Ekaterina Blinova

Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Washington DC has fallen short of convincing US lawmakers to approve US$61 billion in funding for Ukraine this year as per the US press.

Zelensky’s last week’s meeting with US lawmakers reportedly came in sharp contrast with his December 2022 triumphal visit when he was welcomed by a standing ovation in the House and was gifted an encased American flag that flew over the US Capitol during his visit.

This time, Zelensky got a chillier welcome at a closed-door meeting after which House Speaker Mike Johnson told the press: “What the Biden administration seems to be asking for is billions of additional dollars with no appropriate oversight, no clear strategy to win and none of the answers that I think the American people are owed”. As a result, the media outlet Bloomberg did not rule out Ukraine failing to get any more funding this year.

“Ukraine is losing all along the front,” Dr Jack Rasmus, a professor of economics and politics at St. Mary’s College in California, told Sputnik’s Critical Hour podcast. «They›re being pushed back. They›re not being provided because the US simply can›t provide all the ammunition and weapons. The days are numbered.»

“There’s coup talk in Kiev. Zelensky is feuding with his generals. He tried to fire Zaluzhny in July and they told him to go to hell. The mayor of Kiev has come out against Zelensky. Zelensky’s days are numbered and everybody knows that. And everybody knows that there’s no new offensive that Ukraine can put up. So the days are numbered there. And throwing bad money after bad is pretty obvious. But Biden is desperate. He’s got to get some money out of Congress to at least get through the next couple of months because they will run out of money for Ukraine in the next couple of months. And he’s got to get them over the hump until February.”

Rasmus believes that at the end of the day, Biden will make concessions concerning border reforms demanded by Republicans to ram the Ukraine funding bill through Congress. However, the academic expects that the final package would be far less than the US$61 billion initially requested by Joe Biden.

The next year is going to become a year of “finger-pointing” as Ukraine is set to lose big and neither Democrats nor Republicans want to parent this defeat.

“What’s going on is the Republicans want to end the war, and they can just choke it off. But Biden will say: ‘Oh, look, you lost Ukraine’. But they’ll say: ‘Oh, no, you lost it. You lost it on your watch’. So, finger-pointing time is going on. And of course, finger-pointing time is going on big time in Ukraine. And that’s a sure sign that the whole policy and strategy is bust. And it’s just a question of the turn of events in 2024 and who gets blamed, but they’re going to both be pointing fingers at each other as to who’s going to be blamed.”

Per Rasmus, the US government has a lot on its plate at home, and time is ripe for solving burning domestic issues. He drew attention to the fact that the US is “running chronic trillion and a half deficits every year.”

“Why do we have the big gap?” he said. “Well, because we’re throwing US$1 trillion a year at the defence establishment. The Pentagon gets like US$800 [billion] and then US$340 billion more for other things. The war is costing US$100 and billionUS$150 billion. Who knows how much now for Israel and Taiwan?”

Presently, the Pentagon has just US$4.6 billion in additional authority to provide weapons from its stockpiles to Ukraine, but just US$1 billion to replace them, the US media has said, adding that it’s not enough to support the Kiev regime’s military.

Meanwhile, next year’s €50 billion (US$54 billion) in Ukraine assistance from Europe is also in limbo amid opposition from Hungary. Europe is also failing to deliver on its earlier commitment to help get 1 million rounds of 155 mm ammo for Ukraine by next spring. As per Reuters, European countries have so far placed orders for just 60 000 artillery shells under the scheme through the bloc’s European Defence Agency. The small volume of orders highlights “bigger struggles” that the EU is facing while trying to deliver on its pledge, according to the media outlet.

- Sputnikglobe.com

*Ekaterina Blinova is a freelance journalist and has been a Sputnik contributor since 2014.