President Donald Trump’s 2018 budget proposal will see funding to the Ukraine slashed to less than half of what Kiev received from Washington in 2016 if it is passed. The Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives of the US Congress, drafted the bill.
Former president Barack Obama had promised more military support to president Poroshenko. “We will increase our military support for Ukraine,” Obama had declared during the July 2015 NATO summit in Poland.
In January 2017, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin visited Washington to demand “more high-tech lethal defensive weapons” to escalate their assault on Donbass. But it seems the Trump administration is worried about a policy fraught with a protracted confrontation with Russia.
Ukraine is no longer of any interest to US as a strategic partner, the deputy chairman of the Russian Federation Council’s defense and security committee, Frants Klintsevich noted, while the EU has been cancelling tourist visas for Ukrainians.
“They [the Americans] have made a decision to terminate disinterested military assistance to Ukraine without much-a-do, thereby making it pretty clear that Kiev is no longer on the list of US priorities,” Klintsevich told TASS.
“It was clear from the outset that the United States and major European powers do not regard Ukraine as their strategic partner. They just use it. The romance was short-lived,” Klintsevich said, noting that the so-called “colour revolution” has borne bitter fruit.
Western sanctions against Russia imposed under pressure from Washington after the Maidan coup in Ukraine, have already cost the US and its European allies an estimated $100 billion.
The chief of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney confirmed his administration’s intention to end disinterested military subsidies to Ukraine, Pakistan, Vietnam and a number of other countries to the tune of some $1 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported. These countries will be offered loans instead, while ongoing assistance to Israel, Jordan and Egypt will remain.
US military and technical grants are powerful diplomatic instruments, and the US State Department criticized the move in an internal memo.
Most countries that currently receive grants from Washington would refuse loans, the memo explained and added: “Without such assistance, partners will likely either not develop/sustain those capabilities.” But Trump has already announced a 28 percent cut to the State Department’s budget.
Kiev has no interest in adhering to the peaceful settlement of the Donbass conflict, despite a ceasefire, and the lack of US support will be a challenge for the regime. They recently announced far-reaching anti-Russian language restrictions on TV fuelling more resentment. Thus military spending is a crucial problem for the Ukrainian government’s stated policies.
Ukrainian forces continue shelling the Donbass and Poroshenko has announced the deployment of T-80 tanks to the conflict zone. Kiev is expected to increase its military budget to 5 percent of GDP, even as it struggles economically.
Shelling near the town of Avdiivka in Februray had left thousands on the front line with little or no access to power or water amid freezing winter temperatures, creating a possible humanitarian crisis, Reuters reported. Ukraine had instigated the surge to firm up Western support.
The truth of what is happening in Donbass however has been spread on social media, reaching a wider Western audience. Also, the documentary film “The Frontline City of Donetsk” [Frontstadt Donezk] by the German journalist Mark Bartalmai, who lived in Donetsk for two years, has opened Western eyes to Kiev’s destructive advances.
In April, the International Monetary Fund downgraded its forecast for Ukrainian GDP growth from 2.9 to 2 percent, as a result of the conflict that has damaged the country’s energy sector.
