Republican opponent of US aid to Ukraine brings his case to an international conference

MUNICH – A Republican opponent of new U.S. investment for Ukraine argued at an international safety conference Sunday that the package deal caught in Congress would not “fundamentally change the reality” at the flooring and that Russia has an incentive to negotiate peace.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and others have advocated passage of the $60 billion in aid on the Munich Security Conference, which coincided with Ukraine retreating troops from the japanese city of Avdiivka after months of intense fight.

But Sen. JD Vance, an Ohio Republican and best friend of Donald Trump, stated “the problem in Ukraine … is that there’s no clear end point” and that the U.S. doesn’t make enough weapons to support wars in eastern Europe, the Middle East and “potentially a contingency in East Asia.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson insists he won’t be “rushed” into approving the $95.3 billion foreign aid package from the Senate that comes with the assist for Ukraine, in spite of overwhelming beef up from maximum Democrats and nearly part the Republicans.

If the package deal is going thru, “that is not going to fundamentally change the reality on the battlefield,” Vance argued, pointing to limited American manufacturing capacity.

“Can we send the level of weaponry we’ve sent for the last 18 months?” he asked. “We simply cannot. No matter how many checks the U.S. Congress writes, we are limited there.”

“I think what’s reasonable to accomplish is some negotiated peace,” he said, arguing that Russia, Ukraine, Europe and the U.S. all have an incentive to come to the table now and that the two-year-old war will at some point end in a negotiated peace.

Ricarda Lang, a co-leader of one of Germany’s governing parties, the Greens, responded that Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown repeatedly “that he has no interest in peace at the moment.”

Halting weapons supplies to Ukraine now would mean that “both you’re prolonging the conflict otherwise you surrender Ukraine and Putin wins,” she stated.

If Putin wins, “he, but also other forces like China, are going to learn that it’s possible to just change borders and that NATO is not going to hold it against us,” Lang added. That would lead to “a world with less security, and … a world with less freedom for the EU but also for the U.S.”