Speaker of the House Mike Johnson may demand that the aid be converted into loans and be funneled into an LPG terminal in his home state.
of the United States Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson hinted on Sunday that the arms aid package for Ukraine, which has been stalled for months, could go ahead.
“When we come back from the break, the product is moving, but there are important innovations,” Johnson said on Sunday in an interview with the right-wing news channel Fox.
Congress will return from the Easter recess in a week, on April 9.
Newspaper The New York Times tulkitsithat things would have progressed behind the scenes so that the aid package could possibly be approved in the next few weeks.
Senate approved a $95 billion (about €86 billion) arms aid package to Ukraine and Israel in February. Ukraine’s share of the package would be around 60 billion dollars (around 56 billion euros).
Johnson has not brought the bill to a vote in the House of Representatives because the extreme Republicans oppose it and rebel against Johnson. In March, representing the far right of the Republicans Marjorie Taylor Greene started a project to impeach Johnson, but ultimately did not bring his initiative to a vote.
Bills must be approved identically in the Senate and the House of Representatives.
On the edge Republicans have demanded that Ukraine aid be given in the form of loans instead of grants and that the frozen money of Russian billionaires be used for it.
“It would be pure poetry if we could use the frozen money of the Russian oligarchs to help the Ukrainians fight them,” Johnson said.
An important victory for Johnson himself would be to win aid for a natural gas terminal being built in his home state of Louisiana. President Joe Biden stopped the progress of the project for environmental reasons in January.
Ukraine has lost its primary products in the war against Russia and has been put on the defensive. It is largely due to a serious shortage of men and ammunition.
The White House has unsuccessfully tried to appeal to the Republican extreme, which is increasingly reluctant to help Ukraine.