Ukraine Reacts to US Congress’ Funding Snub, Big Win for Slovak Foe

Ukraine received a double dose of bad news over the weekend — far from the battlefield.

On Saturday, the U.S. Congress passed a short-term funding bill that averted a government shutdown but included no additional funding for Ukraine.

Then on Sunday, elections in neighboring Slovakia were won by a party led by former Prime Minister Robert Fico, who has blamed the war on “Ukrainian Nazis and fascists" and vowed that if elected, “we will not send a single round of ammunition to Ukraine.”

These were welcome headlines for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has clearly made a calculation that Russia simply needs to keep up the fight until the west loses interest or turns its attention elsewhere. 

On Monday, Ukrainian officials were trying to put their best face on the news.

“Russia makes a mistake if it thinks it can ‘wait out’ military aid for Ukraine,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted. “Ukraine will only get stronger, and Russian aggression will fail. We are not just bringing weapons to Ukraine. We are ramping up domestic production and co-production with partners in NATO and beyond.”

But Western support–including funding for Ukraine’s government and humanitarian aid, as well as military training, weapons systems and ammunition–has been vital to Ukraine’s ability to hold back the Russian invasion and retake some of its territory. That support has been far greater and more unified than many would have predicted at the outset of the war. 

As if to hammer home that point, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said via Telegram Monday that “the strength of our soldiers on the front is largely a consequence of the strength of our agreements with our friends and our partners.” 

While the heavy flow of western money and weapons are unlikely to disappear overnight, the weekend’s events have made it clear that Ukraine can’t assume it will continue indefinitely. 

America wobbles

After the spending bill passed, President Joe Biden called on Congress to pass a separate aid package for Ukraine, warning that “there’s not much time, and there’s an overwhelming sense of urgency.”

Congress has already passed four spending packages in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, totaling $113 billion. That includes economic and humanitarian support in addition to military aid.

In August, Biden called on Congress to provide an additional $24 billion in funding — probably enough to last for another three or four months before another tranche of money would be needed.

As part of the down-to-the-wire negotiations to keep the government running, Congress was debating an aid package that had been whittled down to $6 billion. In the end, the Ukraine money, strongly opposed by the so-called MAGA wing of the Republican caucus, was dropped altogether. 

How big a difference this will make depends on how long the interruption lasts. Thanks to a $6.2 billion Pentagon “accounting error” discovered in June, the U.S. military should have enough funds allocated to continue providing weapons from its own stocks into the new fiscal year, which began on Sunday.

A Defense Department spokesperson told the Messenger that there $1.6 billion is still available for “drawdown” of U.S. stocks and the Pentagon still has funding “available to meet Ukraine’s urgent battlefield needs.” 

But it won’t have funding to buy weapons to replenish those stocks without an additional spending bill. Some military commanders have already expressed concern that the flow of aid to Ukraine may be dangerously depleting America’s own stocks.

Other aid will run out sooner. The funds allocated under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative–-which essentially provides money to Ukraine to negotiate its own contracts with defense manufacturers–have already run out, according to the Defense Department. Funding for Ukraine’s civilian government and beleaguered economy are likely also close to exhausted. 

Further funds are also needed to support the additional U.S. troops deployed to Eastern Europe since the start of the war, as well as intelligence support provided to Ukrainian commanders and training for Ukrainian troops on operating U.S. weapons systems.

The U.S. has been by far the largest provider of military aid to Ukraine, and losing this support would be a major setback to the country’s war effort. 

Supporters of Ukraine seem confident they have the votes for additional funding, noting that earlier measures in support of Ukraine passed with large majorities. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries has said action on Ukraine aid could come in the “next few days.”

Some Republicans have also downplayed the notion that the party is turning against Ukraine. 

“I think those of us who support continued support for Ukraine, which is the majority of us in the Republican side, will continue to make the argument as we head into next year when the real investments in that fight will need to continue,” Sen. Todd Young of Indiana told The Messenger on Saturday.

But it’s also undeniable that the politics of the issue are shifting. An amendment to the recent defense funding bill sponsored by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., which would have prohibited all military assistance to Ukraine, won 93 Republican votes, up from 70 for a similar measure in July.

And an August CNN poll found that a slim majority of Americans and overwhelming majority of Republicans now oppose further aid to Ukraine. 

The current overwhelming favorite to win the Republican nomination for president in 2024, former President Donald Trump, accuses Biden of putting “Ukraine first,” and his closest rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, also opposes further assistance. 

Zelenskyy has been a remarkably effective advocate for his country on the world stage, but his increasingly difficult task is to make the case that additional aid can help turn the tide in the war, despite the relatively small territorial gains of Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive.

“There’s rising concern about a ‘forever war,’” Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The Messenger. “You see that on both the populist right and the progressive left. If the Ukrainian counteroffensive doesn’t start to show some dramatic successes, these concerns are only going to grow.”

Slovakia: Sign of things to come?

In raw-dollar terms, Slovakia’s contribution to Ukraine’s defense–a little over $700 million– is dwarfed by the numbers being thrown around in Washington. But as a percentage of GDP, Slovakia is a far more generous supporter of the Ukrainian resistance.

And the country has significant symbolic and political clout when it comes to this war: Slovakia shares a border with Ukraine and is among the formerly communist Central European countries that have pressed the West to be more aggressive in supporting Ukraine. 

Fico, leader of the left-wing Smer Party and likely the next prime minister, previously held the job from 2006 until 2010 and from 2012 until 2018. The last time, he stepped down amid protests over the killing of an investigative journalist. 

Dominika Hadju, director of the Democracy and Resilience program at Globsec, a think tank headquartered in Slovakia, told The Messenger that Fico has traditionally balanced somewhat pro-Russian views with support for Slovakia’s membership in NATO and the European Union. 

But she says that in the recent campaign “his party started expressing stronger rhetoric toward the west, NATO and Ukraine, criticizing the West for provoking Russia. They’ve been trying to create the notion that being pro-Ukrainian is anti-Slovak, that giving attention to Ukraine is taking attention away from the real problems that Slovaks are facing.” 

That argument has been made easier by the double-digit inflation Slovakia has faced for much of the last year and a half. 

As in the U.S., the impact of Slovakia’s political shift may not be felt immediately. Fico will likely have to form a coalition government with more centrist parties, which could force him to moderate some of his stances. And in terms of military aid, Slovakia may already have exhausted much of its own stocks, including 13 Mig fighter jets.

But it also seems likely that Fico will join Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in playing a spoiler role within both the EU and NATO. Hungary has worked to slow and curtail EU spending plans on Ukraine aid, and was one of the last two countries, along with Turkey, to support Sweden and Norway’s NATO membership. Orban welcomed Fico’s election on Sunday, posting that it’s "always good to work with a patriot".

Hadju says her country “definitely should be a warning” for other governments in the west. 

“Support for the war in Ukraine is becoming more difficult for leaders to justify, and it might trigger populist parties in other countries.” 

One of those parties may be Germany’s far-right, pro-Russian Alternative for Germany, which for decades was treated as a pariah by the country’s political establishment. Recent polls suggest it may now be the country’s second most popular party. 

Even Poland, which has been one of the staunchest backers of Ukraine since the beginning of the war, announced last month that it would no longer send weapons to the country amid an increasingly bitter dispute with Kyiv over grain imports. 

Hadju suggested that to combat the erosion of popular support for Ukraine, leaders need to focus their messaging on why the war “matters for a given country’s security and prosperity.”

The fact that leaders in a country that borders Ukraine and has a history of political domination by Moscow were unable to make that case doesn’t bode well for countries farther from the front lines.

Nicole Gaudiano contributed reporting.