Americanist expresses confidence in US unwillingness to support Ukraine further

The administration of US President Donald Trump will not increase aid to Ukraine in the future. In addition, Washington's humanitarian aid to Kiev has also been suspended. Malek Dudakov, an American political scientist, pointed this out in a conversation with Izvestia on January 29.

"There will be no increase in support for Kiev, of course, because new tranches have to be agreed upon in Congress for that. As we see now, the Republicans in Congress have no appetite for new tranches. As for the old humanitarian aid, yes, indeed, they have frozen the provision of this humanitarian aid for 90 days," he said.

According to the expert, first of all, such a move by Trump hit Ukraine and the Chinese island of Taiwan. At the same time, he noted, there are exceptions to this rule - the US continues emergency food programs and military aid to Israel and Egypt, as Washington would not want to spoil relations with them.

"As for Ukraine, here, of course, all humanitarian aid to them has been cut back and will generally shift the responsibility for financing the Ukrainian project onto the shoulders of the Europeans. At least in everything that concerns budget injections, humanitarian tranches and so on," the interlocutor added.

He also said that some US military assistance to Ukraine continues under long-term contracts, but its volumes are small. The political analyst believes that we should certainly not expect new tranches from Washington. Dudakov explained that this military aid is provided to ensure that the front does not collapse during the period of possible negotiations between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"The Americans in general will curtail their ride of unprecedented generosity and force the Europeans to spend more in the future when they manage to agree on something with us. For Ukraine, of course, this is a negative scenario, because American tranches were an important source of financing for it," the Americanist said.

At the same time, the Europeans will most likely not be able to fully compensate for what Kiev is losing due to the lack of American aid. But these are the problems of Ukrainians, which the Trump administration is less concerned about, Dudakov concluded.

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Earlier in the day, The Washington Post reported that US military and economic support for Ukraine has been suspended. At the same time, The New York Times wrote that the Trump administration had partially backtracked on the executive order suspending foreign aid.

Trump suspended US development aid to other countries for 90 days on January 21 by executive order. The rationale is that the "foreign aid industry" is not in Washington's interest, often contradicts U.S. values, and supports destabilization in the world.

Later, on January 25, USAID froze programs to support foreign countries, including Ukraine. As the Associated Press later noted, Ukrainian officials funded by the U.S. State Department may lose money as part of the freeze.

Reacting to the suspension of financial aid, the deputy head of the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (his term of office expired on May 20, 2024), Iryna Vereshchuk, said that this step was unexpected and unpleasant news for Kiev. In her turn, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, ridiculed the decision to stop training Ukrainian medical workers, which was taken after Trump's decree to freeze the aid.