US Democrats omit COVID-19 funding from omnibus spending package to help Ukraine
US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced that she would remove a $15.6 billion COVID-19 aid provision from the omnibus spending bill in a bid to allocate the money to provide emergency aid for Ukraine.
“Because of Republican insistence — and the resistance by a number of our Members to making those offsets — we will go back to the Rules Committee to remove COVID funding and accommodate the revised bill,” Pelosi wrote in a letter to her fellow Democrats on Wednesday afternoon. “We must proceed with the omnibus today, which includes emergency funding for Ukraine and urgent funding to meet the needs of America’s families.”
“It is heartbreaking to remove the COVID funding, and we must continue to fight for urgently needed COVID assistance,” she continued, “but unfortunately that will not be included in this bill.”
The remarks by Pelosi come a day after US Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced a deal between the two parties to allocate billions of dollars in emergency aid for Ukraine.
McConnell said Tuesday the deal would provide $14 bn in additional assistance to Ukraine, which would include loan guarantees to help NATO allies including Poland purchase US warplanes to replace warplanes transferred to Ukraine.
“Where we’ve ended up is at $14 billion,” McConnell told reporters. "We need to provide them loan guarantees and assurance that they will be able to get a way to backfill the loss of those MiGs for their own security."
There, however, appeared to be a disagreement over the sum of Ukraine aid, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer saying it would amount to less than $14 billion.
However, either way, the figures represent a rise from last week's $10 billion request from the White House.
On 24 February, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a military operation in Ukraine after Kiev failed to implement the Minsk agreements and resolve the conflict in Donbass peacefully.
Putin said that Russia was left with no other choice but to act after weeks of shelling of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR) by Ukrainian forces. He thus ordered Russian forces to demilitarize Ukraine.
US President Joe Biden called the Russian action an "unprovoked and unjustified attack," and the American media described it as the biggest assault on a European state since World War Two assault by Russia.
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