Aid to Ukraine: too little, too late?

"Just one week ago, hope looked fanciful," said The Economist. Since October last year, President Biden's proposal to spend $61 billion on aid for Ukraine (and smaller amounts for Israel and Taiwan) had "languished in congress". 

The military consequences for Ukraine, which is facing desperate shortages of artillery ammunition and air defence missiles, were dire. The CIA director William Burns warned last month of "a very real risk that the Ukrainians could lose on the battlefield by the end of 2024". 

But opposition to further US support from the isolationist wing of the Republican Party seemed insuperable. The new Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, is himself a sceptic on Ukraine, and colleagues on the right of his party had threatened to unseat him if he tabled the bill. 

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Yet last Saturday, under Johnson's leadership, the House "met the moment", passing the bill through extraordinary parliamentary manoeuvring: a majority of his own party voted against additional aid, but the Democrats were unanimous in support. As a result, $61 billion of aid is on the way to Ukraine. "It should have an almost instant effect."

'Severe setback' for Russia

Pentagon officials have indicated that US artillery shells stockpiled in Europe could be shipped to Ukraine within weeks, said Diane Francis in The Kyiv Post. 

With US missile systems likely to arrive before the expected Russian offensive in early summer, Ukraine's eastern front should soon be stabilised. And Europe's governments and military industries are now finally mobilising in support; F-16 jets are expected in June.

Russia's campaign has suffered a severe setback, said Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic. This aid package alone won't turn the tide. But "suddenly the Russian military and Russian society are once again faced with the prospect of a very long war".

A cloudy outlook

For many ordinary Ukrainians, "the aid is too little, too late", said Owen Matthews in The Spectator. In the past few months, they have lost lives, land and infrastructure because of Western dithering. They know "that their security is dependent on the political whims of their allies and could once again evaporate": Donald Trump could be elected in November, and has claimed that he would end the war in "one day".

The vote was "historic", said The Washington Post. But it was more "an inflection point than a conclusion". The rise of a "selfish, simplistic America First ideology" in the Republican Party puts Europe's security "at risk". 

US support for Ukraine is guaranteed for the next few months."Beyond that, the outlook is cloudier."