American aid to Ukraine: Did Kyiv have a chance to receive aid without a 6-month delay?

In this analysis, considering the available information and different outcomes, we will try to look at the events not from the position of a neutral “observer”, dropping a number of emotions and immersing ourselves in the American motives for this process.

We need to do this to try to understand “Why did this happen?”; “Could it have been avoided?”; and how Ukraine and Europe can avoid such cases in the future.

So let's go back in time.

Stage 1. It is the second half of September — early October 2023.

A number of American media outlets publish insights that the White House is planning to put forward a large aid project for the three countries of Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan and potentially combine everything into one mega-package. Later, it was reported that certain issues would be taken up at the request of the Republicans, which we generally call “the dispute between Democrats and Republicans regarding the border.”

Did Biden have an alternative, not to put forward a large unified aid package? We think not. The idea was strategically quite logical: to combine large packages to unite supporters of the parties, who outnumbered critics of each country individually. Lobbying for funding of 50 billion or 100 billion would technically take the same amount of political resources to push through. Why was it unified? Because the U.S. Congress has a polarized structure now: The Senate is controlled by Democrats and the House of Representatives by Republicans. Compromises are needed. Compromises are best achieved when there are supporters of your idea in the camp of the other side. In early October, the White House saw that Israel, which had just been attacked by Hamas, could be a unifying factor to push through aid for Ukraine.

And here is where the unwritten rule of Congress comes into play, which is now being actively mentioned in the media. We are talking about the “Hastert Rule” or the “majority of the majority” rule. This unwritten rule means that regardless of whether the issue has enough votes to pass (conditionally 200 Democrats + 30 Republicans), if the Republican or Democratic Party has a majority in the body, then there must be a majority not from the House of Representatives itself, but rather a majority of votes from the party that has a majority in the House or Senate. If we're talking about the House of Representatives, then the Republicans have a majority here, and when we say: “What's the problem: there are 213 Democratic votes and the support of 50–80 Republicans,” then legally this is enough to pass the decision, but politically, this is an unacceptable precedent for the Republican leadership, because the decision that is supported by 50% + 1 of their conference (faction) should be passed. Meaning, the project should be supported by at least 111–115 Republicans, not 5-10-20-90, which is enough to technically pass the decision with Democratic votes.

Did it look foolish from the European and especially Ukrainian side under the pressure of the enemy? Probably so. But this is a certain well-established tradition that allows various Republican or Democratic conferences to be kept together by a single party. Therefore, to say “stupidity” about these delicate aspects of the US political system is like explaining why you need a burka and covered swimsuits in a Muslim country without knowledge of the culture and context, if you are more comfortable without them.

A matter of tradition.

Therefore, the moment of the need to extend aid to Ukraine coincides with the moment when support for Ukraine in the Republican Party conference was probably below 50% or on the verge of 50%.

Why did this happen?

There are a number of reasons:

1. First, the information duration of the saturation of the topic “Ukraine” in the American information space provokes tiredness and rejection;

2. Secondly, American society tends to believe in “shadow conspiracies” on the basis of which Moscow's propaganda works (biolabs, bioweapons, Nazis, etc.) + people like Tucker Carlson and others like him legalize Moscow's illegal, occupational invasion of Ukraine;

3. Third, this was intensified by a certain emotional disappointment with the results of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in 2023;

4. Fourth, it was influenced by the internal specifics of the United States with the escalation of the situation on the border and the inter-political confrontation between Democrats and Republicans on this issue on the eve of the election year;

5. Fifth, it was generally imposed on the historical trend of the quantitative growth of radical elements in both parties: the increased influence of radical left-wing Democrats in the Democratic Party and radical right-wing (MAGA) in the Republican Party

6. Sixth, the fragility of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives; and many other factors that we cannot list here, but were important.

But the factor of upcoming elections made the process most intense.

Could Ukraine have done anything to avoid these layers of causes?

At this stage, when they began to emerge, no. We could have conditionally influenced a certain percentage, but the rest of it was the internal political processes of the Americans, the influence on which, even with the help of US lobbying forces, was limited. Furthermore, Ukraine's active interference in these processes through lobbyists could have had extremely negative consequences. Ukrainian diplomats and officials were also warned about this by their US partners.

Pro-Ukrainian Republicans, realizing the problems of future promotion of support for the Ukraine assistance project, support the tactical decision — to demand the addition of the border guard into the Biden's project. On the one hand, the border was supposed to push the project further among those Republicans who have doubts, in order to raise party approval from 50-60% of the Republican conference. On the other hand, reasonable Republicans still realized that this was a historic chance to push Biden to make changes on the border.

Ukraine's reaction at this stage.

At this stage, it can be assumed that the White House was assuring Kyiv that they would support Ukraine, that all problems were US domestic political processes, and that it was better to leave domestic politics to US domestic politics. Especially when the cases against Biden were in an unpleasant position (before the discrediting of key Republican witnesses), where Ukraine was one of the key elements.

If you recall, during this period, there were very active statements from the United States that they “will not leave Ukraine,” “will stay as long as necessary,” and so on. That's why September and early October 2023 were not very active in Ukraine's intergovernmental diplomacy with the United States because of these signals. Probably, Kyiv was waiting for the US political system to find a way out within the framework of the well-known “system of checks and balances.”

The main focus of Ukrainian diplomacy during this period was in Europe, where we had to not only promote such aid projects but also convince our partners that the results of the counteroffensive should not be the basis behind the disappointment in Ukraine and the result of the war forced on Ukrainians by Moscow.

Stage 2. The beginning of October and the first half of December.

In October, a political storm occurred. On October 3, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, McCarthy, is removed.

At this point, this pushes Ukraine into the background, not even to the second, but to the third plan:

1. The consequences of McCarthy's removal.

2. The failure to adopt the main US budget.

3. Support for Ukraine and the others.

Kyiv could not influence the removal of McCarthy or his “rescue” either. The main blame from the expert community to the Democrats is that they gave the main votes for the removal of the speaker. This is true. But again, this is a political issue: “Why not just give them those votes?” The removal of the Speaker came from the inside of the Republican Party itself. Therefore, by the same tradition, Democrats vote against McCarthy. By the same tradition, they should have voted against McCarthy, because how would they (Democrats) have looked to their voters if they had saved McCarthy? Where does “Ukraine and the urgent needs of the democratic world” fit in? Unfortunately, this is not the center of US foreign policy. Kyiv is not the center of the American world. And Ukraine's problems are important for modern democracies, but they are not key compared to the internal processes or traditions of political behavior in any particular country.

Imagine two forces that cannot be combined. In the United States, the political divide has reached the point where 47-50% of party voters would refuse to have dinner with a person if they knew that he or she had “different political views.” Now the question is, would Democratic voters accept McCarthy's rescue? That is an open question.

McCarthy offered nothing to the Democrats to save him - and the Democrats did not save him, so as not to lose the loyalty of their own electorate.

During the “storm in the House of Representatives” on October 20, Biden submits his draft to the Senate with the border included, as requested by Republicans. And on October 24, Johnson becomes speaker as “the fourth candidate.” The speaker, who was not even known in his own party, the speaker who received a “deal with the devil” from McCarthy (referring to the procedural rules that McCarthy signed with the Freedom Caucus to become speaker), the speaker not just in a divided Congress, but in a divided party (radical right/ decent Republicans).

So Johnson faced 3 key challenges:

• To stay in the speaker's position long enough for people to get used to him. In fact, to develop the connections that he needed as speaker, but did not have because of his lack of influence before his election.

• To find a balance between his party and the Democrats in order to adopt the budget as a key responsibility of the speaker.

• To delay the moment of confrontation with the radical wing of the “Freedom Caucus” party in order to have the connections and authority to stay in the position. To build normal relations with decent Republican leaders: Emmer and Scalise, but at the same time become closer to Trump than radical Trumpists like Marjorie Taylor Green.

Where is the issue of Ukraine, which splits the party even more than the national budget? Of course, somewhere in the outskirts of Johnson's interest, but at that time the ball was in the Senate's court, not the House's. The Senate hadn't yet moved the project forward, trying to find the right “balance.”

Therefore, Johnson is following a completely logical strategy for him: until the Senate has sent the project, he is fully in line with the manner of a “classic MAGA.” We are talking about all these statements “border first,” “blank checks for Ukraine,” and so on. There is only one reason for this - not to provoke the radical wing of the party beforehand, especially when the project is still being cooked in the Senate and may remain there. Johnson probably had hopes that he would not have to make a choice because the project would not go further than the Senate.

In those days, we wrote that Johnson might have an agreement with pro-Ukrainian Republicans. The motive for writing was not only that these Republicans supported Johnson as speaker, but that all the incompetent statements of the speaker about Ukraine were not criticized by pro-Ukrainian Republicans. I am talking about this period.

At the end of October, we emphasized in our conversations the importance of Kyiv working with Johnson's associates, including through his religious ties, which are very important to him. We argued and reported, since at this stage we realized that Johnson was a “blank sheet” for Ukraine politically, and such delicate ground-level connections take a long time to build, but potentially this will become an important and permanent element of the lobby.

What was the response of the diaspora and religious communities? It was sufficient. You could see it in our communications. In general, the “bottom-level work” of finding contacts with Johnson through Baptist and Catholic communities in Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, and the United States began — this is what we knew, heard, and in some places helped in various ways. About two months later, it became apparent that Ukrainian government agencies were also involved in this informal effort, but sometimes poor coordination harmed the process. But despite this, there were still positive developments.

What did Ukraine do at the second stage?

Here, the White House continues to convince us that the issue will be resolved. At the same time, Democrats are using the situation to criticize Republicans. Ukrainian diplomacy faces significant problems in the sense that Europe's foreign policy is still globally oriented toward the United States, and it is becoming much harder to hope for significant assistance in Europe without clear signals from the United States.

At that moment, the situation on the frontline escalated, and there was a shortage of resources. First of all, ammunition.

On November 15, a Ukrainian government delegation arrives in the United States, where all the formalities and political statements are made. The Ukrainian delegation probably had two goals:

1) to hear the approximate timing of the aid;

2) to get a public impetus from the U.S. to politically assure European countries that Ukraine and Europe will not be left alone with Moscow's aggressive policy in Ukraine.

Following the meeting, the head of that delegation, Zelenskyy's chief of staff, Yermak, said the following: “We return with a clear feeling that the United States, as a friend of Ukraine, remains with us and believes in our victory. We return with the feeling that today the level of cooperation and our strategic partnership is at an unprecedented level.”

Such rhetoric was aimed primarily at Ukrainians and Europeans, who needed to be convinced that Ukraine could and should survive. However, it is important to note that Ukrainian diplomacy is still focused exclusively on the White House and its statements, refusing proactive steps apart from those approved directly by the White House. Ukraine has abandoned the practice of conducting proactive diplomacy that goes beyond what is directly agreed upon with the White House.

On November 20, the positive trends were confirmed by the visit to Kyiv of Pentagon Secretary Lloyd Austin and the commander of NATO's Allied Forces Europe, U.S. Army General Christopher Cavoli. However, we noted that the biggest achievement on the strategic level was the visit of Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch to Kyiv. After this visit, the rhetoric of the largest pro-republican media outlet significantly improved in its attitude towards Ukraine. This made many aspects easier in the future. Most importantly, the activities of Fox Corporation, or rather Fox News, began to influence the root cause of Ukraine's problems in Congress - insufficient support among Republicans.

Let me remind you that “sufficient” means more than 50%. Murdoch's potential motives for coming to Kyiv remain a mystery, giving rise to many rumors.

On December 2, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer signals that he will introduce a project within the “Aid to Ukraine+Israel+Taiwan+Border” forum on December 4. December 12 Schumer announces a “deadline” for the Senate vote.

On December 6, the Ukrainian delegation arrives in the United States, but it is already a visit of “critical concern” due to the Republican attempt to separate the aid package for Israel from Ukraine. Separately, it is hoped to facilitate the rapid movement of the aid project announced by Schumer. Logically, this was a preparatory visit for the visit of Ukrainian President Zelensky, which should have been used on December 11 as the nudge for the Senate vote. This was the first time that Ukraine was close to a practical aid movement based on bipartisan consensus. At least that's what official Kyiv assured the White House.

But even before the official events with President Zelenskyy began, it had become known in the United States that Democrats and Republicans were split on the border issues and that Schumer would be bringing a “dead project” to a procedural vote.

In fact, Zelenskyy's visit lost its value and significance as such, but could not be canceled for a set of logical and protocol reasons. The White House's circular assurances without a real result in Congress were of no practical use to Ukraine, one that was holding back Moscow's massive offensive.

Procedural voting fails. This is not critical, but Zelenskiy's visit takes place behind closed doors, behind which the conflict between Republicans and Democrats has been escalating. This is the period when both Democrats and Republicans say that “the reason is not in Ukraine” and politely advise Zelensky to return.

Kyiv made the right decision then to avoid getting involved in the interparty fight between Democrats and Republicans, focusing on working with more reliable ones. In general, this was the end of the second stage.

Stage 3. Senate: “after a failure, to a new failure”.

At the second stage, the vote failed mainly because the Democrats and the White House did not compromise on the border with the Republicans. It is ironic that by the end of December, the Democrats will be ready to make these compromises, but the decisive role was played not by compromises, but by the election and Trump's personality.

If we ignore the frequent holidays and vacations during this period of the year, the Senate remained in the same place as of mid-December, where it started back in October. The process moved forward when Biden agreed to compromise on the border, which launched the active process of working on the “aid + border” project. But it happened so that, basically, every two weeks, the Senate had to work and seek compromises with the House of Representatives to avoid a shutdown (to pass a temporary US budget). Therefore, only small pieces of time remained for the foreign aid project “before the new vacation.” McConnell and Lancroft decided to play a key role in promoting aid to Kyiv on the Republican side of the Senate, while Schumer and Sinema decided to take the lead on the Democratic side.

The project is practically moving and is actually becoming a truly bipartisan and compromise bill between the Senate and the House of Representatives. The only new problem is that the key motive is no longer “finding a compromise and the border,” but “elections.” The Republican Party is approaching the first primaries in key swing states, where Trump had no right to lose even one primary to his opponent, Haley or anyone else.

This is the period during which Nikki Haley went from a 3% candidate to 25-30% and continued to grow. The moment when Trump was under pressure not only from the criminal courts but also from the possibility of being withdrawn from the election. This is the moment when Trump had the most support, but a significant number of party donors were looking for an alternative. Trump is holding the “border” issue hostage, and thus aid to Ukraine, in order to crystallize his electoral core.

It is not beneficial for Trump to resolve the border issue at this stage. It is to Trump's advantage to distance his own electoral core against Haley and on the basis of key foreign policy issues that were central to Haley's rhetoric.

The Senate is in a deadlock, as the process of finding a solution has dragged on at the most important and active time, the “beginning of the primaries.” The bipartisan group of McConnell, Lancroft, Schumer, and Sinema are making a truly bipartisan project. This bipartisan project had a chance to succeed in October, November, and even early December, but it had no chance of survival in February. Meanwhile, it wasn't meeting the vital interests of Trump personally, and consequently, interests of those who are guided by him for ideological or pragmatic reasons.

The Senate is throwing the ball to the House of Representatives and Johnson personally, since originally all the “Senate circus tricks” were not related to the problem of passing the project in the Senate, but to the need to find a balance for the viability of the project in the House of Representatives. If the House of Representatives rejects the most affordable bipartisan compromise, the only option - to shift the responsibility as the pressure on the House of Representatives and Speaker Johnson personally. In parallel, this is all supported by the so-called discharge petition.

It is at this point that our commentary comes out that the only option to force Johnson and Trump to unblock the aid project for Ukraine is via external pressure from international actors who are not connected to or dependent on Trump.

To say the unpopular thing, but at this point Johnson realizes that he will have to give a clear and direct answer that will go down in history: “He is with Ukraine, or he is not.” Most paradoxically, both Johnson himself and his associates realize it. It is also understood by the extreme right-wing anti-Ukrainian Republicans, who are proactively beginning to remind Johnson of the McCarthy case. In this way, the radical right-wing Republicans wanted to make Johnson fear the consequences if he wanted to support Ukraine.

The pressure on Johnson and the hope for a favorable coincidence became the basis of the fourth stage.

The fourth stage (late February to the present day).

The first key event back in December was that the EU adopted long-term assistance for Ukraine and began to adopt large-scale support programs. This gave European politicians the moral and political right to start putting pressure on the United States.

The greatest pressure on Johnson came from the Baltic partners closest to Ukraine. It was the parliamentary delegations of these three countries, led by the speakers of their parliaments, that visited the United States to convey the importance of the issue. But this was certainly not enough. Later, the Baltic initiative was transformed into an appeal to the House of Representatives from 23 European governments, whose signatures were collected by Ukrainian diplomacy.

But the key is that the “external field” has changed because of two factors:

1. The first is Trump's provocative statements about NATO and his blackmailing of Europe's security. These statements actually “scared” individual representatives of European politics. That is why the “Ukrainian value” in the European security strategy has indeed increased. No one wanted to be left alone with Moscow.

2. Secondly, Nicky's electoral field crystallized, which was united by two factors: rejection of Trump and different foreign policy rhetoric.

3. There is also a third factor that emerged later — Trump's victory in the primaries, his identification as the only candidate from the Republican Party, and the gradual need to soften the rhetoric to attract broad support for the party (the same voters from Haley after she withdrew from the primaries).

The first national sociological polls after Haley's withdrawal showed the following trends in her electorate:

• 63% of Haley's supporters were leaning toward supporting Biden.

• Only 27% supported Trump.

• 10% — undecided

It is worth noting the key US politicians who pushed the project to support Ukraine: Turner, McCaul, McConnell, Pompeo, and to be honest, CIA Director Burns played an important role, as his data finally convinced Johnson of the risks to the democratic world in case of Ukraine's loss on the battlefield.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Brown, played an important role, as he was active in attracting skeptical Republican voices and providing extensive information on why support for Ukraine should continue. But in reality, the list of people is in the dozens, maybe even hundreds. It may sound strange, but even Speaker Johnson, although he was delaying the start of 2024, was already looking for ways to provide assistance with the help of the listed individuals. Such a combination was needed to keep the Republican Party together, to keep Jhonson's position and get Trump's “blessing”, and on the other hand not to go down in history as a politician who encouraged wars of occupation and the destruction of international order.

Initially, the key role was played by Intelligence Committee Chairman Turner, who visited Kyiv on February 9 and then launched an extremely active lobbying campaign in the United States. Turner did an important thing - he became close enough to Johnson that the speaker listened to his views.

Then Turner's partner — McCaul — took up the initiative. McCaul is the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

At the same time, Senate Minority Leader McConnell continues to work on lobbying, in addition to constantly reminding Johnson of the “Senate Project.” McConnell supports Trump. Perhaps this was one of Trump's conditions for the senator to soften Trump's position on Ukraine. After that, Trump's thesis “Senate Republicans have sold out to Ukraine” abruptly disappears from the former president's speeches.

It was at this point that Ukrainian diplomacy became most active. Europe, after gaining moral leadership in helping Ukraine, begins to put pressure on Johnson and indirectly on Trump. All these visits to the US from Europe that we have seen are the result of many processes and actions.

The next turning point was Burns' speech and his meeting with Johnson, where the CIA chief said that without US help, Ukraine could lose the war by the end of the year, which would be a disaster for European security and US interests. Many US insiders say that after this closed-door meeting, Johnson finally decided to “support the Ukrainian aid project.”

But the biggest problem remained the same — the radical wing of the party. They needed Trump's support. At first, the former president was persuaded from the outside. We're talking about British former Prime Minister Johnson and later the visit of British Foreign Secretary Cameron, which was organized by Boris Johnson. At the same time, Pompeo, Trump's former Secretary of State, played an important role and continued to influence Trump. Probably, when the American media wrote that influential Republicans were preparing a meeting between Johnson and Trump, it was Pompeo and his team.

It is important that on the eve of his activity on February 2, Pompeo visited Kyiv, probably outlining a certain plan of action.

The final stage and preparation became the meeting between Johnson and Trump, where the former president supported the speaker, and then we saw what we saw.

That is, we go back to the beginning of this saga. Johnson had developed relationships in Congress, alongside Democrats, that guaranteed him protection. But under the “Hastert Rule,” Johnson still needed at least the support of half the Republican conference. Johnson was respected by decent congressmen from both parties as having passed the US budget. Moderate Republicans close to Trump at the right time (when Trump needed it) helped the speaker push the idea of “supporting Ukraine”, giving Trump several purely symbolic victories: separation of aid packages for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, financial aid on credit, and the ability to attract some of Haley's voters by showing that it was possible to work with Trump constructively.

Was it possible before? For Johnson, no. In general, for Ukraine, there were two moments when it was possible earlier, but internal disagreements between Democrats and Republicans got in the way.

The question is, what did Ukrainian diplomacy do at this stage?

1. Well, first of all, all the key actors who influenced the promotion of the decision Ukraine needed from February to March 2024 visited Kyiv, or vice versa. That is, there was communication and relevant developments.

2. Secondly, it was a timely reaction to the need to try to act indirectly: to avoid situations where Ukraine could be involved in internal political conflicts between the main US parties. To work more cautiously via European partners who realized the importance of supporting Ukraine for Europe. As a result, the collective pressure on the US and Johnson became mainstream, sweeping the democratic world from London to Tokyo.

3. Thirdly, the activities and attempts to influence decisions went to the bottom level: work through NGOs, religious communities, and celebrities loyal to Ukraine. By the way, Professor Timothy Snyder played an important but invisible role at the bottom level, with his help and authority.

In general, the strategy of Ukrainian diplomacy can be divided into stages:

• The first is expectations based on assurances from the White House. The focus is on Europe.

• The second is active concern, but willingness to act within the framework of the strategy proposed by the White House (waiting).

• The third is to resolve the issue in Europe as a matter of priority and then engage European partners to lobby for assistance to Ukraine in the United States. Ukraine should start building its own proactive policy in the United States.

• The fourth is an attempt to implement this proactive policy without relying on the White House's assurances and strategies.

Now the question is, could the delay and the problems with the “registration of aid” have been avoided?

Tactically — hardly. Strategically, only partially. It is beneficial for Kyiv to look for ways to successfully maintain support for Ukraine among citizens of the United States or any other country. In our opinion, Ukraine's primary problem is the decline in support among U.S. voters, especially among Republican voters. It became profitable for Trump and his associates to speculate on this, which was actually part of the reason why the US supported Ukraine.

The following conclusions can be drawn:

1. Kyiv should take a more proactive diplomatic stance and sometimes not to be afraid to get into a certain dispute with its partners. Of course, to the extent possible. It is good to listen to partners and positions (as in the case of the White House), but it is also necessary to build a proactive international policy.

2. The crisis that occurred with the help of Ukraine has caused large-scale problems for Ukraine's defense capability. The key is the unnecessary loss of Ukrainian lives due to a lack of resources for defense. But Kyiv must squeeze everything it can out of this crisis. Now Ukrainians should see who is a true friend in the United States and who is not. Based on the crisis, they had to see what methods work. In the end, they saw that the conflict between Democrats and Republicans led to a positive result - a demand for the White House to provide a clear strategy for Ukraine's victory, and so on. Kyiv should use this crisis to become stronger in its interactions with Western partners.

3. Every problem is a challenge. What cannot be achieved today due to a set of factors can be attempted when external factors become more favorable.

4. It is necessary to work with both Democrats and Republicans, because 2025 will probably bring similarly divided Congress, both to Ukraine and Europe.

5. Tracking the level of support for Ukraine among US citizens and trying to influence this level requires a separate strategy from Kyiv.