President Biden made a point Friday to quickly single out Republicans for Ukraine funding struggles during a brief meeting overseas with Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Biden, speaking to Zelenskyy in Paris a day after D-Day commemorations, told the Ukrainian leader “You haven’t bowed down. You haven’t yielded at all. You continue to fight in a way that is just remarkable. It’s remarkable. And we’re not going to walk away from you.”
“I apologize for those weeks of not knowing what’s going to pass in terms of funding, because we had trouble getting the bill that we had to pass, had the money in it, from some of our very conservative members who were holding it up. But we got it done finally. And since then, including today, I’ve announced six packages of significant funding,” Biden added. “Today, I’m also signing an additional package for $225 million to help you reconstruct the electric grid.”
Biden was referring to a recent foreign aid package that passed Congress in late April after being stalled for months in the House of Representatives.
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A growing number of fiscal conservatives have been skeptical about the U.S.’s continued financial involvement with Ukraine, while others have raised questions about corruption within Kyiv’s government.
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More traditional Republicans and national security hawks warn that Ukraine’s victory is critical to preventing a wider conflict between NATO and Russia, warning that its President Vladimir Putin is rapidly forming a second “axis of evil” with Iran and China.
Zelenskyy told Biden during the brief meeting that “It’s very important that you stay with us.
“This bipartisan support with the Congress, it’s very important that in this unity, United States of America, all American people stay with Ukraine like it was during World War Two,” he said. “How the United States helped to save human lives, to save Europe.”
Fox News’ Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.