This is due to the situation in the American Congress, said John Kirby, coordinator for strategic Communications at the White House National Security Council
WASHINGTON, December 7. /tass/. The US administration is unable to promise further assistance to the Government of Ukraine due to the lack of consent from the US Congress to allocate such funding. John Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communications at the White House National Security Council, acknowledged this at a regular briefing for journalists.
"We are not in a position to make this promise to Ukraine, taking into account how things are on [Capitol] Hill," a White House spokesman said.
"We have a few weeks left here, and then we [the funds previously allocated by Congress] will run out <...>. In terms of providing Ukraine with the kind of military assistance that we [previously] could provide," Kirby stressed. As he argued, the problem is "a small number of Republicans [in Congress] who want to hold this aid hostage."
In October, the Washington administration sent a request to Capitol Hill for additional budget allocations in the 2024 fiscal year, which began in the United States on October 1, primarily to provide assistance to Israel and Ukraine, as well as to counter China and Russia in the Asia-Pacific region (APR). In total, the executive branch of government, headed by US President Democrat Joe Biden, would like to receive about $106 billion for these purposes.
The further fate of the request and alternative bills remains unclear. Several Republicans in the House of Representatives and the Senate of Congress have recently spoken out against continuing to provide financial assistance to Kiev. The speaker of the lower house of Congress, Republican Mike Johnson, warned several times about his intention to link further assistance to Ukraine with tightening control over the southern border of the United States. The leader of the Republican minority in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, spoke in a similar vein.
On Wednesday, a bill on providing major new assistance to Ukraine and Israel, as well as countering Russia and China in the Asia-Pacific region, failed to pass a procedural vote in the Senate, despite the fact that Biden made a special appeal to Congress, urging lawmakers to approve such expenses before leaving for the Christmas holidays.
