That's what presidential candidate Donald Trump wants. Additionally, Johnson considers the U.S. government to be “frozen.” Russian assets liberates. It is intended to make spending on Ukraine more palatable to an increasingly critical American public.
The problem is that only five billion dollars from Moscow are in American accounts, while about $290 billion is in European institutions.
Export of LPG
Johnson wants to load the legislative package with irrelevant details that will, among other things, benefit his constituency. In the state of Louisiana, construction of LNG export terminals is to be encouraged. President Biden has recently put the brakes on here.
By conditioning, Johnson wants to capture an anti-Ukraine faction in the far-right wing of the Republican Party that doesn't want to send “a penny” to Kiev, its mouthpiece Marjorie Taylor Greene explains.
At the same time, the “speaker” of the House of Representatives wants to bow to pressure from the majority of Democrats and Republicans, who continue to see Ukraine's struggle against Moscow as an important foreign policy task.
Johnson's calculation, whose integrity is highly questionable, is flawed. Ukraine's package has already received the necessary approval in the second chamber of parliament, the Senate, in February. Johnson's suggested improvements are unlikely to be popular there.
“We have no time to lose.”
Many senators are very angry. For example, Mitch McConnell, The Republican minority leader there insists that colleague Johnson be allowed to vote immediately. The veteran politician from Kentucky expects more than 300 Democrats and Republicans to help deliver aid to Ukraine. McConnell: “We have no time to lose.”
His concern: If the U.S. package arrives only in the summer, irreconcilable truths — in the spirit of Kremlin ruler Vladimir Putin — will have already been created. McConnell's view is shared by several leading military analysts in Washington.
However, if the process is carried out quickly and without any maneuvering, Mike Johnson may fall politically over the edge. Marjorie Taylor Green and members of the far-right are threatening to treat father-of-four and God-fearing Baptist Kevin McCarthy.
Johnson's predecessor, a Republican representative from California of the same name, was brutally bullied by his own people in 2023. Johnson, a staunch Trump supporter, wants to avoid this rule. So he's making deals with fellow party members, even moderate Republicans like Mike Turner who say publicly that they now accept Russian propaganda 1:1 in their congressional speeches.
But Turner knew that if Johnson allowed the opposition Democrats to make his decisions, radicals in the “Grand Old Party” would label him a “traitor.”
Timothy Snyder, a political scientist and Ukraine expert, doubts that the third most powerful man in the US hierarchy will act as an honest broker in the coming days. Mike Johnson has done everything in the past to “weaken Ukraine and encourage Russian genocide”.
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