When Biden met with Zelensky on Ukraine on the 12th, he changed his previous tough attitude for the first time, saying that the United States would support Ukraine as much as possible, but did not give a specific time and amount. This shows that Biden has been unable to convince the US Congress to continue to provide large amounts of aid to Ukraine, and has even made concessions to the Republican Party, but still does not have the support of the Republican Party.
Biden has proposed an aid bill of up to $105 billion to the US Congress, of which Ukraine will receive $61.4 billion, of which $50 billion will be used for military aid, while Israel has only $14.3 billion. However, the bill was rejected by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, and Biden repeatedly threatened to warn Congress to pass the bill immediately, but to no avail. On December 6, Republicans in the Senate voted unanimously to reject the bill in a major vote.
Zelensky has not given up on this, he recently personally visited the United States in the hope of convincing Congress to continue providing assistance to Ukraine, but his efforts have not paid off, and Congress has announced a holiday from December 15 until January 9 next year, during which time no matters related to Ukraine will be discussed.
Zelensky's visit to the United States only received Biden's verbal promises and $200 million in aid, which is a drop in the bucket for Ukraine, and the amount of aid that the United States can provide is currently less than $1 billion, and this money can only last until the end of this year.
In fact, the United States has provided more than $100 billion in aid to Ukraine, plus the aid of other Western countries, Ukraine has received huge amounts of money and **, but these have not changed Ukraine's disadvantages on the battlefield, Ukraine's ** has not achieved any substantial results, even if the United States gives Ukraine another $61.4 billion, it is impossible for Ukraine to defeat Russia.
Zelensky told Biden on the 12th that Ukraine would be able to resist Russian aggression even if the US Congress did not provide new aid, but by the 13th, he had to admit that without the help of the United States, Ukraine would have to cede part of its territory to Russia.
At present, Russia still controls nearly 20% of Ukraine's territory, although Ukraine has launched a few months of **, and has also announced some "major breakthroughs" and "village-level victories", but under Russia's strong counterattack, Ukraine is losing its previous gains.
On October 7, a new round of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict attracted global attention, and Putin took the opportunity to launch a full-scale ** in the Donbas region, committing at least 25 divisions of troops, and soon occupied the leading position of the war.
Winter has come, and the two sides are at a stalemate on the frontal battlefield, but Russia is constantly carrying out missile strikes on Ukraine, trying to repeat the scenario of the winter of 2022, destroying Ukraine's energy, transportation and other infrastructure, making Zelensky shiver in the cold.
Russia's missile strikes also broke the calm of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, and on the 13th, Russia again launched ** ballistic missiles and attacked Kyiv. However, according to the reports of the Ukrainian air defense forces, the attack did not cause much damage, and the Ukrainian air defense forces managed to intercept 10 ballistic missiles, only because of the fragments of the missiles, which caused some fires and **, a total of 25 people were injured and an apartment building was destroyed. Russia has spent tens of millions of dollars, but only with such a small result, it is really blind.
The Ukrainian ** office said on the 13th that the ** of the West is very effective and cannot be doubted. That is to say, even if the West's ** does not bring much advantage to Ukraine, Ukraine must maintain the face of these ** and not let the West's ** make a fool of themselves in Ukraine.
Since May this year, Zelensky has shown his magical ability, Russia's advanced hypersonic missiles in his hands, none of which have played any role, and the Dagger hypersonic missile launched by Russia's MiG-31 fighter jet was successfully intercepted by Zelensky with the American Patriot air defense system.
At the end of May, the Iskander missiles launched by Russia were also intercepted by Zelensky, you know, the Iskander missile is Russia's most advanced campaign-tactical missile, and it is the best in its class. Its R&D unit even said that the Iskander missile was the nemesis of the American Patriot missile, and as a result, the Patriot became an artifact in the hands of Zelensky.
However, from the perspective of the frontal battlefield, the advanced ** of the West have failed one by one on the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield, and have not brought too many advantages to Ukraine, but have turned into scrap metal under the fierce blows of Russia. For example, the German Leopard 2 tank, the American Bradley tank, the American M2A2 infantry fighting vehicle, the British Challenger-2 tank, etc.
The United States announced in January this year that it would provide Ukraine with Abrams M1 tanks, but they were not delivered to Ukraine until September. The United States originally expected that this batch of M1 would be used for Ukraine's defense, but now that Russia has opened a comprehensive **, the United States directly asked Ukraine to deploy M1 tanks far from the front line, apparently also afraid that these tanks would be destroyed by Russia.
Judging by the current situation, Ukraine has lost the support of the West, and Ukraine's ** is constantly decreasing. Zelensky's visit to the United States did not receive the $61.4 billion in aid he wanted, and only received verbal promises from the US Congress.
Recently, senior generals of the United States and Ukraine have held consultations on next year's strategic plan, and Ukraine has expressed its hope to attract the attention of the international community by attacking important targets such as military factories and railway lines. But the United States sees this as a risky approach, too presumptuous, and hopes that Ukraine will be able to maintain its existing defense line and territory and become self-reliant.
This is undoubtedly asking Ukraine to continue to confront Russia without foreign aid, which is unrealistic. The root cause of the Russian-Ukrainian war is actually NATO's eastward expansion, which led to a strong reaction from Russia, but the result was that Ukraine and Russia fought, but NATO only provided ** behind the scenes, and now it doesn't even give**, and requires Ukraine to be self-reliant.
Ukraine's economy and finances are already in trouble, with Ukraine's defense budget next year being more than $44 billion, with a total budget of more than $92 billion, and its fiscal projected revenue of $48.7 billion. In other words, almost all of Ukraine's fiscal revenue next year will be used for the defense budget, and how will Ukraine, which has lost aid, fill the deficit of more than $40 billion next year?
In contrast, Russia is getting stronger and stronger under the sanctions of the United States and Western countries, and Russia's GDP growth rate is expected to reach 29%, higher than expected. Putin not only increased the defense budget for 2024 by nearly 70 percent, but also announced another 170,000 military expansion in December, bringing the total number of troops to 1.32 million.
Judging by the current situation, the balance of victory is already tilted in favor of Russia, how long can Ukraine hold out if the US Congress does not approve new aid?