Biden privately pushing Zelensky to negotiate with Putin
President Biden and senior advisers have been privately urging Ukraine to consider negotiating with President Putin in an attempt to end the bloody invasion.
FOR some weeks, President Biden’s administration privately has been urging President Zelensky of Ukraine to climb down from his absolute refusal to negotiate with Russia.
Zelensky is being encouraged to show at least an openness to peace talks to calm fears among western donors that there will be no end to this expensive and damaging war.
Frustration is growing within Republicans in Congress about America’s open chequebook to Ukraine, which is why the midterm elections could mark another key milestone in the conflict.
America’s huge assistance package of dollars 45 billion for Ukraine is twice as much as its other backers combined. Many Republicans and some left-wing Democrats in Congress have become restless and their numbers seem set to grow in today’s (Tuesday’s) elections.
So far, Biden’s officials have not demanded that Ukraine return to the negotiating table as a condition for receiving aid and armaments, but they have argued that Zelensky needs to do more to placate critics in other donor nations. A more sceptical Congress under Republican control could start to make these demands, however.
There are growing signs of discontent with Biden’s policy of allowing Zelensky to set the diplomatic agenda for ending the war.
In the spring, 57 Republicans in the 435-member House of Representatives and 11 in the 100-seat Senate voted against a small aid package to Ukraine.
In September a Pew Research Center poll found that 32 per cent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents believed that the United States is providing too much support for Ukraine, up from only 9 per cent in March.
A poll in The Wall Street Journal last week showed 48 per cent of Republicans saying America was doing too much for Ukraine.
The percentage of Americans saying they were extremely or very concerned about Ukraine’s defeat fell from 55 per cent in May to 38 per cent in September.
A month ago Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader likely to take over control from Nancy Pelosi as Speaker, warned that his party members would not simply agree to every request of the Biden administration to fund Ukraine if they won control of the lower chamber.
“I think Ukraine is very important. I support making sure that we move forward to defeat Russia in that programme. But there should be no blank cheque on anything. We are dollars 31 trillion in debt,” McCarthy said.
He may have been playing to his America First members to help to ensure they back him for Speaker, but Biden expressed his concern if the Republicans did prevail in the midterms. “I am worried about it because they said they would cut it,” he said.
Then he was hit with a letter from 30 of his own left-wing members calling on him to “pair the military and economic support the United States has provided to Ukraine with a proactive diplomatic push, redoubling efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire”.
It caused an outcry and was withdrawn, but it also showed that monolithic unconditional support from Democrats could no longer be counted on.
The White House hopes for signs that Ukraine will be prepared to consider talks after its present offensive in the Kherson region, once winter sets in, and will send more signals that it recognises concerns in donor nations.
Otherwise, Kyiv could feel a chill from American funding next year in a more sceptical Congress.
THE TIMES
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