The White House warns that they will be out of money for Ukraine by the end of the year if nothing is done.

 

An Ukrainian tank. BBC/Getty.

The White House has warned that they will be out of money for Ukraine by the end of the year if nothing is done in Congress to secure funding. BBC. They called for a deal in congress to secure funding for a war. However, new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson seemed skeptical of the idea a deal could be made, saying there wasn't enough transparency for the funding. $110 billion has already been allocated to Ukraine but most of that money and aid has been spent. Efforts to secure funding have stalled in congress because Republicans have made border security a requirement for any funding bill and Democrats have given no indication that they wan to compromise. 

The news comes a day after NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said NATO should expect bad news from the war in Ukraine. Politico. 

My Comment:

I'm not expecting any additional major funding for the Ukraine war from the United States in the short term. The Republican powers that be do care about Ukraine, but they understand that the war is getting less and less popular among their base and that if they don't try to do something on immigration they won't vote in 2024. 

For me this is a win win. If no deal is made we can at least stop funding this stupid war. If a deal is made, the war continues for a few more months and a lot of people will die for no good reason, but at least something will be done on illegal immigration. In a perfect world we would both stop funding the war and do something about the illegal immigrants, but this is not a perfect world and we should take victories where we can. 

I also think that this is an obvious off ramp to the war in Ukraine. It seems clear now that the powers that be understand they screwed up and screwed up badly by launching the war against Russia and that Ukraine cannot win the war at this point. They have begun the finger pointing phase. Right now they are blaming the Ukrainians themselves, though to be fair, defending Adviika and Bakhmut to the last man was obviously a mistake. 

But I think now they want others to blame and the failure of a deal being made in Congress. Both parties gain from this. Republicans can blame Democrats and Democrats can blame Republicans. Once the funding falls through they both say "Ukraine totally would have won the war if it only the other side hadn't blocked the funding!" I don't think anyone would buy it but it would help hide the fact that everyone has blame for the war in Ukraine. 

Honestly though, I think that the war is pretty much over in the first place. Ukraine's offensive this year was the equivalent of Stalingrad. After that battle Nazi Germany never really had a chance at winning the war. Ukraine still has a large army and is probably capable of limited attacks, but I don't think they are capable of launching another major offensive. 

And this is pretty obvious if you have heard any of the news out of Ukraine. Zelenksy has been calling for defensive lines to finally be built and they are now shepherding their remaining armor very carefully. They finally understand that the time for offensive operations has long passed and are now preparing for the defensive war they should have been fighting since the start of the war. 

It's too late of course. Russia's limited winter offensive has already been more successful than Ukraine's summer offensive and they have a massive advantage in manpower and equipment. And unlike Ukraine they have factories pushing out new weapons every single day. Russia is not going to run out of weapons any time soon.