Committed to standing with Ukraine, Biden will have to make his case to the American people and show them that doing so is vital to the homeland, experts say.
President Joe Biden has remained steadfast in his commitment to Ukrainian sovereignty over the last year, both financially and diplomatically, but the political bets waged by those investments grow larger each day.
In the span of a year, Congress has approved more than $112 billion in aid for Ukraine, including $67 billion in military aid, $28.4 billion in economic aid and $14.7 billion in humanitarian aid. In terms of money spent, no other nation has contributed as much to Ukraine as the United States. The European Union, which is the second-largest donor to Ukraine, has committed less than half of that figure.
It’s not only American aid that Biden has delivered to Ukraine. He has also publicly defended Ukraine and continuously renewed his support in a variety of public speaking engagements and most notably, in a surprise visit to Kyiv last Monday.
Those commitments, which Biden has vowed to maintain, will ramp up the pressure for a Ukrainian victory.
«A major set of defeats for Ukraine would reverberate throughout Europe in ways that would be deeply unsettling and potentially, politically disastrous, for Biden,» Kimmage said.
Many Republican lawmakers have opposed the massive spending bills, warning that there’s not enough oversight for Ukranian aid while arguing that the Biden administration is too busy with international matters to address domestic affairs, like immigration at the southern border.
