Some top U.S. officials have sought to publicly reassure Ukraine of continued support from Washington, arguing that backing Kyiv in its fight against Russia is in America’s best interest.
The United States has provided Ukraine with almost $54 billion in military equipment and other security assistance since Russian forces invaded in February 2022, including a $225 million package earlier this month.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General CQ Brown on Friday called such help from the U.S. and other Western countries crucial, warning of dire consequences if that aid stopped flowing.
“If collectively we stop supporting Ukraine, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin wins,” Brown told an audience at the Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colorado.
“What that allows, it also emboldens others,” he said. “We have credibility that's at stake associated with this. Not just the United States, but NATO, the West.
“If we just back away, that opens the door for [Chinese President] Xi Jinping and others that [have] wanted to do unprovoked aggression.”
Some U.S. politicians, however, argue that the current level of support for Ukraine is unsustainable. And they have been led, in part, by the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Republican Senator J.D. Vance.
“There are a lot of bad guys all over the world, and I’m much more interested in some of the problems in East Asia right now than I am in Europe,” Vance told a major security conference in Munich earlier this year.
“Can we send the level of weaponry we’ve sent for the last 18 months?” Vance asked. “We simply cannot. No matter how many checks the U.S. Congress writes, we are limited there.”
The Republicans' presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, has also been critical at times of U.S. support for Ukraine, telling supporters during his nomination acceptance speech Thursday that the war “would never have happened if I was president.”
This past May, at a town hall event sponsored by CNN, Trump said, if elected, he would end the fighting in one day.
Brown, the most senior U.S. military official, was cautious about such predictions when pressed at the Aspen conference.
“If he can get it done in 24 hours, that'd be great,” he said, while also rejecting arguments that the U.S. is incapable of providing Ukraine with continued military support.
“We have the capability to produce,” Brown said. “We have the capacity to do it. We’ve just got to make the commitment to do it.”
Other senior U.S. officials also pushed back against arguments that Washington’s European allies are not doing enough.
“The Europeans are doing a lot more than I think Americans give them credit for,” said White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, speaking separately at the Aspen forum.
“When you calculate their contribution to Ukraine in terms of military assistance, economic assistance, humanitarian assistance and other forms, they [European allies] are combined doing considerably more than the United States,” he said, adding that the Ukrainian cause remains popular despite some vocal skeptics.
“Poll after poll shows the American people still care,” Sullivan said. “[They] still support funding Ukraine. Still support the notion that it is our duty-bound obligation to continue to help Ukraine fight for its freedom and its sovereignty and its territorial integrity.”
Some of those supporters, including both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, have urged the White House and President Joe Biden to be even more aggressive and loosen restrictions preventing Ukraine from using U.S.-made weapons systems to strike deep in Russian territory.
“As the war has evolved, our support has evolved, the capacities we provided have evolved, and the parameters under which we've provided them have evolved,” Sullivan said. “But thus far, [Biden’s] policy on long-range strikes in Russia has not changed.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Britain’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer, earlier Friday to help remove those types of restrictions instituted by the U.S. and other Western allies.
Addressing a meeting of the Cabinet at the official residence of the British prime minister, Zelenskyy said Ukraine has proved it can prevent Russian attempts to expand the war by hitting Russian military targets positioned not just along the border but deeper inside Russia.
In an interview with the BBC, British Defense Secretary John Healey was asked about the issue of Ukraine’s use of British-supplied weapons, and he said nothing precludes “them hitting targets in Russia, but that must be done by the Ukrainians. It must be done within the parameters and the bounds of international humanitarian law.”
Also Friday, Zelenskyy said that following a meeting with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Thursday, Ukraine received a “positive decision from the Polish government” that will allow Ukraine to receive U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets sooner.
He did not specify what the decision was in his statement, shared on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter. The Reuters news service said there was no immediate word from the Polish prime minister’s office on Zelenskyy’s comment.
VOA’s Jeff Custer contributed to this report. Some information came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
