Senior US administration officials are convinced that further American assistance to Ukraine, as well as the international reputation of President Joe Biden, depend on how successful the future Ukrainian counteroffensive will be, the influential American publication Politico concludes.
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If this offensive stalls or fails, military and economic aid to Ukraine is likely to dry up and calls for a fast-track diplomatic solution will grow, the publication predicts, based on conversations with five senior Biden administration officials.
These predictions contrast with public statements by the US administration, including Joe Biden himself, who only on Thursday, at a meeting with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, once again assured that he intends to provide Ukraine with “long-term security to prevent future aggression after this war” and that the US “there is actually funding to support Ukraine for as long as it takes.”
With all that, in its earlier material, the same publication reported that the White House considers an increasingly likely scenario in which the Russian-Ukrainian conflict can be frozen for many years or even decades, and Ukraine is divided into two parts according to the “Korean version” » . “.
In conversations with the publication, Politico interlocutors said they did not know if lawmakers would give the green light to further allocation of funds to Ukraine when the current tranche ends. At present, the majority of representatives from both parties in Congress express strong support for Ukraine and intend to continue to provide it with all kinds of assistance, including military.
At the same time, only about $2 billion of military assistance to Ukraine approved by Congress under the PDA program by the end of this fiscal year remained unspent by the end of May. This means that if additional funding sources are not found, then by the end of September, the average monthly US military aid to Ukraine will be reduced to $500 million, which is about three times lower than the average monthly since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion.
It remains unclear whether the administration will invoke the more than a year old lend-lease law for Ukraine, which has no financial limits on the amount of military aid but has so far failed to come into effect for unknown reasons.
According to Politico, there are also reports of strikes in the depths of sovereign Russian territory, allegedly carried out by Ukrainian forces, which Kyiv does not officially confirm, causing concern in Washington. This has already led to a series of private harsh reprimands sent behind the scenes to Kyiv through diplomatic channels, the newspaper reports.
The White House believes that a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive could be rendered as another foreign policy victory for Biden, which, on the eve of the battle for a new term in the presidency, will allow him to show himself as a world-class statesman against the backdrop of a chaotic jostling in the state of his future rivals in the election chase .
This makes Biden look nervously at the Ukrainian counteroffensive, believing that both the results of the war and his reputation are at stake, the publication concludes.
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.