WASHINGTON: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky presses on Tuesday for more US military aid to battle Russia, which said any funding would be a "fiasco" and claimed its forces were advancing on the front.
Zelensky, who is in Washington to plead for continued support, will meet with President Joe Biden at the White House and also with congressional leaders from both parties.
For much of the nearly two years that Ukraine has resisted President Vladimir Putin's onslaught, the United States has led a Western coalition sending billions of dollars in weaponry and ammunition.
But Republicans are ever-more openly rejecting the need to fund Ukraine, saying that Biden needs to devote more attention to domestic security, particularly to stopping illegal migration over the US-Mexican border.
The Republicans are also questioning whether Ukraine should keep fighting at all.
Biden is a key supporter, framing the Ukrainian war effort as part of a global struggle between democracies and aggressive autocracies.
But on Capitol Hill, Zelensky will face his real test when he addresses Republican and Democratic senators, and meets the new Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.
In a speech on Monday at the National Defense University in Washington, Zelensky said that politics should not "betray" Ukraine's soldiers and he echoed Biden in saying that the struggle had global implications.
"When the free world hesitates, that's when dictatorships celebrate and their most dangerous ambitions ripen," he said. "They see their dreams come true when they see delays."
The Kremlin played down the consequences of any further US funding on Tuesday, saying it would be doomed to a "fiasco."
"It is important for everyone to understand: the tens of billions of dollars pumped into Ukraine did not help it gain success on the battlefield," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
"The tens of billions of dollars that Ukraine wants to be pumped with are also headed for the same fiasco."
In an interview with Russian state television on Sunday, Putin said that Ukraine was "running out" of arms because its defense industry was not able to produce enough.
"They have no base of their own. When there is no base of their own, no ideology of their own, no industry of their own, no money of their own, nothing of their own, then there is no future. And we have one."
Russia further upped the pressure on Tuesday, saying its forces had "advanced significantly" in southern Ukraine. — AFP
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