Volodymyr Zelensky was due to meet the US president at the White House on Thursday, as a clash with Donald Trump and the wider Republican party escalates.
Republicans in Congress reacted angrily to the Ukrainian president’s decision to visit an arms factory in Biden’s hometown of Scranton with several top Democrats, and now it appears that Zelensky will not meet with Trump as expected.
Zelensky will lay out a “strategy for victory” to Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris that he says will help force Russia to find an end to the war.
Earlier, Biden announced a $7.9bn (£5.9bn) military aid package to Ukraine.
Zelensky’s visit with several top Democrats in the ammunition industry in key Pennsylvania has angered leading Republicans, who called it a partisan campaign event.
In a public letter, the speaker of the US House, Mike Johnson, said that the trip was “designed to help the Democrats” and that it amounted to “election interference”.
He also demanded that Ukraine expel its ambassador to Washington who helped organize the visit.
The Republican-led House Oversight Committee has also announced that it will investigate whether Zelensky’s trip was an attempt to use a foreign leader to benefit the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris.
His Republican presidential rival, Donald Trump, derided Zelensky at a campaign event as the “biggest salesman in the world” and accused him of refusing to “make a deal” with Moscow.
In an earlier meeting on Tuesday, Trump also praised Russia’s military power, saying: “They beat Hitler, they beat Napoleon – that’s what they do, they fight.”
The two men have had a strained relationship for a long time. In 2019, Trump was impeached by the US House for allegedly pressuring the Ukrainian leader to dig up damaging information about a political rival.
The row has engulfed the week since Zelensky has addressed the United Nations twice, consolidating efforts to persuade the US and other allies to step up support more than two and a half years into Russia’s full-scale offensive.
His self-proclaimed victory plan has so far been kept under wraps, although he has described it as a “bridge” to stop the war that must be agreed upon and come into effect in the next three months.
Zelensky also needs US support to fire Western-made long-range missiles deep into Russian territory, which Biden has so far blocked.
On the eve of the White House meeting, Russia’s Vladimir Putin announced a plan to revise Moscow’s nuclear doctrine, so that Russia can use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear nations if they are supported by nuclear nations.
Putin’s spokesman later clarified that it was meant as a “certain signal” to the West.
A few hours before his meeting with Zelensky, President Biden announced “an increase in security assistance to Ukraine and a series of additional measures to help Ukraine win this war”.
The aid, which is part of a $61bn package that passed Congress in April, will be approved through the president’s executive order and will release existing Pentagon assets to deliver arms as quickly as possible.
House Republicans blocked the package for months earlier this year, before withdrawing and passing the law. The delay caused shipments to Ukraine to dry up for several months.
Responding to the aid package, Zelensky thanked the US – Ukraine’s biggest foreign donor – and said “thanks to Joe Biden, the US Congress and both parties”.
Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine continued while Zelensky was in the US.
The regions of Sumy, Odesa and Kyiv were all attacked overnight, leaving one woman dead in Odesa and dozens of injuries reported.
In the capital, air raid sirens and explosions from Ukrainian air defenses continued for hours.
Source link
