Ukrainian leader's rude awakening: In Washington, his country's destiny is a bargaining chip
Vital military aid is caught up in complicated negotiations and it's about to expire
A U.S. senator looked at Ukraine's president in a meeting and informed him: This problem is nothing personal.
He was referring to the potential expiry of American military support — tens of billions of dollars' worth of weapons transfers — that has sustained Ukraine's self-defence for nearly two years against Russian forces.
"It's got nothing to do with you," Republican Lindsey Graham told Volodymyr Zelenskyy, attempting to reassure him during his Washington tour Tuesday.
"You've done everything anybody could ask of you."
It's caught up, he explained, in a domestic American dispute. It's the poisoned politics of migration, which now risks killing a security bill lumping together funding for Ukraine, Israel and the southern U.S. border.
Meanwhile, military aid for Ukraine runs out in a couple of weeks, leading defence analysts to predict the country at war with Russia would be lucky simply to hold the territory it already has.
Zelenskyy left town without any commitments.
It was not the celebratory welcome he received just a year ago on his first Washington visit. This time, Zelenskyy was subjected to insults on social media from Donald Trump Jr. and from the head of a Trump-aligned political committee who called him an "ass" for not wearing a suit.
So is the funding package dead? Not necessarily.
The dimmest glimmer of optimism emerged from a late-afternoon meeting on Capitol Hill, which unfolded while Zelenskyy was across town meeting President Joe Biden.
4 political obstacles to a deal
At the Capitol, a few Democratic and Republican senators met with White House staff and the secretary of homeland security in an effort to find some sort of migration compromise.
While leaving the meeting, top Democratic negotiator Chris Murphy said, "We made progress." Kirsten Sinema, a former centrist Democrat that is now Independent, concurred — calling it "substantive progress."
What's left to be determined is whether that progress winds up overcoming four towering political obstacles.
One is getting a deal with the necessary bipartisan votes to pass the Senate. Then, can it pass the far more conservative Republican-led House? It will need Democratic votes, but how many will be lost in a progressive backlash? And, finally, can this happen before a looming deadline as Congress departs this week for its holiday break? Ukraine funds could run out during the holidays.
There's already fury from the left over a report the Biden administration is willing to reimpose strict expulsion rules enacted by Donald Trump during the pandemic.
If House Republicans got their way, the deal would replicate their existing legislation that completes Trump's wall with Mexico, cracks down on asylum and makes it easier to detain and deport unaccompanied migrant children.
The other thing Republicans want is clarity on what exactly the strategic objective of the United States is in Ukraine — in other words, what's the goal here?
House Speaker Mike Johnson shared an anecdote Tuesday to drive home his point that America's Ukraine plan is almost comically opaque, with the very people leading it misaligned on what they're trying to achieve.
In a radio talk show interview, he said the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine told him the goal was to have Ukraine reclaim Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014.
"And I said [to the ambassador], 'Ma'am, are you aware that that's not what your boss says?' I mean, they don't even know in the White House itself what the strategy is," Johnson said Tuesday.
Needed: Ammunition for a brutal winter
That strategy may be in flux, The New York Times reported Tuesday, as the U.S. plans to send military advisers to Ukraine next month to hold war games and map out a new plan amid fear Ukraine will lose this war.
The House Speaker did offer Zelenskyy one intangible thing Tuesday: Moral support. Johnson told him Ukraine deserves to prevail.
"I reiterated to him that we stand with him and against Putin's brutal invasion.… They're on the right side of this fight," he told reporters afterward.
Now what Ukraine wants, above all else, is ammunition.
A former Ukraine analyst at the CIA and National Security Council came back from a trip there describing that country's fears.
There are the economic fears: A monster national budget deficit after a year where the country lost almost one-third of its economy, which is one reason Zelenskyy was at the World Bank promoting his idea of using frozen Russian assets to fund the Ukrainian government.
Then there's the military fear of being pounded by Russian artillery, or having the cold of winter weaponized against it.
"They're worried about a particularly brutal winter. In terms of Russian air and missile attacks against energy infrastructure and so on," CIA and White House veteran Eric Ciaramella told the Lawfare podcast.
His own concern is that even if the war seems static now, Russia's economy is relatively resilient, and the country is massively investing in new defence production.
Optimism the mission
Zelenskyy deployed a clear political strategy in Washington: Project optimism.
The U.S. capital is notorious for proving the dictum that success breeds success as victories build political capital and attract more legislative support.
Zelenskyy emphasized Ukraine has reclaimed half its lost territory, and destroyed Russia's Black Sea Fleet. Ukraine's economy has even stabilized this year after a catastrophic 2022.
And in 2024, he said, it intends to destroy Russia's air superiority by taking advantage of partners training Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets.
The leader of Senate Republicans, Mitch McConnell, said Zelenskyy "is inspirational."
Such optimism was reinforced by the Biden administration, which released purported U.S. intelligence that Russia's tanks and soldier ranks from early 2022 have been almost entirely wiped out.
The president announced a transfer of $200 million worth of U.S. gear — the 53rd such transfer — from a previously approved fund.
"I don't want you giving up hope," Biden told Zelenskyy. Later in the day, at a news conference, the president said: "I'll not walk away from Ukraine. And neither will the American people."
Yet notes of pessimism pervaded the visit.
Give up territory? 'That's insane'
The top Senate Democrat, Chuck Schumer, shuddered at the implications of a Putin triumph, imagining that future generations might look back on it as a turning point in the ascent of autocracy.
"If Ukraine falls, it will be a historic, colossal tragedy," he said.
Zelenskyy himself was asked, by a Ukrainian reporter, about the chance of him relinquishing some of its lost eastern territory in still-hypothetical peace negotiations.
He responded with outrage. Those territories, he said, are a piece of Ukraine, home to Ukrainians, who have been killed, tortured and raped — Ukrainians who have families, and friends, elsewhere in the country.
"That's insane, to be honest," Zelenskyy replied in Ukrainian. To the people who suggest this, he said: "I ask these people, 'Are they ready to give their children to terrorists?' I think not."
He was speaking at the White House while contemplating a fate that has nothing — and everything — to do with negotiations unfolding two kilometres to the east on Capitol Hill.
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