White House officials privately admit Ukraine funding problems – CNN

Senior White House officials have privately admitted that only weeks remain before the halt in US funding to Ukraine will result in serious battlefield issues for Kiev’s forces, CNN reported on Wednesday, citing sources within the administration of President Joe Biden. 

The report comes after the US Congress last week omitted any funds for Ukraine in a last-minute 45-day stopgap government spending bill following pushback from Republican senators. Legislators now have until November 17 to approve a long-term funding bill, and a growing portion of the GOP is adamant about not sending any more US taxpayer dollars to Kiev. 

Top US officials have continued to call on Congress to urgently approve additional funds for Ukraine’s war effort and have repeatedly warned about the dangers of halting financial support for Kiev.  

While publicly officials say they are convinced the majority of Americans support sustained assistance for Ukraine, CNN reported that privately they are concerned that Congress may ultimately fail to include any additional funding for Kiev in the government’s spending budget. 

Additionally, after Republican Kevin McCarthy was ousted from his position of House speaker this week, the need to vote for his successor could mean that “prospects for a new relief package in the near future seem slim,” CNN wrote. 

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, President Joe Biden stated that he was planning to address legislators in the near future and wanted to stress the imperative of continued support for Ukraine. “I’m going to make the argument that it’s overwhelmingly in the interests of the United States of America that Ukraine succeed,” he said. 

Biden also suggested that his administration is currently searching for “workaround methods” of providing Ukraine assistance should Congress fail to include such financing in the government’s budget. “There is another means by which we may be able to find funding,” the president said, without elaborating on what these alternative avenues may be. 

Moscow, meanwhile, has suggested that the US Congress’s refusal to send money to Ukraine was only a “temporary phenomenon.” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that despite the recent hiccup, Washington will inevitably continue to be directly involved in the Ukraine conflict. 

Nevertheless, he reiterated the Kremlin’s position that eventually many countries, including the US, will grow tired of the “completely absurd sponsorship of the Kiev regime.”