Putin Isn’t Scared of Ukraine’s $61 Billion Boost
The US aid will help Kyiv make it through 2024 but the Russian leader still thinks he can outwait the West.
Still eyeing victory.
Photographer: Mikhail Metzel/AFP/Getty Images
Sometimes, foreign policy is simply about averting catastrophe. By that metric, Washington did well last week. The approval of $61 billion in aid for Ukraine ensures that 2024 will not be the year the US abandons Kyiv to defeat at the hands of Moscow, an outcome that would have sent geopolitical shockwaves around the world. Yet it hasn’t changed the fact that the coming months will be quite ugly — and it won’t be enough to win this war or to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin that he can’t simply outwait the West.
Ukraine aid passed with sizable bipartisan majorities — nearly 80 votes in the Senate, over 300 in the House — showing that support for American internationalism remains strong so long as Donald Trump isn’t terrifying Republicans into neo-isolationism. And it came just as Ukraine’s war effort was reaching a decisive, desperate moment.