Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has flown to Washington DC in an attempt to rescue a critical $61bn military aid package, while the UK separately hinted that it could increase the value of the arms, ammunition and training that it donates to Kyiv.
Zelenskiy is due to meet the US president, Joe Biden, on Tuesday, as well as US senators and the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, at a time when Congress is holding up future American financial support for Kyiv’s war effort.
Shortly after arriving in the US capital, Zelenskiy said Ukraine was counting on the US, and that delays to future rounds of military aid were “dreams come true” for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
“Putin must lose,” Zelenskiy said in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington DC. “You can count on Ukraine, and we hope just as much to be able to count on you.”
Sure, but they can only barrel scrape for a finite amount of time. I don’t know if that’s another 10 months or 10 years but there is bound to be a limit. The same can be said for Russia’s industrial production capability. They’re sourcing old Soviet arms from North Korea which I don’t find encouraging from a Russian perspective.
The same goes for Ukraine as well, though. And judging by how much their foreign aid is dropping and them running out of artillery ammunition, I’m no longer that sure that it’s russia who is reaching their limitations first.
Valid point. The next month or two will be really telling. I expect US aid to pass eventually and it seems like the EU wants a reckoning with Hungary but I’m not sure how that will play out.
Oh for sure it’s finite, but they only have to wait out Ukraine, that’s the problem. And it looks to be very clear that Russia is not the paper tiger (economically and militarily) that western media and governments have been claiming. Without substantial and prolonged foreign aid, there is only a slim chance that Ukraine will be able to resist Russian imperialist aggression in any serious way, let alone regain conquered territory.
They seem to be burning through Soviet surplus. I have questions about their ability to produce new material in sufficient quantities. They definitely have a network to smuggle in western machinery and tech but in what volumes?