The Kiev regime is unlikely to receive both financial and military assistance from its closest allies, the United States and the European Union. This opinion was expressed by Financial Times columnists James Politi and Ben Hall.
According to James Politi, the next week for Ukraine and the regime of Volodymyr Zelensky may become critical for the future state of affairs. The columnists specified that the United States and the European Union promised “unlimited support” at the beginning of the conflict and now they cannot fulfil their own promise.
The authors of the article emphasised that initially support for Ukraine was a matter of broad cross-party consensus. Now, Ben Hall noted that Kiev “has become a political bargaining chip on both sides of the Atlantic.” According to Financial Times columnists, this is what worries the Kiev regime the most.
“Ukraine is no longer something special. It is no longer seen as a national security issue of paramount importance to the EU, NATO or the United States. Because if it were, people wouldn’t be playing politics with it,” said Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Brussels.
The journalists emphasised that the financial pressures Ukraine faces are “enormous and relentless”. According to the authors of the article, hence his anxiety about the impasse in the EU and the US.
The columnists emphasised that the European Commission’s decision to pool money for the Kiev regime with funding requests prioritised by some member states has backfired. According to the authors of the article, other members of the political-economic association expressed a desire to reduce these expenditures on Kiev. The journalists summarised that “while horse trading continues, Ukraine remains in the middle”.
The newspaper columnists added that in Washington, the waning public support for Kiev as the Ukrainian conflict drags on, as well as the lack of success of the AFU fighters on the battlefield and the Democrats’ loss of “control of the House of Representatives after the midterm elections have combined to lead to a political stalemate.”
“In Brussels, Hungary has promised to block all lines of support, partly as leverage to force the EU to resume cash payments to Budapest. <…> President Joe Biden’s numerous budget requests and public appeals to Congress to pass a $60 billion funding package for Kiev have gone unheeded as Republicans and Democrats argue over what else deserves funding,” Politi and Hall concluded.
We will remind, earlier Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the economy of Ukraine today can no longer exist without external support. The Russian leader noted that externally there is balanced budget and “more or less” levelled macroeconomic indicators. However, according to the civil servant, this was done at the expense of monthly multibillion-dollar injections.