Ukraine’s closest European allies are increasingly concerned about the U.S.’s ability to sustain support for Kyiv amid a thorny political spending debate ahead of next year’s presidential elections. Senior officials from Baltic nations expressed disquiet in interviews about tensions over funding in the U.S. Congress that threaten to leave Ukraine without sufficient aid to beat back Russia’s invasion, as a slower-than-expected counteroffensive grinds to a stalemate. “I am concerned about the internal political debate in the U.S. about this,” Latvian Foreign Minister Krisjanis Karins said of support for Ukraine. “It seems that some of the debaters are forgetting the importance to American security of maintaining their leading role in the world and in NATO,” he said in Brussels this week.
The White House has asked lawmakers to approve over $61 billion in additional assistance for Ukraine for the current fiscal year as part of a nearly $106 billion overall package that includes funding for Israel, operations on the U.S.-Mexico border, and bolstering allies in the Indo-Pacific. But the request faces a difficult path as a growing group of hard-line Republicans have voiced opposition to providing additional aid, led by former President Donald Trump. The front-runner for the party’s nomination again in 2024, Trump has repeatedly criticized lawmakers for providing assistance to Ukraine instead of spending the money on domestic priorities.
“The U.S. has enough military power to help Israeli armed forces and also Ukraine, but at the moment it seems that it’s more domestic politics, which affects U.S. decisions, not the real situation on the battlefields,” Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said in a separate interview. Russian President Vladimir Putin, Pevkur said, is benefiting as global focus has shifted toward the Israel-Hamas war and “the U.S. is struggling with their own decisions.” He urged the U.S. to act as it “has always been the guarantee of the free democratic world.”