts of food Ukraine normally produces.
The package, which administration officials estimated would last five months, is more than twice the size of the initial $13.6 billion aid measure that Congress enacted early last month and now is almost drained. With the bloody war dragging into its third month, the measure was designed to signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin that U.S. weaponry and other streams of assistance are not going away.
“The world must and will hold Russia accountable,” Biden said. “And as long as the assaults and atrocities continue, we’re going to continue to supply military assistance.”
Zelensky thanked the U.S. in his nightly video address to his nation. “President Biden rightly said today that this step is not cheap,” he said. “But the negative consequences for the whole world from Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and against democracy are so massive that by comparison the U.S. support is necessary.”
Biden’s request to Congress comes with powerful Russian offensives underway in eastern and southern Ukraine, and pleas from Zelensky for long-range and offensive weapons. The U.S. and others have pledged to step up deliveries of such equipment, and summaries of Biden’s plan mention artillery, armored vehicles and anti-air and anti-tank weapons and munitions.
Biden said the new package “addresses the needs of the Ukrainian military during the crucial weeks and months ahead” and begins a transition to longer-term security assistance that’s “going to help Ukraine deter and continue to defend against Russian aggression.”
The proposal also comes as Russia has halted gas supplies to two NATO allies, Poland and Bulgaria, increasing anxieties that the war and its repercussions, in one form or another, could ultimately spread elsewhere.
Biden promised that the U.S. would work to support its allies’ energy needs, saying, “We will not let Russia intimidate or blackmail their way out of the sanctions.”
Bipartisan support in Congress for Ukraine is strong, and there is little doubt that lawmakers will approve aid. But Republicans said they were examining the proposal’s details, including its balance between defense and other expenditures, and would not reflexively rally behind Biden’s $33 billion figure.
South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Senate GOP leader, said that while Republicans are committed to helping Ukraine, “It’s a pretty eye-popping number.”
President Joe Biden speaks Thursday about the war in Ukraine in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington.
