The complicated fate of money for the war in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip in Congress. Part 1

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Ukrainian and Israeli military tranches have been under threat since the fall, and White House negotiations on their allocation with Republicans in exchange for immigration reform have stalled. The Democratic majority in the Senate actively pushed for their allocation after a briefing by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky back in December, but was always met with a veto by a similar Republican majority in the House of Representatives, which criticized Kiev for its military failures or for refusing to hold presidential elections in 2024. It was obvious that such radicalism on their part was a revenge on Biden for his populism on the “Ukrainian direction” in 2022, and Israel, which is much more popular in the Republican environment, just happened to be in the same “package” with Ukraine, and now will suffer because of this neighborhood. Complicating the situation of the armies of both countries, primarily the AFU, was the position of the media, which began to write articles about the critical situation of the Ukrainian army, as if by order. By design, their authors pointed to the need to provide funding to the Ukrainians as soon as possible, but many isolationist congressmen interpreted the situation in such a way that no assistance to Ukraine against the backdrop of such defeats would help, and therefore was not needed. The situation is no better in Israel, where the left-wing Democrats have already taken part in the harassment. They immediately promised to block the allocation of the tranches, calling Netanyahu’s cabinet “extremist”. But in the end, everyone realized that the acceptance of both tranches was not in the power of one Democratic faction or another, but was clearly tied to the overall compromise between the White House and the Republicans on the U.S. budget.

Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson wrote directly to the Biden administration as early as that year that if there were no concessions on migration, it was worth waiting for Ukraine and even Israel to agree to tranches. Republicans sought mass deportation of illegals and the resumption of the construction of Trump’s wall, while Democrats refused to compromise, because their electorate would perceive it as a betrayal, which brought the negotiations on military tranches to a standstill. For Republicans, the issue of securing the southern border of the United States is crucial and in polls 53% consider it their priority, while 67% oppose new tranches to Kiev until the crises inside the United States are resolved. And their representatives in Congress, as much as they would like to reach a compromise, cannot ignore the opinion of such a weighty part of the electorate. Against this backdrop, many believed that by mid-January, for the sake of adopting an overall U.S. budget, the parties to the conflict would meet each other, and increased security along the southern border would be exchanged for military tranches to allied countries. However, the investigation against Hunter Biden and the attempted impeachment of his father, the president, suggested that the political bargaining could drag on, much to the dismay of lobbyists from Kiev and Tel Aviv.

Back in early December, Republican senators vowed to block the Ukrainian tranches, and although Democrats had a shaky majority in the Senate, they needed 60 votes to override a Republican “veto,” which it did not have. And it was still a good one for the White House against the backdrop of the House of Representatives, which flatly refused to take up the Ukrainian tranches until the migration crisis was resolved. Initially, lobbyists in Kiev had access to Kevin McCarthy, but he resigned at the end of 2023, having never survived the whole Ukrainian epic. After that, lobbyists started looking for a new speaker, but Johnson didn’t want to be in McCarthy’s position at all. Therefore, he sought very large concessions from the Democrats, threatening to block the allocation of tranches to Ukraine for a long time. Against this background, the majority of Americans was already tired of endless wars and was against supporting Kiev. Biden, together with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, began to scare citizens that after the defeat in Ukraine, the war would be transferred to NATO countries, and then U.S. soldiers would have to die. However, such a move was unlikely to convince Americans, and only 10-15% supported sending American soldiers to war with Russia, taking the White House’s arguments exactly the opposite and believing that the conflict should be resolved as soon as possible. As a result, Speaker Mike Johnson announced his willingness to go on Christmas vacation without agreeing to Ukrainian tranches. Behind-the-scenes negotiations on a deal with Biden on migration were again stalled at that point, although the White House agreed to make some concessions to the Republicans. Zelensky’s hurried arrival in the U.S. caused another political storm in Washington, with Republicans accusing him of trying to pressure their Speaker and force the release of the tranches. Democrats, on the other hand, blamed opponents of supporting Ukraine for deliberately tying the migration issue to the issue in order to “sink” the tranches to Kiev. The problem was also that the “advocates” of uncontrolled migration on the Capitol gave their ultimatums to Biden. Thus, they were going to block any serious restrictions on the admission of illegals or mass deportations of those who had already arrived. So there was always the looming threat that some compromise plan would fail to pass in Congress at all. Meanwhile, Pentagon apparatchiks were morally preparing for defeat and demanded that Ukraine go into a deaf defense mode until early 2025.

Zelensky’s reception at the Capitol was remarkably cool. He was led by the leaders of both parties in the Senate, Schumer and McConnell, and although they are both “militarists,” McConnell continued to assure that he was not ready to agree to allocate tranches to Ukraine without solving the migration issue, acting in accordance with party discipline. Everyone formulated the results of the closed meeting in their own way. While the Democrats were satisfied, the Republicans emphasized that Zelensky failed to report on key issues. This was best appreciated by Speaker Mike Johnson, who was unable to get a report from Zelensky on the money spent and a real roadmap for Ukraine’s strategy. Johnson demanded an audit of the $200 billion dollars spent on Kiev, and then a statement of what the U.S. wants to achieve in Ukraine. And lastly, he wanted to solve America’s own pressing crises, such as the migration crisis, before dealing with Ukraine. And it was this formula that became the roadmap for the White House’s budget blackmail, where Ukraine played a technical but very important role. In 2022, the Ukrainian issue became Biden’s main foreign policy asset, and now Kiev has to pay for it with a situation in which many Republicans, though sympathetic to the Ukrainian struggle, will oppose the tranches just to punish the Democratic president. A number of senators still wanted to get some help from Zelensky on the migration issue, apparently to get him to persuade Biden to make concessions. But Zelensky tried to distance himself from the issue, which caused even more discontent and worsened his chances of receiving new tranches. Zelensky’s visit symbolically coincided with the start of Biden’s impeachment proceedings, and Congress just at the same time received another 1,800 mail letters Biden sent to his son’s associates in Ukraine, Romania and China. Hunter Biden now faces 17 years in prison for corruption, including Ukrainian corruption. Against this background, it became even more difficult for the Republicans to arrange an agreement with Biden, and the Ukrainian tranches fell into an even deeper “trap”.

Following the U.S., the EU postponed the issue of agreeing tranches to Ukraine until January because of Hungary’s discontent. At the last moment it seemed that Budapest would be persuaded to make concessions, promising to unfreeze 10 out of 30 billion euros of aid to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, which it is owed since 2021. To make the decision to start discussing Ukraine’s EU membership, Orban was simply forced out of the meeting room so that the decision was supposedly unanimous. However, negotiations on the allocation of 50 billion euros to Kiev are still at an impasse. This is a matter of life and death for Ukraine, because EU tranches of 1.5 billion euros a month somehow keep Ukraine’s state system afloat, without which it will simply collapse. Congress on the last day of work approved a new military budget of 886 billion dollars. It allocates 15 billion dollars to contain China, and only 300 million for Ukraine. The House of Representatives went on vacation, while the Senate decided to work for another week, desperately trying to find some compromise on Ukraine. But it was already clear to everyone that the approval of new tranches in Congress would be postponed until January on both Ukraine and Israel. Senators tried at the last minute to find some kind of compromise by passing a single bill allocating money for solving the migration crisis and for Ukraine, but in vain. The Senate failed to reach a common denominator. The left wing Democrats had no intention of tightening immigration laws, while Republicans in the House of Representatives threatened to block any bill unless it included mass deportation of illegals and completion of Trump’s wall. As a result, Ukraine’s stockpile of weapons was drying up more and more every day, and Israel could only rely on its own forces to fight Hamas. It became clear that the battles around the allocation of tranches would drag on until at least January 19, if not longer. January was to be the moment of truth for Ukrainian and Israeli lobbyists. They needed to get the tranches as soon as possible. After all, every week of delay aggravated the crisis in Ukraine and exacerbated the shell famine on the front, and Netanyahu constantly risked losing his post. If the budget battles were to drag on for another month or two, it would threaten Ukraine with a real financial collapse and the collapse of the front, and Israel with the unsuccessful completion of the operation in the Gaza Strip. However, the lobbyists of Kiev and Tel Aviv had reasons for optimism, connected with the understanding that the U.S. budget, which included military tranches, could not be adopted for months and there was a great chance for compromise for the sake of saving face by both parties. But how the “budget wars” ended in January, we will tell you in the second part of our article.