Zelensky arrives in Washington as time runs out to push Congress for more aid

Volodymyr Zelensky is in Washington – his third visit this year – in a last-ditch effort to convince reluctant Republicans they should support Joe Biden’s request for a $105bn bill to fund extra defence for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, as well as US-Mexico border enforcement.

A year ago, it would have been unthinkable to question whether Congress would be willing to spend whatever was necessary to bolster the defensive efforts of President Zelensky’s government, which since February 2022 has been fighting off a Russian invading force and pushing to reclaim other territory that Moscow illegally seized during its’ unlawful annexation of Crimea nearly ten years ago.

At the time, Mr Zelensky was perhaps best known to many Americans as the comedian-turned-politician who in 2019 was blackmailed by then-president Donald Trump, who attempted to withhold defence aid unless Mr Zelensky announced a sham investigation into Mr Biden and his son Hunter.

But in the nearly two years since Mr Zelensky’s star has risen in Europe and the broader international community as he’s become a symbol of resistance in what Mr Biden has described as a global war between democracy and autocracy.

Mr Biden’s defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, reiterated that Washington will remain in Kyiv’s corner “for as long as it takes” on Monday, when he introduced Mr Zelensky to an audience at the National Defence University in Washington.

The retired four-star general, who Mr Zelensky jokingly described as a “huge man” and “big friend of Ukraine,” said the United States remains “determined to help Ukraine fight to defend its territory and its’ citizens” and to “show the world that America will not flinch in our defence of freedom”.

“If we do not stand up to the Kremlin’s aggression today, if we do not deter other would-be aggressors, we will only invite more aggression, more bloodshed and more chaos. America will be more secure if we stand up to Putin’s increasingly aggressive Russia. America will be more secure if we stand up for our bedrock values in America, will be more secure if we make it clear to would-be aggressors worldwide,” he said. “They do not get to decide which countries live or which countries die”.

The US president and his top aides have made the case that by not renewing American defence aid to Kyiv, it would be the Congress that decides whether Ukraine lives or dies as a free nation, with both Mr Biden’s budget director and national security adviser warning that the funds previously allocated for Ukraine will run out before year’s end without action from Congress.

But with the Senate scheduled to break for the year as soon as Thursday, there appears to be little hope for Mr Zelensky or his government, as Republicans remain determined to block any attempt to appropriate funds for Ukraine without simultaneously enacting draconian changes to US immigration policies meant to make it more difficult — if not impossible — for largely non-white immigrants from South and Central America and other countries to claim asylum at the US-Mexico border or receive protection from removal from the country.

The Republicans who have been demanding severe restrictions on asylum and stepped-up border enforcement are largely taking their cues from Mr Trump, the ex-president who is currently running for his party’s nomination in next year’s election, and other isolationist members of their party who equate defence aid for Ukraine with defending that country’s “border” while, in their telling, Mr Biden ignores a crush of migrants seeking asylum at America’s southern frontier.

The president and a number of Democrats in Congress have indicated their willingness to accept some changes in immigration policy in exchange for an end to what would be a de facto GOP filibuster of the supplemental funding bill, and a group of senators led by Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Republican James Lankford of Oklahoma have been engaged in on-again, off-again talks on what a potential compromise would look like.

Still, even were such a compromise to take shape, it might face opposition from a number of House and Senate Democrats who’ve derided potential changes as a return to harsh Trump-era immigration policies.

One Democratic senator, ex-Senate foreign relations committee chair Bob Menendez, said in a statement that Mr Biden “is badly mistaken to think Democrats in Congress will agree to Trump-era, anti-immigrant policies that will gut our asylum and humanitarian parole laws, which are the bedrock of our country”.

“It is alarming that the President is open to dramatically limiting access to asylum and significantly expanding expedited removal, even to the interior of our country … It would be wise for the administration to stop entertaining such dangerous policy prescriptions, which have little to no support among many Democrats in both chambers of Congress,” he added.

Some other Democrats, such as Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, have indicated willingness to accept the same sorts of limits that Mr Menendez claimed have “little or no support”.

But even if Democrats in the Senate were to adopt some of the policies their GOP counterparts desire, it’s still unlikely that any bill that passes the Senate could pass the House, which is also set to go on vacation after this week.

The newly-minted GOP House Speaker, Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana, has indicated that his conference would only accept a bill that enacts HR 2, a draconian border enforcement bill passed by the Republican-controlled chamber earlier this year.

And while there remains a critical mass of Republicans in the upper chamber – including GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky – who support continued aid to Kyiv, more and more House Republicans are increasingly opposed to anything that would help Mr Zelensky’s government.

The reason? Because it would be seen as helping Mr Biden.