More than ever, the war in Ukraine is looming and becoming a major issue in the campaign for the next presidential election in the United States in November.
If Democrats and Republicans have been torn apart for months in the American Congress over the question of aid to Ukraine, the oppositions have become more and more marked in recent days.
Democratic-backed President Joe Biden is urgently calling for the new funds to provide aid to Ukraine at a time when Russia appears to be retaking many positions on the ground and is stepping up bombing.
The Republicans are more divided between those who are ready to be even more interventionist in an attempt to quickly outdo Russia and the lieutenants of Donald Trump, who are much more isolationist with the leitmotif: “America first”.
And in the House, Trump's supporters are growing in number as polls bring the former president once again to the White House.
Especially since Donald Trump affirms that the issue of the war in Ukraine is not really, according to him, a problem.
According to the former head of state, with him, the war would be resolved in “24 hours”.
Conditioning of aid
Under these conditions, the Senate was to adopt a text this Tuesday combining $60 billion in aid for kyiv with funds for Israel and Taiwan for a total envelope of $95 billion.
The fact remains that this text could remain a dead letter if the House of Representatives does not even want to debate it.
Monday evening, Mike Johnson, the leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, and loyal to Donald Trump, assured that the text negotiated by the senators would not be examined as is in his hemicycle.
According to him, "the Senate's foreign aid bill remains silent on the most urgent problem facing our country," he lambasted, referring to the migration crisis at the border between the United States and Mexico.
In other words, the Republicans condition aid to kyiv on a significant strengthening of migration policy.
And “in the absence of any modification” from the Senate on the subject, “the House of Representatives will continue to work according to its own will on these important issues,” he warns.
Furthermore, Mike Johnson, like many Republicans in Congress, is following directives from Donald Trump, who said on Saturday that the United States must “stop giving money without expecting to be reimbursed”.
The Republican candidate also threw a spanner in the works, by assuring that he would “encourage” Russia to attack NATO countries if they did not pay their share, which caused a shower of critics on the other side of the Atlantic.
“We are helping Ukraine with more than $100 billion more than NATO,” Donald Trump insisted Monday evening on his Truth Social network.
“NATO must equalize, and now,” he demanded.
“Otherwise, it will be America first!”
“, he said.