Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
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Ukrainian officials say donor fatigue is now impacting their war effort.They said the conflict between Israel and Hamas could also impact aid to Ukraine.Ukraine is facing a $43 billion budget shortfall for 2024.
Staring down a $43 billion budget shortfall for 2024, Ukraine is uncertain how it’ll continue to defend itself against Russia’s invasion.
Ukraine officials say donor fatigue is a big part of the problem.
Serhiy Marchenko, Ukraine’s finance minister, told Reuters he’s seen “a lot of tiredness” among international partners. “They would like to forget about the war, but the war is still ongoing, full-scale,” Marchenko told Reuters on Saturday.
Ukraine’s leaders are making “twice the effort right now to convince our partners to provide us with support compared to the last annual meetings,” Marchenko added.
Ukrainian officials said they’re also concerned that the war between Israel and Hamas could dilute future international support for Ukraine.
Pavlo Klimkin, a former Ukrainian foreign minister, told The New York Times that US lawmakers “shaping decisions on foreign policy only have 24 hours in a day to care about the whole planet.” With a second conflict between Israel and Hamas, that means “less time for us,” he said.
Kyrylo Budanov, the director of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, also said the Middle East conflict could present future barriers to assistance.
“If the situation drags on, it is quite clear that there will be certain problems with the fact that it will be necessary to supply weapons and ammunition not only to Ukraine,” Budanov told Ukrainian media outlets, per the Times.
Funding for Ukraine was a central issue for US lawmakers as they narrowly avoided a government shutdown last month, pushing their deadline to mid-November. That stopgap deal omitted $6 billion in aid to Ukraine. Even that was only a third of what President Joe Biden had requested.
While Biden has pushed for additional funding for Ukraine, a new round of funding would ultimately need congressional approval. That’ll be no easy task as House Republicans continue to be mired in a leadership fight.
Since Russia first launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, US lawmakers have approved about $113 billion in response. That has gone partly to Ukraine and partly to other European countries seeking to fortify themselves against possible Russian aggression, according to the Times.