No new resources will be given this year for her Ukraine from USA: bipartisan leaders in the Senate hinted yesterday, Tuesday, that work in Congress will end in 2023 without passing the $61 billion package requested by Kiev and the White House.

Republican and Democratic negotiators they failed to agree, despite repeated pressure from US President Joe Biden and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.

Senate bipartisan leaders Chuck Schumer, Democrat, and Mitch McConnell, Republican, said they hope to vote on the aid “early next year.”

It is yet another setback for Zelensky in a year marked by the Ukrainian counter-offensive, which did not go as well as Kiev had hoped, increasing pressure from Russia on the battlefield and the failure to release 50 billion euros in EU aid.

And the White House has already warned that “by the end of the year,” it will have “no more resources” for Ukraine.

The Ukrainian president visited Washington for the third time in a year in mid-December in an attempt to increase pressure on American parliamentarians. The US “will not betray” Ukraine, he said yesterday, Tuesday, during a press conference.

“As long as it takes”

The failure to vote for this aid is also a blow for Biden, who has reduced support for Ukraine and the strengthening of the Atlantic alliance to important pillars of his foreign policy.

To demonstrate his commitment, the Democratic president—who is running for re-election in 2024—went to Kiev in February, the first visit by an American president to a non-US-controlled war zone.

But nearly two years after the start of the war and after more than $110 billion already released by Congress for Kiev, the question of continuing this aid “as long as necessary” to Ukraine is becoming more and more pressing.

Mainly the Republicans have started to react and set as a condition for providing support for the release of the aid the tightening of the immigration policy of the USA. Consultations on the explosive issue failed to bear fruit in time.

See you on January 8th

The failure of Congress to pass this aid package does not mean the end of US support for Kiev, however.

US lawmakers return on January 8, and the Republican and Democratic leaders in the Senate say they are ready to ratify this package, which includes military, humanitarian and macroeconomic aid.

But this must also be ratified by the House of Representatives, where things are more complicated.

Its new president, Republican Mike Johnson, is not opposed to extending US aid to Ukraine, but wants it to be more circumscribed.

“What the Biden administration seems to want is (to give Ukraine) billions of dollars more without adequate oversight, without a real winning strategy,” he commented after meeting with Zelensky.

Johnson must also manage to reach a compromise with the hard right of his party, which does not want a cent more to be sent to Ukraine.

These lawmakers, who are close to former President Donald Trump, succeeded in impeaching the previous speaker of the House a few months ago, accusing him, among other things, of making a “secret deal” on Ukraine with the Democrats.

During yesterday’s press conference, Zelensky also warned that a possible return of Trump to the White House could have “serious consequences” on the war in Ukraine.