From Disappointment To Relief: Ukrainians’ Political Triumph

Soon after Iran’s April 13 attempted airstrike on Israel — a massive bombardment of about 300 missiles and drones — a Ukrainian YouTuber couldn’t help but notice the difference in global reaction.

U.S. forces, including fighter jets, joined by French and British forces, helped Israel down almost all of the incoming fire in an impressive display of military resources and Western know-how. It was a lesson not lost on the Ukrainians.

A Ukrainian-born YouTuber who goes by Yewleea, who says she left New York to return to her home country to help with the war, called it “kind of incredibly fucking hypocritical,” given Israel’s state-of-the-art air defense system and unrealized Western promises of aid to Ukraine.

“That was done specifically to make a point,” she said in a livestream. “They didn’t need the help. Ukraine does need the help. And Ukraine was promised all the help. Yet we’re not receiving it.”

That same attack, though, ultimately ended up freeing about $60.8 billion in U.S. military and economic aid for the beleaguered Eastern European country by pushing the stalled funding to the forefront in Washington.

A week after Ukrainians saw footage of the global powers rushing to knock out of the sky the same kind of Iranian Shahed drones they face nightly alone, many tuned into C-SPAN to watch 72% of the House vote Saturday, after months of delay, to give Ukraine the desperately needed aid.

“It’s been said it’s never too late to do the right thing. Well, we’re coming really close,” said Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), a co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, on the House floor.

But the road to get there, for Ukrainians and their allies, began with the Iran attack and the world’s reaction to it.

“This night Ukrainians got a clear view of what we truly mean for the US. We’re not allies, never have been,” Stas Olenchenko, a Kyiv-born analyst living in Europe, posted on social media.

“We’re an inconvenience. An aberration in their view of geopolitics. A problem that just won’t solve itself. We’ll keep resisting no matter what, but this really hurt,” he wrote.

Even Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelenskyy, who has always been careful to thank the U.S. and both political parties for aid, brought the subject up when he spoke to the European Council.

“Unfortunately, in Ukraine and our part of Europe, we do not have the level of defense that we saw in the Middle East a few days ago. Our Ukrainian sky and our neighbors’ skies deserve the same level of security,” he said. “And I appreciate everyone who sees our need for security as a need for equal security for all, because all lives are equally valuable.”

The White House greeted the complaint by noting how much aid had already been sent to Ukraine or saying there were substantive differences between the two situations.

“Different conflicts, different airspace, different threat picture,” said John Kirby, spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council, at a White House press briefing.

On Capitol Hill, many Republicans opposed to Ukraine aid admitted there was a double standard. Though they previously pushed to tie aid to Ukraine to tightening border security, they saw no reason to apply the same condition to Israel, whose need for aid they saw as urgent.

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) said Israel’s status as a long-standing ally meant its aid should be unquestioned.

“What’s happening in Ukraine is very distasteful,” Donalds said. “But at the same time, the administration would have been able to probably secure Ukraine funding by this point if they would simply secure the southern border.” (Senate Republicans, under the direction of former President Donald Trump, killed a bipartisan border security bill that had been linked to foreign aid.)

“Ukraine has not been a long-term ally of ours,” said Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.). “They’re not in NATO. They are not a democracy in the sense that we think of a democracy. They do suppress religious freedom and freedom of speech.”

Steven Moore, a former Republican House chief of staff who now runs the Ukraine Freedom Project, a nonprofit focused on delivering goods and medical supplies to Ukrainians on the frontlines of the war, said many of the GOP objections, including accusations of religious persecution, were based on Russian propaganda.

“We’re just getting the snot kicked out of us in the information war. And the Russians, by some estimates, are spending two and a half billion dollars annually on propaganda worldwide,” Moore said.

Neither Ukraine or Israel is in NATO. While Ukraine has, like many post-Soviet countries, had big issues with corruption, its president, unlike Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, has not entered the fifth year of a corruption trial. In terms of longevity, the U.S. has recognized Israel since 1948, within minutes of the Jewish state’s creation. But it also signed the Budapest memorandum in 1994, convincing Ukraine to abandon its nuclear weapons.

On Tuesday, after a pro-Ukraine rally on the U.S. Capitol grounds, Daniel Balson, director of public engagement with the advocacy group Razom for Ukraine, said Ukrainians didn’t “begrudge” the help Israel received.

“It simply reinforces the fact that with additional ammunition, both for the fighting on the front as well as for air defenses, there could be a very different story coming out of Ukraine today,” Balson said.

On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters he was sticking with a plan to take a four-bill package, including Israel and Ukraine aid, to the floor ― and potentially be ousted by hard-line Republican colleagues for it.

“I could make a selfish decision and do something that is different, but I’m doing here what I believe to be the right thing,” he told reporters in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall.

“I think providing lethal aid to Ukraine right now is critically important. I really do. I really do believe the intel in the briefings that we’ve gotten, I believe [Chinese President] Xi and [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and Iran really are an axis of evil. I think they’re in coordination.”

That full-throated declaration was what Ukraine advocates had been waiting for as artillery and air defense supplies had dwindled in recent months. Only two days before the attack by Iran, the capital city of Kyiv lost its main power station when Ukrainian forces ran out of air defense missiles to protect it.

“Obviously, this six months of dragging on has been something that has been really hard on Ukrainian morale,” Moore said.

On Friday, when Democrats provided the procedural votes to advance the aid bills, the stalemate broke.

Democrats were confident in predictions the Ukraine package would get more than 300 votes if it came to the floor. And for some, there was a question of equity.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said she had asked her staff for a visual aid showing attacks in Israel and Ukraine. “I wanted a visual aid ― the rockets coming in from Iran to Israel, the rockets and missiles coming in to Ukraine.”

“What’s the difference? Tell me: What’s the difference? There is none,” she wanted to ask her colleagues.

Before the vote, the aid package survived amendments that would have trimmed it back either slightly or very sharply. The most extreme amendment, an effort by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to zero out all the dollar amounts in the bill, garnered 71 votes, all Republican.

Another amendment, though, may hint at trouble ahead. Rep. Cat Cammack’s (R-Fla.) proposal to scrap the non-military aid portions of the measure drew support from 154 Republicans, or about 70% of the party. In future packages, it may be difficult for Johnson to oppose something with that much support among his colleagues.

In the end, the Ukraine bill received 311 votes, with more than two-thirds of those coming from Democrats, compared with 112 votes against. Johnson foes did not call for a vote on ousting him, and the bill is expected to be approved by the Senate this week.

As the final seconds of the House vote ticked off, some Democrats took to waving small Ukrainian flags that had been handed out, creating a joyful contrast with the Republican side of the House floor, where even Ukraine’s supporters remained stolid.

Outside the Capitol, groups of Ukrainian supporters carrying much bigger flags cheered. One group broke into a chant of “Thank you, USA! Thank you, USA!”

Yurii Koval, a 31-year-old IT worker from Kyiv, brought to the rally a scrapbook of pictures of destroyed homes and a flag signed by people who had lost their homes to Russian bombs.

Though he was glad to see the aid, he said, it could have been approved earlier.

“We would just simply have less books and less people who were willing to sign a flag with the address of something that used to be their home for decades and that suddenly was destroyed by Russians,” he said.

The vote was also watched in Ukraine, where it was already Saturday night. In a viral tweet, a Ukrainian ambassador said he had been texted by a soldier: “The whole unit was watching. After the vote, one could hear all over the trench: ‘YESSS!’”

Yaroslava Antipina, a Kyiv-based blogger, wrote on social media that she was watching the vote at almost 9 p.m. local time. “It was so heartbreaking to see [Ukrainian] flags,” she wrote.

Moore, the head of the nonprofit, said his girlfriend in Kyiv was also one of those watching. “She watched the vote. She cried,” he said.

“Ukraine is a very pro-American country, the most pro-American country perhaps I’ve ever been to,” he said. “So they’re like, ‘OK, America’s back! They’ve got our back again!’”

“This is not victory over Russia for them. But it’s that they can keep fighting for their freedom.”