To talk over Ukraine aid with Biden, Scholz will fly to Washington
Photo: Scholz and Biden will meet at the White House to discuss aid to Ukraine (WhiteHouse twitter)
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will go to Washington in the first half of February to meet with U,S. President Joe Biden. The leaders will discuss further assistance to Ukraine, writes Bloomberg.
It is noted that Scholz and Biden plan during the meeting to rally support around aid to Ukraine at a time when disputes are raging in the U.S. Congress over border security, where $61 billion in aid to Kyiv is included in the bill. But at a time when there are delays in the allocation of 50 billion euros aid by the European Union to Ukraine.
It is noted that a bilateral meeting in the White House is planned to be held during the second week of February. Earlier, Scholz called on allies to increase their support for Ukraine, saying that EU countries are not doing enough to help Kyiv.
On Thursday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. believes there is still plenty of energy in this network of coalitions, allies and partners to help support Ukraine.
"Each country does it in their own way and does it to the degree that they can. So, just like us, these are sovereign decisions. But we haven’t seen any slackening or disunity when it comes to supporting Ukraine," Kirby said.
Aid to Ukraine from U.S.
In October 2023, US President Joe Biden submitted to Congress a bill to allocate 106 billion dollars. It includes 61.3 billion for Ukraine. However, the Senate blocked the start of debate on the package in December .
The reason was the demands of the Republicans to include in the bill a tougher set of measures to protect the southern border of the USA with Mexico.
On January 26, the mass media reported that Congress approved the text of the agreement on the US-Mexico border, which will depend on the renewal of funding for military aid to Ukraine.
Aid to Ukraine from EU
In December of last year, at the summit of EU leaders, the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, vetoed the provision of macro-financial assistance to Ukraine in the amount of 50 billion euros agreed by Brussels.
Now all 27 EU national leaders will meet again in Brussels on February 1 to try to agree on providing financial assistance to Ukraine.
Read more about how the European Union negotiates aid to Ukraine in the RBC-Ukraine article.
