A sense of unease prevails in US-Ukraine relations. While Russia is working on the systematic destruction of the Ukrainian infrastructure, and Kiev is begging for even more massive military and economic aid, voices are beginning to emerge from the American right and from the US corporate world against continued support for Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin again misjudged Ukraine’s resilience. Eight months have passed since the invasion, which was about to collapse Ukraine like a house of cards within a few days. But Putin continues to believe in the fundamental weakness of his enemies.
The last few days tickle his nostrils. He observes the political unrest throughout Europe, from Bucharest to London, and it seems to him that what he calls “the collective West” is beginning to crumble under the weight of the energy crisis it caused and the inflation, which he played a prominent role in creating. He rejoiced in the Ida of Britain, his bitterest enemy in Europe; He sees Italy passing into the hands of an alliance of far-right parties, influenced by his fans; He sees a wave of wild strikes in France, inspired by the extreme left; He sees crowds protesting in the streets of Prague protesting the cost of living, but also against their government’s support for Ukraine.
He and his followers have believed for many months that all that is needed is to freeze the Europeans in the dead of winter, so that they will come back and consider whether it is worth getting cold for Kyiv, Lviv and Zaporizhzhia.
sabotage as much as they can
Putin is eagerly awaiting the mid-term elections in the USA. On November 8, all the seats in the American House of Representatives and 34 of the hundred seats in the Senate will be up for election. Republicans have a considerable chance of winning. So the Republican Party, minus Donald Trump, will dedicate itself to one main goal in the next two years: to sabotage Joe Biden’s presidency as much as possible.
Putin has good reason to hope that the Republicans will make it difficult for Biden to add and support Ukraine. Congress, with a tiny Democratic majority, allocated $40 billion to Ukraine, military and humanitarian aid. This is the largest and fastest aid package the US has ever allocated to any country. The results are dramatic: Ukraine stood up for itself with unexpected success, and moved to counterattacks. It needs much more, now that it has lost 40% of its energy infrastructure.
In democracies, governments have to convince their legislatures to approve budgets and appropriations. In most normal countries governments have a parliamentary majority, because if they didn’t have such a majority, they wouldn’t be in power. The US continues to separate authorities. A president does not need a majority to be president. But without a majority he cannot legislate and allocate funds.
This is going to be the case from next January. We do not know to what extent Ukraine will be affected. But the signs of the last few days are causing anxiety in Kiev. We wrote here last week about the statement of the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, who is designated to be the Speaker of the House of Representatives. He announced that it would not be possible to add and write “open checks” to Ukraine at a time of economic recession in the US.
The man designated to be the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, Michael McCaul (McCaul) explained that aid to Ukraine will continue, but additional “supervision” will be necessary. This is true in itself, and the fear of corruption on the Ukrainian side is based on past experience. But a presumption of “supervision” that would slow down the pace of aid in absolutely critical circumstances.
“And what’s going on in Bachamot?”
An even more surprising and disturbing intervention came from an unexpected side: Elon Musk. He scared Ukraine even two weeks ago, when he announced that his satellite company, Starlink, would stop financing the Internet connection, which it gave to Ukraine at the beginning of the war. Starlink saucers did save Ukraine. Without them, the Ukrainian army would have difficulty adding and functioning; Without them, millions of Ukrainians would lose contact with the outside world.
Not anymore, Musk announced in the middle of the month; That the US government will pay, if it wants. He retracted it two days later, but his intentions add to the doubt. He sent a series of tweets, interpreted as pro-Russian. He called on Ukraine to give up the territories that Russia had occupied, and to agree to full military neutralization. These are Putin’s classic positions. He also taught a defense of Putin’s implied threats to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine.
At the end of last week, Musk got into a friendly dialogue on Twitter with Putin’s deputy, former president Dmitry Medvedev, an extremist hawk who openly calls for the destruction of Ukraine. Musk and Medvedev openly rejoiced at Liz Truss’ Ida in the UK. Then Musk asked Medvedev, “And what’s going on in Bakhmut?”, a key city in eastern Ukraine that the Russian army is trying to capture. Medvedev responded by inviting Musk to the “Victory Parade in Moscow” after the end of the war.
“See you in Moscow on victory day” Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation to Elon Musk. pic.twitter.com/gOQCIj8D8o
– Outspoken™️ (@Out5p0ken) October 21, 2022
Is it a collapse? Or caprice? Or pathology? Or adolescent boys’ humor? What was it for Musk? who knows. But Musk is also a vocal critic of President Biden, and there was some closeness between him and Donald Trump during the latter’s presidency.
Musk is not the only suspicious billionaire now that Ukraine has had enough of him. Two days after Musk’s announcement of the internet shutdown, Bill Ackman, the owner of the hedge fund Pershing Square Capital, whose private fortune is estimated at $3.3 billion (according to Forbes), tweeted a call to Ukraine to drop its demand that the Crimea be returned to it, and to walk away from its expressed desire to join the NATO “and. Although Ackman is identified with the Democratic Party, he took a series of right-wing positions, and opposed Joe Biden’s candidacy for the presidency. Another right-wing billionaire, David Sachs, from the Capital Ventures venture fund, tweeted this week, “The US should not be involved in a nuclear crisis in a country that most Americans barely heard of last year.”
The United States shouldn’t be in a nuclear crisis over a country that most American were barely aware of last year. That’s the whole point. https://t.co/Rg99toJveE
– David Sacks (@DavidSacks) October 21, 2022
Sachs, like Ekman, is Jewish; And like Musk, he was born and raised in apartheid South Africa. Last week he published an article in ‘Newsweek’, in which he claimed, interestingly enough, that a completely unlikely partnership is pushing the world to war in Ukraine: between the “neocons” (the famous right-wing hawks of the days of Reagan and Bush Jr.) and the woke (the leftists) today’s extremists). Absurd, but Musk responded that Sachs’ words “were well written.”
Hawks against “realists”
Among the Republican candidates in next month’s elections, one can find a claimant for the position of senator in the state of Ohio, who says that “I am not even remotely interested in what happens to Ukraine”; And claims the position of senator in the state of Arizona, saying, “Ukraine is essential for Russia’s security, it is not essential for our security.” Neither is a foreign affairs expert, but both believe that a separatist stance toward Ukraine will help their electoral prospects.
Donald Trump, who holds rallies across the United States in favor of the party’s congressional candidates, occasionally stings the Biden administration for its willingness to send money to Ukraine while he avoids spending money on the security of the United States’ borders. While he was president, Trump withheld security aid to Ukraine for several months, and was impeached for it in Congress.
The Republicans are divided between hawks from the old school, who demand a strong stance against dictatorships, especially Russia, China and Iran, and “realists” who want to lower the international political profile of the USA and do business with dictatorships.
It is hard to know where the separatists will lead the USA. But Ukrainians are in for weeks of anxiety heading into the supposed Republican Congress.