Lawfare Archive: The Complicated Politics of Ukraine Aid

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just go ahead and check out the minerals. With an episode from the Lothar Archive for September 12th, 2026. On September 6th, U.S. special envoy Steve Whitkov and Jared Kushner, who is also President Trump's son-in-law, visited Kiev, a day after meeting with President Putin in Moscow.

Following the talks, Trump spoke with Putin about potential negotiations, telling Putin a cessation of the conflict, quote, "would immediately open up impressive and far-reaching prospects for relations between the U.S. and Russia to be fully restored." For today's Archive, I chose an episode from December 11th, 2023, in which Benjamin Winis spoke with Eric Charamella of the Carnegie Endowment for International

Peace and law-fersing your editor, Molly Reynolds, about the politics of U.S. A.D. Ukraine. They discussed negotiations in Congress at that time, how the ongoing A.D. debates impact Ukrainian perceptions of the U.S. and more. I'm Benjamin Whitis, and this is the lawfare podcast December 11th, 2023. The Senate last week failed to move forward the national security supplemental,

which includes a large package of aid for Ukraine. The hold-up, migration at the southern border, and Republican insistence that the administration and Democrats will have to swallow major policy changes in order to get the Ukraine aid through. Meanwhile, the mood in Kiev is a little down.

The counter-offensive did not go as planned. The U.S. aid situation and the European commitment to Ukraine is alarming

and domestic politics are returning after a hiatus during the first couple years of the war.

To chew over the state of Ukraine and its support from the United States, we got together Eric Charamella of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a former CIA Ukraine analyst and Molly Reynolds, lawfare senior editor and congressional guru. We talked about the state of the Ukraine aid package in Congress. We talked about whether a deal on the border is possible.

We talked about whether such a deal could pass the house. And we talked about Charamella's recent trip to Kiev and the mood there as Congress dithers. It's the lawfare podcast December 11th. The complicated politics of Ukraine aid.

So Molly, let's start with the news, which is that the Senate last week failed to get closure to move forward with the national security supplemental, which included the Ukraine aid package. Let's start with why that failed given that there is very solid majority support for Ukraine aid in the Senate.

“Why did that fail and what are we hung up on as negotiations continue if they continue?”

Sure. So the national security supplemental has four basic pieces to it. Most of what we'll talk about today, since we are subsequently focused on Ukraine of this podcast.

We'll kind of focus on those two items, but just for completeness.

Note that there are two other major components to the national security supplemental. One of which is assistance for Israel. The other is some assistance for Taiwan and sort of the US interests in the Indo-Pacific. But the principal sticking point as it stands now with the progress of this package to the Senate. We can talk about its prospects in the House separately, but is this the state of these negotiations

over the border provisions. And so these talks have been going on for a little while in the Senate.

It's clear at this point that Democrats are going to have to accept something that

could be described as a border policy changes in exchange for Republican support for Ukraine aid. What's in the version of the supplemental that the Biden administration requested. And then that leader Schumer brought up for a vote last week that failed is additional money for the border. But doesn't have some of the kinds of policy changes that Republicans are seeking. And so these talks that as if when we are recording this are ongoing are being led for Republicans.

By Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, being led for Democrats, by Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, and then Senator Christian Senema, the independent who caucuses with the Democrats from Arizona,

is a sort of third key player in them.

And is your impression that the Ukraine aid is among Senate Republicans controversial in its own right. Beyond a certain group of relatively fringe senators like JD Vance.

“And or is it simply a hostage to the border negotiations?”

As in, you know, has opinion changed substantively in the Senate enough to actually endanger Ukraine aid? Or is it simply hung up on this unrelated domestic policy dispute? So I think the way to think about this is as follows. So you're right to name that there are some Republican senators who are opposed to additional assistance for Ukraine. Let's say, let's call it on the merits.

They have sort of policy reason for not wanting to support additional assistance. And we can, I think that probably comes from a number of different sources, but folks who are who are subsequently opposed to additional assistance. I think where the rest of the conference is is somewhere between that, so opposed to additional assistance. And vigorously supportive of additional assistance, which is where, say, my Nardy little leader Mitch McConnell is,

“what I think has changed over time is kind of how important is it to these Republican senators who are, I would say, you know,”

to strongly supportive of additional assistance, how important is it to them to get that additional assistance? And how does getting it fit in with other policy priorities that they have, which is sort of where we come to this place where it's tied to policy changes with respect to the U.S.'s southern border? And I think one thing that kind of helps us understand this evolution and also makes this a little bit tricky, politically, is that we're not really talking about sort of this for that trade.

So it's not at this point that, you know, Democrats really want additional assistance for Ukraine, and Republicans really want these border policy changes. There are folks in both parties, for whom each of those two issues is a winner versus a loser, and the Democrats who want to drive towards policy change on immigration are the ones who are in vulnerable seats,

“which I think has shaped Republicans incentive to compromise on the border piece,”

to try and get to the place where they also approve assistance for Ukraine. And I think that sort of the weaker Republican support for Ukraine on its merits gets the harder it is to see enough of those folks wanting to support that aid so badly, that they're not sensitive to the kind of political pressure, not to give Democrats a potential win on immigration, particularly some Democrats who are in vulnerable seats. So that, I mean, I'll just note, that was a pretty political analysis.

Well, it is the Senate. Yeah, and so I don't want to, and we're going to talk, I'm sure, about this at substantial length of this podcast,

I don't want to frame this entirely as about to who are the US political winners and losers in these negotiations, because fundamentally, this is about providing need of assistance to our allies in Ukraine.

“But I think to understand kind of where the hang-up is right now,”

you really do have to get into kind of these political reasons and thinking about what the two parties and the elements within the two parties would get out of a deal, and also how important is getting to a deal getting to, yes, for different players. Yeah, I would just say that to anybody among our listeners who is inclined to be irritated at Molly for talking about this in overtly political terms.

That is the way you talk about the United States Senate, and it doesn't matter how important or critical the issue is.

That's the language of the Senate is horse trading. All right, so I want to turn to Eric before we go talk about the house, but before we do that, I want to lean in even a little bit further to the political nature of the Senate conversation, and just ask you, is there a border deal that you can imagine that in the next couple of weeks breaks this log jam? So I think there is still space for a deal.

I think if there wasn't, the negotiators would not still be talking, at least as of when we're recording this.

Reports indicate that they are still exchanging, exchanging paper as the link goes.

So I do think there remains a possibility for a deal.

“I think one important question is over what time frame does that deal happen?”

And we can talk, particularly when Eric comes into the conversation, and I haven't just been to Ukraine about sort of how acute is the need for immediate additional assistance from the United States. The Biden administration had a letter that went to the hill that suggested that assistance by the end of the calendar year was really vital. If it was going to kind of get to the Ukrainians sort of on a time horizon that was most useful to them. But I think even if there is space still for a deal, it's becoming less and less clear to me that we could get to that deal by the end of the calendar year.

Some of that has to do, and we can talk more about the House in a little bit. Some of that has to do with the fact that the House Speaker Mike Johnson has indicated that he plans to recess the House for the holidays. I think on or about December 15th, it's very hard to see if the idea of getting to an agreement by then and also more importantly actually moving it through both chambers by then, and especially since the National Defense Authorization Act is also on the agenda between now and then in the House Mayorary not take votes on extending section 702.

And so there are other competing things on the agenda.

“So sort of my bottom line is I think there's still space to get to yes for the size to drive to a deal.”

That's not to say it's definitely going to happen, but I'm not taking it off the table at this point. But I think the bigger question right now is whether it gets kicked into next year and then it comes with its own set of kind of political challenges and how it may get links to other issues as well. But that's kind of how I see things at this point. All right, so let's we will come back to the politics and the House shortly, but this is a good moment to get a sense of how all this is playing in here.

And I think it's not going to be a good moment. I think it's going to be a good moment in here. I think it's going to be a good moment in here. I think it's going to be a good moment in here. I think it's going to be a good moment in here.

I think it's going to be a good moment in here. I think it's going to be a good moment in here. I think it's going to be a good moment in here. I think it's going to be a good moment in here. I think it's going to be a good moment in here.

And I would say the mood is primarily one of frustration rather than necessarily doom and gloom. There's frustration that the counter offensive didn't achieve the objectives that Ukraine had hoped, but also that the West had unrealistic expectations for what was possible.

And that Ukraine was being forced to fight in a way that the United States never would have launching a major ground offensive with no air cover and into heavily mind areas with drones overhead.

And so they feel like the criticisms of the total failure of the counter offensive are overblown in the West and that the narrative has kind of been unfair to them.

Very frustrated there, feeling like the United States is not as reliable a partner as it was earlier this year in last year.

“But then also that Europe is having challenges too.”

There's Polish truckers who are blocking the border and Hungarian threat of a veto of decisions that could be made at the next European Council.

Meeting at the end of this week on whether to open formal accession talks with Ukraine and to grant another 50 billion euros in long term aid.

So there's a real sense of frustration. And you know, one of the things that I have heard both informally and actually there was a significant article in the key of independent by Francis Farrell that articulated this very bluntly is that there's kind of a developing understanding in key of that the West and the United States does not really want Ukraine to win.

“I have to say I find this surprising although perhaps understandable given given the domestic politics of a lot of the West countries including this one.”

Are you were you hearing that sort of frustration and and since that a kind of long term stalemate is maybe a western objective. Whereas the Ukrainian objective is really victory. Yeah, there's definitely a sense there that there's a mismatch in objectives that the West is kind of comfortable with a lot of these intermediate states and hasn't really figured out for itself what it wants. Ukraine to look like in the future and European security to look like and Russia and so you know until we define what our actual strategic objectives are and our interests that are at play here fundamentally we're not going to be able to devote the kind of resources that are needed.

And so you know they do feel like we've given them just enough to hang on and not enough to win. I think some of the critiques that they have of you know that we kind of deliberately metered out support so that they would just kind of have minimal military successes and that we were afraid of catastrophic victory and so on.

“I think that kind of fear of escalation dynamic maybe was present in the early months of the war when we really didn't understand Putin's logic and how kind of crazy he was and how far he was willing to go.”

But I think that dissipated you know last summer and fall and I really do think that the Biden administration made a really good faith effort and European allies as well to equip Ukraine with as much as possible that we could pull from stocks to put them in a best possible position to launch this counter offensive. And you can quibble over certain types of equipment you know fighter jets and and long range weapons and so on and so forth and I think some of those critiques are valid but others are not I mean it's there's questions of inventory and the questions of cost and the feasibility of getting things over in a time frame that would actually help them on the battlefield.

So you know I don't think there was some grand conspiracy to just you know get the Ukrainians so that they survive and that's it. But I do think that they have a good you know conceptual critique that we really haven't kind of grappled with what we want this to look like over the long term and what resources we're willing to put against that. Eric, I very much tend to agree that the translation of disputes over what weapon systems should be delivered at what speed into a kind of conspiracy theory on the Ukrainian side about Western intentions including American intentions is more a reflection of the failure of the counter offensive.

And the frustration of that that that the first major defeat of the war for the Ukrainians or the first major failure has no parents in a way that you know success.

People don't argue with that said I do think that they have a pretty good argument with respect to various different systems that. You know we said no it will be escalatory no it'll be escalatory no it'll be escalator okay you know you can have attack them so are okay you can have you know high Mars right and there's this pattern of one system after another that they felt like they needed in real time that we provided.

And as an ancillary matter how much of that to the extent that the critique has merit how much of it was.

The US trying to keep a western coalition together and how much of it was genuine US anxiety about providing the weapon systems in question.

“Yeah I mean I I see it from both sides I think the Ukrainians definitely have a valid critique that you know we we tend to say no no no and then yes in the end and so they think that.”

Just by continuing to push you know eventually the next door will be unlocked but that it's far too much effort on their side and too much time is wasted as they keep getting to these positive decisions but only after a tremendous amount of. Time and like you said lives on the front that they believe could have been saved with earlier provision of weapons that being said you know on the US side it's it's really really hard and you know people in the White House and Pentagon and State Department are dealing with really serious.

“Issues here and concerns about a wider war with Russia and that's been one of the animating factors of the presidents thinking from the get go which is you know.”

This war is existential for Ukraine but our overarching objective is to ensure that the war does not become existential for Europe in the United States.

And that means avoiding you know a direct confrontation with Russia and early on like I mentioned when we were not quite sure of Putin's logic and his red lines and we were testing each other and trying to gather new data.

“There was definitely caution on our side but I think as as the war went on and the concerns about escalation receded because it's sort of the war set into a logic of its own and we kind of understood that.”

You know the Ukrainians could strike things in Crimea and hit the bridge and hit Russian airfields and you know it doesn't lead to World War three it Putin for all of his tremendous tremendous flaws still seems to believe in the credibility of. You know NATO and Article five and so he has confined the war to Ukraine and so you know we we ultimately have our own interests here in protecting the alliance and I think that has governed some of the decision making. So one of the things that I look at when I talk to Ukrainians is house sophisticated they are or are not about the American domestic politics if Ukraine aid and as best as I can tell most of them are quite sophisticated about the fact that there is a wing of the Republican party that.

For reasons that are understandably confusing to them are friendly to Putin and do not appreciate the Ukrainian struggle but I have been surprised at how slow Ukrainians were to appreciate the gravity of the congressional. This function that Molly was just describing that that this declining salience of Ukraine relative to other priorities for the median Republican senator and even more so for the median Republican house member seems to have largely escaped Ukrainian attention.

Even as they continued to be very frustrated with the Biden administration which was fighting this weird guard action to protect the premise of you say to Ukraine over.

You know fighting over the speed of delivery of individual systems and I'm curious whether you know behind the scenes there is you know more attention to you know just how delicate the premise of USA to Ukraine is or whether that aspect of domestic US politics is just sufficiently remote from Ukrainian consciousness that it's. You know it kind of rounds to zero in their list of concerns which you know involve drones and missiles. I mean look it I think it escaped a lot of people how serious this situation was I mean talking to people in the administration couple of months ago they kind of thought that you know yeah there would be this wrangling over the supplemental but that ultimately it would pass because this was just too important and I don't think anyone predicted would be quite where we are today otherwise I think you probably would have seen.

You know at least the Republican kind of senators who had been very strongly supportive of Ukraine aid you know McConnell Graham others have done what seems like a you turn and again I understand.

“You know in the way Molly explained about kind of the horse trading here and and all of that and it's just politics but at the end of the day.”

To see a statement you know from senator McConnell saying you know I encourage vote against this even if it is just a procedural vote that translates over there into a lot of confusion about ultimately what the position is. And so again I mean I think this gets to the question is has the bottom started to fall out even among Ukraine's strongest supporters in the Republican Party that ultimately this isn't as important as it was a few months ago and I just I don't know the answer to that.

I have heard you will give your mobile phone number to the audience but not just come from there but I will give you a little bit of a question.

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“Right so let's go back to that question Molly with respect to the house where I think the answer to it is clearer than in the Senate.”

And that is the bottom really has fallen out assuming we can get to yes in the Senate on some kind of an immigration package. One that will make democrats extremely uncomfortable on substantive grounds. But which frees up ten republicans to support a the larger supplemental and that goes over then to the house. What do we know about what happens then sure so the house Republican conferences kind of position on border issues. The what we know about it is in the form of HR 2 which is one of the bills that the Republican conference passed out of the house earlier this year.

Democrats in the Senate have repeatedly said that those provisions are a non starter so any sort of deal that if a deal comes together in the Senate with immigration and border provisions it will not be as as much as. Republicans themselves had managed to get through the house earlier this year. I think at the end of the day this is ultimately not so much a question about what house Republicans will vote for though it is in some ways so the nature of the challenges of governance in the House Republican conference right now.

And that really to get anything done in the house whether it's a supplemental whether it's the supplemental as attached to something funding the rest of the government whether it's the NDA I would really anything.

“Basically you need to have an extremely large bipartisan majority the difficulty that Republicans first speaker party.”

And now in some cases I think even speaker Johnson have had bringing things to the floor with only Republican votes. I think it's going to get through the house is going to have to do so on a sort of large bipartisan basis quite possibly under a procedure that we've seen used a couple of times for more substantive legislation that it's usually used for.

I think one of the if I think about sort of places this year where things really got worse for the prospects of Ukraine aid I think a lot about the vote at the end of September on keeping the government open and to go back to what seems like. A million years ago even those you know not actually that longer we were headed for the possibility of a government shutdown the Senate had indicated that they really wanted additional assistance for Ukraine not as much as the Biden administration was asking for but some additional assistance for Ukraine to ride along on measure keeping the government open temporarily.

“They essentially got jammed by the house so the house acted more quickly on a proposal to keep the government open then I think folks were expecting more quickly being sort of a.”

Physicians term here because they did it like 12 hours before government funding was going to expire but then the Senate was basically left with the choice of moving with the house that already passed and keeping the government open or trying to hold out against the house and. I think that I think that it's a very important thing to do with this and for Ukraine and at that point basically McConnell got rolled to by the rest of the Senate Republican conference who said that we're not willing to shut down the government over this question of a to Ukraine and I think one of the things that suggests going forward is that the choice is between funding the government and funding Ukraine people are going to take funding the the US government and so we look at sort of possible vehicles if it doesn't get done by the end of this calendar year.

We're like a possible vehicles where this could try and ride along in the new year that's where we get to the question of funding the rest of the US government again and I'm not terribly optimistic or I should say I.

“I think the September experience suggests that we should be wary of that as a possible place for this this to get done if that's if that's what it comes to.”

What other thing I want to say that I was thinking about when you were talking about sort of the the read from Ukrainians on the role of the Biden administration and President Biden is that.

We see a lot of that same sentiment frankly among members of the US Congress themselves so if you look at kind of what people have said. Particularly on the Republican side of the aisle in the past several days about the prospect of getting a deal in the Senate with border provisions there are all these calls for President Biden to sort of somehow.

Step in and solve this problem.

The man doesn't have a magic wand like it's possible that he could help drive the talks but the end of the day like they have to get to something that they can agree on and I don't you know the US president is very powerful person but he's not a magician.

“And so figuring out kind of how to think about the role of the president himself in this I think it's something that is is difficult for lots of people including members of the US Congress.”

Yeah, I mean one of the things that I think is if you expand the point that you just made to include not just the politics of the US Congress but also the politics of the European Union.

Which has a weirdly similar mechanism to the House which is that you know a single member state veto over everything which is kind of like you know Matt gates doesn't like something he can file a you know motion to vacate the chair and Kevin McCarthy's gone right. And so you have these very small states like Hungry and Slovakia that can effectively exercise just extraordinary power and stopping things that is very similar to the power that you know individual or very small groups of members in the House can exercise by way of constraining the leadership.

Thus you have this situation where Biden is even as he's been being criticized by the Ukrainians for not moving more aggressively is struggling to maintain the degree of support. In the face of relatively small numbers of people we across many different institutions wielding disproportionate power to force a roll back and I think it's like what you're describing in the House is actually sort of a microcosm of the story of Ukraine aid including international. I don't know I'm curious Eric whether you think I'm overstating the degree of delicacy of the European Union interface there it's but it seems almost as chaotic as the House of Representatives.

Brussels and the rest of the member states give a little and then Hungary goes along with consensus and so you know there's kind of this the shadow of the future negotiations and so they all know that they're stuck in this system together and they have to keep reaching consensus and they all have their own priorities and so.

It's a little bit of an incentive ultimately to make a deal because if they're going to need anything in the future they're going to need the rest of the union to go along with it.

“But but I guess my question is are we making the same wrong assumption that you know you you just said a few months ago people weren't looking at this and seeing the bottom fall out they would say well it's what it's just too important.”

So the supplemental will pass and that was certainly the way a lot of Ukrainians were thinking about it and then all of a sudden they underestimated the degree of erosion and I guess the question is are we doing the same thing with respect to the we got a bunch of Polish truckers who were blockading the Ukrainian border now are are we doing the same thing with Ukraine with with the EU that we did a few months ago with respect to Congress. On the on the Polish thing I do think that there will be relief on that because you know there's going to be a new Polish government voted in most likely next week and Donald Tusk will be attending the European Council meeting and you know his priority will be resolving this blockade and his ability to negotiate some sort of relief or compensation or subsidies for the truckers.

“With Brussels is going to be far greater than the outgoing government's ability which you know they had this poison relationship with Brussels for for the past many years.”

So I do think you know that's kind of a.

A crisis that hopefully will have some resolutions soon I don't think that overall support among EU member states is really changing that much but they're looking at us too and again if we're unable to pass this supplemental. There will be a huge debate opened up in Europe about whether to double down which some will argue or to scale back because they realize that they can't really replace us and so it's a losing proposition to just keep funding from from the European side without the significant American contributions particularly on the military side and so.

“Our ability to act decisively and coherently has a pretty direct effect on European cohesion and that's been a huge part of the president strategy going back to not even day one but before the invasion is to hold.”

I think that's why I'm going to do that. It's a really good job of that but with this crisis in Congress it could really start to come apart. All right so speaking of domestic politics there has been a bit of a return of domestic politics in Ukraine itself which has had a bit of vacation from them over the first. Of the war when everybody kind of rallied behind President Zelensky so Eric give us a bit of an overview of the recent events and the recent stresses on on the unity and what you think that means for the year coming forward in Ukraine.

One of the main stories I heard when I was there was about this brewing conflict between the really the top civilian and military officials and you know this sort of manifested.

Notably in the article written by generals allusionies the head of the armed forces in the economist where he you know basically acknowledged that the war was drifting into a stalemate of sorts positional warfare that the counter offensive didn't achieve you know the breakthrough that had been hoped for. That was you know published after months and months of public statements by President Zelensky and Zelensky's advisors that you know there was still hope for breakthrough and Ukrainian armed forces was making progress on the battlefield.

So it really cut against that sort of official narrative and the reaction from Zelensky's office was you know pretty sharply critical of you know the timing and the presentation by by generals allusiony. It wasn't just about that article I mean there had been kind of personality and bureaucratic conflicts brewing for really since the beginning of the war and kind of the the underwhelming results of the counter offensive have really brought those to the fore.

You know as allusiony just for listeners who for whom that name is not as prominent as Zelensky's as allusiony is a very revered figure in Ukraine as somebody who sort of on the military side has really run the war is that fair.

“Yeah, that's fair. He's he's widely regarded and beloved within the Ukrainian armed forces but again Zelensky is also quite popular still even though some of his you know approval ratings had started to dip a little bit.”

But the overall message is you know whereas in the west this is being presented as kind of Ukraine is on the brink of catastrophic implosion and you know there's going to be this huge split in the leadership and Ukraine is going to be engulfed in internal conflict for Ukrainians. The last year and a half was really an aberration. I mean Ukrainian politics is pretty fratious. Yeah, pretty baronocled you know and right before the war Zelensky's approval ratings were about 23% and so the idea that you had the country rally behind a leader with 90 something percent and just have no political discussion whatsoever was really unusual and so things are sort of re adjusting to maybe a new normal.

And maybe that's good for you know the health of democracy overall and to have this debate you know start to happen there are concerns that Russia can exploit it.

And that you know things like an election for example which is hotly debated right now because it can't be conducted under martial law but technically the terms of both parliament and the president will have expired you know by early next year parliament already did president and march. So you know there is concern that kind of not having this unity is going to open the country up to you know Russia taking advantage of it but still.

You know being in cave that it was a lot less of a dire you know alarm than we see in these western headlines about how the country is on the verge of political implosion.

And since you mentioned the elections problem. How what is the current thinking on the subject my understanding and my knowledge of Ukrainian law is pretty limited but my understanding is that there are actually legal impediments to holding elections and as you say there are also legal impediments to not holding elections in the sense that you don't want you know Zelensky to turn into.

“You know Mahmoud Abbas who's in the 20th year or something or 15th year of his four year term. What is the current state of thinking about how you address this constitutional problem in Ukrainian politics?”

Yeah well I mean you're right to characterize it that way it is a constitutional and legal problem it's not just that Zelensky has artificially installed himself as president for life. You know when martial law was imposed and Zelensky didn't do that by executive order he had to have a vote of the parliament and they have to vote every 90 days to continue martial law under the law and martial law there's no possibility for an election to be held. Which makes sense again because when they were designing that law you know 30 something years ago the idea was that if the country were ever under an existential enough threat to have to oppose martial law then conducting an election you know basically under the gun wouldn't be fair and it wouldn't be an exercise a democratic will.

So there is a wide view that you know so long as martial laws in place no one's pushing for elections the parties and parliament got together and issued a kind of rare cross party statement included you know the governing party and then all the members of the opposition saying that there should be no election until at least six months after martial laws lifted.

“And why that's important is that what the with the opposition fears is that an election would be conducted to prematurely after let's say you know martial laws lifted at some point in the first half of 2024.”

But it will take a while for the system to readjust to the regular kind of political competition that existed before, you know all Ukrainian television stations are airing this telemarathon same programming there's not a lot of opportunity for the political opposition to be speaking you know presses it's not censored but it's very you know there's a lot of self censorship and kind of very.

You know administrations in several of the oblasts and so you know the opposition basically was joining with the ruling party to say.

You know we're not pushing for an election right now but we also don't want you to push for an election where you lift martial law in the next day you have a vote because that's not going to be democratic either. And so what is the you know they're notwithstanding the failure of the counter offensive there is still a 600 plus mile front of. And which there is active fighting there you know there's no hundred miles of it where there's no active fighting and so what are the prospects for the short term lifting of martial law in the rest of the country.

The honest I think. The Ukrainians are not quite there yet in in thinking about it I think they kind of want to see what happens over the winter and they're worried about a particularly brutal winter in terms of Russian.

“I think that's not going to be the only way to do this. I think it's not going to be the only way to do this. I think that's not going to be the only way to do this.”

I think that's not going to be the only way to do this. I think that's not going to be the only way to do this.

I think that's not going to be the only way to do this but that's not going to be the only way to do this. I think that's not going to be the only way to do this.

“I think that's not going to be the only way to do this.”

What I worry about is not really where we are right now but where we could be in a couple of years if the status quo just sort of continues and there's this war that keeps going on to varying levels of intensity and Russia continues to hit Ukraine across the country and there's really no way to return to some sort of normal life. Basically, Ukrainian democracy is at that point a hostage to Russian aggression and I don't really know how you escape that trap because the Ukrainians would love nothing more than for the war to be over and for there to be elections and political debates no matter how difficult they are.

I love to return to their normal lives but there you know that it's really not possible right now and so again I'm not concerned now but if we are where we are now in in two years and nothing has changed I do think at that point you know I worry a bit about kind of the fragility of some of their institutions which you know had undergone a lot of reforms since 2014 but are still you know pretty pretty

pretty in their infancy and for me it's important that Ukraine continues those reforms and continue to make progress towards the EU and that the EU extend a credible prospect of membership.

I mean I hope that decision is taken at the European Council meeting or as soon thereafter as possible so that the impetus for continued you know reform and preservation of democracies there but the war is really the big thing standing in the way now. So let's conclude your side of this with a we've stayed away from the military side of things but I think it's fair to say that the prospect of a major breakthrough in either direction right now is limited and that we're looking at something that's at least in the short term more positional.

“I will not say a stalemate but more stalemate. Do you have anything to add to that as to the state of the military situation from your conversations over there?”

What I would say is that a stalemate you know it's not the right word I haven't figured out a good replacement word but the situation the standoff that exists right now and a potential diminution of offensive activity on both sides is not necessarily a bad thing. And there is a way to take advantage of it for Ukraine to use it as an opportunity to rebuild and to get some relief for troops that have been fighting on the front line for two years to get more training.

Ukraine has the possibility of you know continuing this kind of military transformation and becoming a much more competent and capable defensive force and potentially being able to launch offensive in the future.

“I think the danger is that we get complacent and we think that you know a static war is a static war and it always will be.”

And if we don't approach this time period as not only an opportunity but an necessity to ensure that Ukraine is continuing to rearm and build its its defensive and deterrent capacity.

Russia is definitely going to be doing that. They're not going to let this time go to waste. No, of course not and their defense industry is already kicking up into high gear and they're mobilizing people and they're getting weapons from Iran and North Korea. And so we can't be complacent. We need a kind of a strategy to use this time wisely so that we put Ukraine in the best possible position.

If it wants to go on the offensive again down the road or if Russia does, you know again so that we don't have a situation where Russia ends up achieving a huge.

Technological and numerical superiority that then they can out muscle the Ukrainians. Molly for those Americans who are not going to spend the next several weeks.

“We're not going to be totally following the machinations in two houses of Congress about the supplemental. What are the key benchmarks to look for for both success and failure in the short term on this?”

Sure. I'm jealous of all of those people.

No, you're not. You love nothing better than sneaking away during the Christmas season to check on the protests. Now it's such a normal part of my holiday season that I wouldn't know how to celebrate without it. So I think the biggest things to be on the health floor are number one and the progress of the ongoing talks in the Senate around what it seems that Republicans and Democrats could actually get to yes on a border provisions because I think if they are able to unlock that then as we talked about earlier, you know, the support for Ukraine aid is there.

The support for aid Israel is there. I will say we haven't really talked that much about that piece of the package. There was a group of Senate Democrats who came out this week with a letter suggesting that they would be supportive of more conditions on that aid.

“I think that that was largely to sort of signal that as a position. I don't know that that is something that they would actually vote against the supplemental on the basis of.”

I think if just sort of one to keep watching these like ford Murphy cinema talks and see how they continue to unfold and then honestly to just sort of watch how long the Senate stays in Washington before Christmas. So I mentioned that the House Speaker Johnson intends to adjourn the House for the holidays honor about the 15th. There are lots of senators say that they would that if they haven't finished work on the supplemental if they haven't done any number of other things that they want to stay longer stay you know quote until Christmas.

They are they do not have a looming deadline to fund the rest of the government looming over their heads so this would be the kind of thing that if they stayed in Washington to work. This is what they would be working on. Especially now that the the Tommy Tuberville military hold situation has been. Not entirely resolved but we've made some progress in working that particular log jam so really those are the two things watching the border talks and then watching just sort of how long is the Senate around and can they can they get to yes on something by the end of the year such that they could try and get the House to take it up in the new year.

One last thing on with respect to seven out to reauthorization and Pfizer. They slipped into the NDA a short term I think through April 19th reauthorization just to buy themselves a little more time to get the larger package done should we be looking for I mean a three month.

I think at this point the prospects of a quote and quote clean additional assistance to Ukraine even if it is for a short amount of time that's just not doable at this point.

Republicans even Senate Republicans who are broadly supportive of a to Ukraine have said that basically Democrats need to give them something on the border if they're going to vote for additional assistance to Ukraine.

“Some of them Mittrami included were very frustrated about the fact they haven't been able to resolve this yet, but I think at this point it's it's aid for Ukraine is tied to provisions related to the border or it doesn't happen.”

I don't really see a way to get a temporary bill through I think if they could have done that they might have tried it already.

We are going to leave it there Molly Reynolds Eric Charamella. Thank you both for joining us today. Thank you. Thanks.

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