WASHINGTON (CN) — President Joe Biden said “it’s stunning” that Congress has not approved further aid to Ukraine, but is hopeful that lawmakers will pass a funding package before the end of the year.
Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke to reporters Tuesday after Zelenskyy directly lobbied Congress for further funds to support its war effort.
But despite Zelenskyy’s second trip to Washington in three months, lawmakers haven't been swayed to push through Biden’s request for an additional $61.4 billion in the coming year. The funds are part of a larger emergency spending package that includes money for Israel, Taiwan and the U.S.-Mexico border.
The White House has been urging lawmakers to act before leaving for the holidays, saying the Biden administration will have exhausted all previously allocated funding sources by the end of the year.
But the package has received an icy reception by Republicans in the House and Senate who aren’t inclined to continue funding the Ukrainian war effort and want to tie any spending package to border security policy changes.
House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that he expressed support in his meeting with Zelenskyy, but the White House needs to lay out its concrete goals for the conflict in Ukraine.
“We need clear articulation of the strategy to allow Ukraine to win,” he said. “Thus far, their responses have been insufficient.”
Democratic Representative Gerry Connolly told CNN that it is “imperative that the United States and our allies stay with Ukraine to the end.”
“We can’t get discouraged,” he said. “We can’t set arbitrary milestones for the Ukrainians for their performance on the battlefield.”
Biden’s vision for victory is an independent Ukraine that wins the war and can deter future Russian military aggression, he said.
“Ukraine will emerge from this war proud, free and firmly rooted in the West unless we walk away,” he said. “I will not walk away from Ukraine and neither will the American people.”
Zelenskyy said his meetings “were very productive” and expressed confidence that funding would be approved.
“I got the signals,” he said through a translator. “They were more than positive.”
Biden said the money has so far only been held up by “a small number of Republicans who don’t want to support Ukraine.”
“Holding Ukraine funding hostage in order to force through an extreme Republican partisan agenda on the border is not how it works,” he said. “History will judge harshly those who turn their backs on freedom’s cause.”
Failing to approve aid for the war effort would lead to battlefield victories for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Biden said.
“Putin is banking on the United States failing to deliver for Ukraine. We must prove him wrong,” he said. “It’s stunning that we’ve gotten to this point.”
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