Ukraine warns it will fall to Russia without US military aid

What was concern at the end of 2023 is now despair. The Ukrainian authorities are increasingly distressed by the delay of the military aid package of more than 50 billion euros approved by the president of the United States, Joe Biden. The Republican Party has been blocking this item in Congress for half a year, under the influence of former President Donald Trump. The Ukrainian head of state, Volodymyr Zelensky, stressed this Tuesday in the German newspaper

Bild

that without American support, Russia will end his country: “Everything will be destroyed. Many people will die, it will be a bloodbath, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of victims.”

In this dramatic way, Zelensky was referring above all to the progressive lack of ammunition for the anti-aircraft defense systems that protect Ukrainian cities. The call from Zelensky and his government is, specifically, for Washington to provide more Patriot anti-aircraft batteries. “Give us the damn Patriots,”

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba exclaimed on

Politico

on March 25 .

There is a statistic that shows the worsening of the situation: the Ukrainian Air Force intercepted on average 80% of the long-range missiles fired by Russia in 2023; This year, the percentage has fallen to 60%. This is allowing the invading army to systematically destroy the Ukrainian energy system since March. The country's Energy Minister, Herman Galushchenko, indicated on April 8 that the Russian Air Force has damaged 80% of its thermal plants and more than half of its hydroelectric plants in recent weeks. In the early hours of this Wednesday, Russian drones and missiles again attacked electrical substations in the cities of Odessa and Mikolaiv.

Trumpism opposes allocating more millions to Ukraine because it considers that it is a lost war and that the money should be invested in fortifying the US borders.

Prominent Ukrainian media outlets opened their editions this Wednesday with news that adds more pessimism, published by The

Guardian newspaper:

the British Foreign Minister, David Cameron, had dinner with Trump on Tuesday and did not convince him to unblock military assistance for Kiev.

The Guardian

added that Cameron did not even get the Republican Party to grant him a meeting with Republican Mike Johnson, president of the US Congress. Johnson has the power to put to the vote the aid package for Ukraine, which is accompanied by military assistance for Israel and Taiwan. Johnson assured in early April that the issue could be unblocked this week, but Republican congressmen loyal to Trump have threatened to instigate his impeachment if he brings Biden's proposal to a vote.

Trumpism opposes allocating more millions to Ukraine because it considers that it is a lost war and that the money should be invested in fortifying the US borders. The Ukrainian Government has leaked to the media that it is willing to provide aid through credit, putting the public coffers in debt despite the fact that, without financing from the European Union, the Ukrainian State would be bankrupt today.

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The Ukrainian Armed Forces insist on the weakness of their arsenal: Russian artillery has six times more ammunition than Ukrainian artillery

The Washington Post

reported on April 7 that Trump has a plan to end the war by granting Russian leader Vladimir Putin sovereignty over the Crimean peninsula and the Donbas region. Zelensky responded from

Bild

, describing the former US president's proposals as fantasy: "Here we are talking about people's lives, we cannot make jokes or take risks." Trump's team denied the veracity of the news, although it would not be an unusual approach: there are more and more voices in the international political and military sphere that assume that the war will end with Ukrainian concessions. Zelensky does not doubt that Putin only seeks to disintegrate the Ukrainian State and will not stop at conquering 20% ​​of the territory of the invaded country.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces insist on the weakness of their arsenal. Russian artillery has six times more ammunition than Ukraine's, and the invader's control of the sky is allowing its planes to bomb positions on the front more easily. Zelensky spoke openly on March 29 about the situation on the front line of war, in

The Washington Post:

“If we do not have the support of the United States, it means that we do not have anti-aircraft defenses, we do not have Patriot missiles, we do not have inhibitors against electronic warfare, we do not have artillery ammunition. It means that we will go backwards, going backwards, step by step.”

The main Ukrainian fear is a Trump victory in the US presidential elections next November. The alternative is none other than Europe, as the director of the Dialogue Institute for Social and Political Studies, Andrei Miseliuk, wrote on April 5 in the

LB

media: “For the first time since the creation of NATO, Europe must prepare its defense without the 100% safe umbrella from the United States.” “It is a very big problem that the United States does not overcome its national differences. We must prepare for our own defense,” Sandra Kalniete, former Latvian foreign minister and former European Commission commissioner, said at the kyiv Security Forum on March 21.

The problem for Ukraine is that it cannot wait until Europe takes over the US military role. “If Congress does not help Ukraine, we will lose the war,” Zelensky said in an April 7 speech, “and if Ukraine loses the war, other countries will be attacked.”

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