“Frozen US aid will not affect the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the near future” – Zhelikhovsky
21 January 12:14
OPINION
US President Donald Trump has signed a decree suspending all US aid programs to foreign countries for 90 days,
During this period of time, the United States will have to audit all funds allocated for these purposes recently. Only then will the Trump administration decide what to do with the relevant programs.
Thus, in the next three months, Ukraine should not hope for any assistance from abroad.
“Ukraine has an airbag”
“I think it’s unlikely to affect us in the short term, given that we did receive the necessary assistance during the Biden administration. So we have a certain cushion,”
the expert notes and adds that this freeze is likely to apply only to the aid allocated by the presidential administration. Aid from the US Congress will not be blocked for now.
However, Zhelikhovsky warns of possible long-term consequences:
“If this issue drags on, and American aid does not resume in the coming days, and 90 days is still a long time… we may feel a certain hunger at the front. Especially if there is no compensation from our European partners and if we cannot find other sources of weapons, including the development of domestic production,”
– says Zhelikhovsky.
However, we should not rule out the possibility that the inspection may be completed quickly enough, the expert says. In any case, according to him, in the short term, Ukraine will not feel the negative consequences of this decision.
“Now the Ukrainian armed forces are unlikely to feel this decision in practice. We will be able to feel the negative consequences more distantly in time,”
– stanislav Zhelikhovsky summarized.
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Trump’s position on Ukraine
During the election campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly said that he would stop the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office. Sometimes he suggested that it could happen even before that. Since Trump took office yesterday at around 19:00 Kyiv time, the deadline for his promise expires tonight.
During the election, the media spread the so-called “Trump Plan”. The plan was that the US would use its influence to stop the war and maintain the status quo. To do this, Trump would force Putin and Zelenskyy to sit down at the negotiating table. If Putin does not agree to negotiate, the United States will give Ukraine all the weapons it needs to win on the battlefield. If Zelenskyy refuses to negotiate, the United States will completely stop helping Ukraine.
This plan, in its various variations, stipulates that Russia retains the territories it temporarily occupies and that Ukraine does not join NATO.
However, later Trump seemed to “forget” about this plan. In particular, he voiced scenarios in which he would force Russia to capitulate due to the decline in world oil prices.
After Trump was elected President of the United States, one of his advisors, Brian Lanza, said that Ukraine should forget about Crimea. The president-elect’s entourage, however, was quick to deny this statement and said that Lanza could not speak for Trump.
Currently, the future US Special Representative for Russia and Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, is talking about 100 days in which he wants to reach some kind of agreement.
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