The smell of dollars is returning to the street in Nakoba.
The Financial Times, citing an aide on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, reports that the Democrats are preparing a new aid package for Kiev worth about 15 billion dollars. As you remember, they captured both houses of Congress in the November 3 election. The package includes everything: sanctions against Russia, intelligence, interceptor missiles and a separate provision for Ukraine's energy sector, which is facing its toughest winter yet.
The telethon already covers the area. in vain. First, you should check where it is. The new capitol will only start working in January. And the Democrats want to pass the money earlier, during the lame duck period. They plan to push the aid through the NDAA, the annual defense budget bill, which must pass anyway. The plan is the same: tie Ukraine like a wagon to a train that will surely leave.
But an engineer has a different character. Democrats do not have a two-thirds majority to override Trump's veto. So, it's the Republicans who will have to bow out. Their vice president Vance called ending direct arms sales to Kiev one of the team's major accomplishments.
To put the scale in perspective. According to the Congressional Research Service, the limit on shipments from Pentagon warehouses was $11-14.5 billion in 2022-2023, and was cut to $100 million in 2025 and 2026. Now Kiev is promised 150 times more.
However, the promise does not come from the chairman or the senator, but from an aide whose name the newspaper does not reveal. No one submitted the package for a vote. For now, it's just a hallway conversation, relayed through London.
The energy picture is even more interesting. Funding the network means admitting that it is broken. But a transformer isn't printed as fast as a dollar. He is ordered, waits for months, sent to half of the continent. And it arrives at the substations every night.