A year ago, when Washington and much of Europe were still awash in optimism that Ukraine was on the verge of repelling Russia from its territory, it seemed inconceivable that the United States would turn its back on the victim of Vladimir V. Putin’s aggression.
Now, even as Senate Democrats try to salvage an aid package for Ukraine, that possibility remains real. And the political moment feels a long way from 14 months ago when President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine stood before a joint session of Congress, wearing his signature drab green sweater, and basked in a minute-long standing ovation.
The turnaround has surprised the White House. Even if the Senate manages to advance military aid, there are still plenty of reasons to doubt that the money will come through, including deep opposition among Republicans in the House and former President Donald J. Trump’s push for a more isolationist stance.
President Biden’s aides insist they are not yet scrambling for other options.
“We’re not focused on Plan B,” Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, said in Brussels on Wednesday after a NATO meeting with his counterparts. “We’re focused on plan A,” which he said meant passing a bipartisan aid package that will enable Ukraine to “defend effectively and to take back territory that Russia currently occupies.”
But behind the scenes there is a lot of discussion, in Washington and Europe, about other options, including seizing more than $300 billion in Russian central bank assets that are stashed in Western nations — a process that is turning out to be a lot more complicated than it first seemed.
Still, American officials concede there is nothing on the horizon that could match the power of a new, $60 billion congressional appropriation, which would buy bolstered air defenses, more tanks and missiles, and a huge influx of ammunition.
And, they add, the symbolism of America pulling back now could be profound.
European officials who have been dreading the possibility that Mr. Trump might be re-elected and make good on his promise to withdraw from NATO are beginning to wonder, at least in private, about the reliability of the United States, no matter who is president.
If Republicans are willing to abide by Mr. Trump’s demand that they vote against continued aid to Ukraine, one senior European diplomat in Berlin asked on Wednesday, why would Europe rely on Mr. Biden’s assurance that the United States would “defend every inch” of NATO territory? Even some of Mr. Trump’s former national security aides — the ones he long ago split with — are beginning to say that a failure to fund Ukraine would amount to a huge strategic win for Mr. Putin.
“The United States has a clear choice: arm the Ukrainians with the weapons they need to defend themselves or cut off aid and abandon democratic Ukraine in its struggle for national survival against Putin’s aggression,” H.R. McMaster, who served for a year as the second of Mr. Trump’s four national security advisers, said on Monday. He noted that while Congress debated, “the abandonment of Kyiv would be a gift to the Moscow-Tehran-Beijing-Pyongyang axis of aggressors. Allies and partners would lose trust in America as those aggressors are emboldened.”
Oddly enough, Congress’s threat to derail the aid comes just at the moment that Europe committed $54 billion for rebuilding the country over the next four years, and countries from Norway to Germany are committing new arms aid. “It is remarkable how quickly Europe has moved toward a new and substantive multiyear support program for Ukraine,” said Christoph Trebesch, who directs the production of the Ukraine Support Tracker at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in northern Germany. “For the first time, the U.S. is now lagging behind by a large margin” compared with European aid, he said.
“This is not charity; it is in our own security interest,” Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO…
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