Zelensky: Putin thinks his dreams are coming true with Ukraine aid impasse in Congress

The political standoff that threatens U.S. aid to Ukraine is in line with Russian President Vladimir Putin's wishes, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

“Let me be frank with you, friends: If there’s anyone inspired by unresolved issues on Capitol Hill, it’s just Putin and his sick clique," Zelensky told a National Defense University audience at the outset of a trip to Washington, D.C. “They see the dreams come true when they see the delays. … They see freedom falling when the support of freedom fighters goes down.”

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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin welcomed Zelensky with a prefatory pledge that “America's commitment to supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression is unshakeable.” The applause that followed the line couldn’t silence Zelensky’s apparent recognition that this support has been shaken and might fail, a prospect that has stirred an array of anxious appeals to the West.

"Simply put, we cannot get tired of this situation because otherwise we will die,” Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska told the BBC in an interview that aired Sunday. “And if the world gets tired, it will just let us die. We badly need help.”

The provision of that assistance has come into doubt in recent months as Republican skepticism about Ukraine aid hardened into a demand that the legislation to provide the funding also include border security provisions that Republicans long have favored. President Joe Biden hoped to sidestep that demand by assembling a supplemental funding bill that would include other more popular priorities, such as funding for Israel and various U.S. initiatives in the Indo-Pacific region, but the talks remain stalled.

“In terms of what it would mean for Ukraine, what it would mean for Israel, what it would mean for our efforts to be competitive in the Indo-Pacific — I think the only people who’d be happy if this supplemental budget request is not voted on and approved by Congress are sitting in Moscow, sitting in Tehran, sitting in Beijing,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday. “For Ukraine, this is absolutely vital.”

Zelensky argued more broadly that the war in Ukraine has high-stakes implications for Western security as he cast the conflict as the beginning of a Kremlin effort to re-litigate the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

“Since 1989, freedom’s enemies got stronger, trying to turn their annoyance at freedom’s success into a comeback,” Zelensky said. "Russia’s war on Ukraine isn’t just about some old-fashioned dictatorship trying to settle scores, real or imagined. It’s not just Moscow trying to split Europe again. It’s Putin attacking that big shift that happened back in 1989.”

That assessment has traction on both sides of the aisle in Congress, where leading Senate Republicans believe that “if Russia prevails, there’s no question that Putin’s appetite for empire will extend to NATO,” in the recent words of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Yet the influx of immigrants across the southern border has enervated House Republican support for the war in Ukraine as right-wing border hawks have argued that the Biden administration is more willing to support Ukraine than the U.S. citizens affected by the border crisis.

“I don’t need any admonishments about what’s at stake for America and our allies in Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression,” McConnell said Thursday. "Republicans have spent years urging the administration to start performing even the bare minimum of its fundamental responsibility to secure our southern border and enforce our nation’s laws. Right now, the crisis created by the Biden administration’s neglect is bringing illegal aliens to the United States at a rate of 300,000 a month.”

As frustration with the border crisis feeds conservative House Republican opposition to aid for Ukraine, a pair of California Democrats warned Biden against striking a compromise.

“Caving to demands for these permanent damaging policy changes as a ‘price to be paid’ for an unrelated one-time spending package would set a dangerous precedent,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) and Rep. Nanette Barragan (D-CA) said Monday in a joint statement.

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Zelensky, whom Biden invited to Washington with the apparent goal of tipping the balance in that debate, tried to strike a rhetorical note congenial to the Republicans.

“People like Putin shouldn’t even hope to conquer freedom,” he said. “And we can show our children and grandchildren what real confidence is, as was shown to us … when in Berlin the great words were spoken: ‘Tear down this wall.’ We need no less confidence now than President [Ronald] Reagan had then.”