House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said that Ukraine shouldn’t get any more help before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
According to Breitbart News, Johnson made it clear that Trump should be the one to decide how much more help to send to Ukraine once he becomes president in January.
“As we predicted and as I said to all of you weeks before the election, if Donald Trump is elected it will change the dynamic of the Russian war on Ukraine, and we’re seeing that happen,” the Louisiana leader of the House said during a House Republican leadership press conference.
He stated that Trump’s electoral victory will alter the dynamic of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
“So it is not the place of Joe Biden to make that decision now. We have a newly elected president, and we’re going to wait and take the new commander-in-chief’s direction on all that, so I don’t expect any Ukraine funding to come up now,” Johnson added.
The Biden administration has requested $8 billion in security assistance for Ukraine, which includes providing military equipment, funding for training its armed forces, and additional support. An additional $16 billion has been requested for the Department of Defense (DOD) to supply Ukraine with more resources.
In September, Trump said he would work to end the war in Ukraine even before he takes office.
“I want to get Russia to settle up with Ukraine and stop this — millions of people being killed, far greater than the number you read about. But I want to get that done before I even take office, I want to get that done as president-elect, because it has to be solved — too many people dying, too many cities are just in rubble right now, you look at the cultures just being destroyed,” he said at the time.
“We’ve got to get that done, and I’ll get it done. There wouldn’t have been an October 7th, there wouldn’t have been Russia attacking Ukraine, there wouldn’t be inflation, all this inflation which has hurt people so badly. You wouldn’t have had that horrible type of withdrawal — we were getting out of Afghanistan, but with dignity and strength — that was the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country,” Trump added.
“And frankly Russia would have never gone into Ukraine if it weren’t for that. They looked at that and they said, ‘This country is no longer run by Trump. This country is run by stupid people,’” he noted further.
Late in November, Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, said that the “hot war” with Russia could end if Ukraine was promised protection under a “NATO umbrella” and tried to get back Russian-controlled areas through diplomatic means. Russia, on the other hand, would not agree to those terms.
