Just as Zelensky arrives in Washington, Poland calls it quits on arms sales to Ukraine

After browbeating a sparsely attended United Nations' General Assembly about Russia's invasion, and calling for additional international support on the grounds that Ukraine's fight is everyone's fight, President Volodymyr Zelensky is heading to Washington, to lobby for more money; $24 billion up for a vote in U.S. Congress.

According to Newsweek:

President Volodymyr Zelensky can expect a warm welcome from President Biden when he arrives Thursday in Washington to make the case for continued U.S. support for Ukraine.

Republicans in Congress may be a tougher sell, however.

Zelensky is making the quick side trip to Washington, following his appearance at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, to urge lawmakers in Congress to approve additional assistance for Ukraine as part of a spending deal that would avert a government shutdown at the end of the month.

"The aim is to move the needle" by winning over Ukraine skeptics in Congress and addressing concerns lawmakers may have about Kyiv's progress on the battlefield, said Andrew D'Anieri, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center.

"Zelensky can allay some of those concerns and make a strong case for why [additional military aid] would allow Ukraine to continue the fight," D'Anieri told Newsweek.

  Joe Biden, who's never met a spending bill he didn't like, is all for it, but House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who leads increasingly skeptical Republicans, says that all he wants to know is:

"Where’s the accountability on the money we’ve already spent? What is the plan for victory? I think that’s what the American public wants to know."

That's not much to ask, really, but neither Zelensky nor Biden are going to give him those answers. 

Zelensky's approach is to say that he's still winning the war. He may be grotesquely outnumbered, and most of his army may be already dead, but Ukrainian ingenuity and persistence will do the trick. He's been saying this for a while now, calling for total victory, with no concessions to much-bigger Russia, and it's getting a little old.

He's mouthed global warming platitudes at the United Nations to please Joe Biden, and fired a crazed transgender American military spokesperson for Ukraine, after the latter started putting errant American journalists on hit lists, in order to please Republicans. He's made every neocon argument about the threat to the global order, the moral good of winning, the importance of "saving democracy" and the dangers of emboldening Russia should Ukraine fall as the first domino.

But win? We still don't know if he can win. And inquire about the previous money? Like, with an auditor? Nope, not gonna get that. Getting an auditor would "play into Putin's hands,' and anyone asking is a "Putin stooge."

The claims that Ukraine can win, though, seem to be going down like a shot-down fighter jet. 

Here's the news that broke today from the Washington Post:

WARSAW — Poland will no longer send weapons to Ukraine, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Wednesday, sharply escalating a battle over grain exports that has driven a wedge between Kyiv and one of its strongest supporters in the fight against Russia’s invasion.

Russia has targeted Ukraine’s vital agricultural sector, disrupting transit routes in the Black Sea and repeatedly bombing the country’s grain infrastructure. That has left Ukraine desperate for other export routes, but also prompted Poland and other neighboring countries to impose an import ban, aiming to protect their farmers from the market being flooded with low-cost Ukrainian grain.

The grain export issue is being reported as at the root of it but it seems only an interesting side story -- Russia's destruction of Ukraine's ports in the Black Sea has forced Ukraine to take its grain exports through Poland, supposedly so it can reach its markets in Egypt, Ethiopia and the like, but as ZeroHedge notes, it tends to get sold in Poland at cheaper prices than Polish farmers produce, putting them out of business. Poland (along with Slovakia and Hungary and to some extent Romania) is vowing to block those grain imports, and supposedly has linked that trade retaliation to the arms sales.

But I have my doubts. The apparent real reason was stated by Poland's president, according to The Hill:

Polish President Andrzej Duda on Tuesday compared Ukraine’s fight for survival to that of a “drowning person” capable of bringing down those who try to help. 

“Ukraine is behaving like a drowning person clinging to anything available,” Duda told Polish journalists, the Financial Times reported. “A drowning person is extremely dangerous, capable of pulling you down to the depths … simply drown the rescuer.”

 Poland thinks it's maybe time to start thinking about saving Poland instead of just funneling cash and arms to Ukraine. That means saving Poland's economy, based on the grain issue, but also defending its own national security, based on not sending all of its resources to go into an unwinnable war in Ukraine, which got itself into its situation by not preparing.

As Mark Wauck at Meaning in History notes:

Ukraine as “a dangerous drowning man”? That doesn’t seem to support the official narrative that Ukraine is winning, nor does it reflect well on the Ukrainian leadership. It even opens the door to a Polish debate on whether to scale back Polish support and involvement in the war on Russia. In other words, abandon the drowning man and save yourself.

The Biden administration has been quick to claim that this damning verdict is just a spot of bother, according to the Washington Post:

On Thursday, a senior U.S. government official downplayed the rift, casting it as a heat-of-the-moment bit of electioneering.

“I know some folks feel like the prime minister’s remarks maybe were a reflection that the unity is finally cracking, and I just don’t see any evidence of that at every level,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic relations. “Throughout the bureaucracy in Poland, we saw a firm commitment to stay the course. They see no alternative.”

Morawiecki’s remarks, the official continued, are a “reflection that at the end of the day, we’re all human and there are moments of tension and there can be frustration on all sides, but that doesn’t mean that there’s going to be some dramatic shift in alliance unity or even Poland’s fundamental position and determination to support Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

And in the last hour or two, Poland has announced that it will fulfill existing arms sales contracts with Ukraine, according to Barron's.

There's some spin control going on about that Polish vote of no confidence, in other words. But the underlying question, of whether Ukraine can win its war and whether more U.S. spending is going to help it win its war, remains a real issue. Poland's pulling of arms sales is a dramatic turn of events given its staunch willingness to stand up for Ukraine in the past. It's now reading something different in the air. Its arms sales cutoff was accompanied by Belgium announcing that it wouldn't be selling those fighter jets it promised after all to Ukraine, either. There seems to be some kind of chian reaction which may get worse now that Congress is getting very skeptical and may not approve all the money for Ukraine that the Biden administration is asking for. 

Wauck also notes that the U.S., behind the scenes, is urging Ukraine to negotiate some kind of deal both sides can live with, which Ukraine thus far has publicly said it has no intention of doing:

The fact is, there has so far been no American reaction to any of this, which suggests that the US may find the Polish stance to be useful at this time, when the US is attempting to pressure Ukraine into proposing direct talks with Russia. Zelensky is attempting to resist the US pressure, and Polish attacks on Zelensky may be helpful in undermining Zelensky. It fits in with other ongoing attacks directed at Ukraine by the US, such as the NYT story exposing Ukrainian responsibility for a disastrous missile attack on a market in Ukraine that resulted in heavy civilian casualties—Ukraine had tried to blame Russia. It is widely believed that the revelation was timed to embarrass Zelensky during his attendance at the UN.

If so, that's an even harder recognition of reality -- and Wauck thinks Poland probably coordinated with the U.S. before declaring its cutoff.

Yet Biden and his crazies in Congress, such as Sen. John Fetterman, have loudly declared that they will get Ukraine its $24 billion from Congress even as all of these private indicators of Ukraine not being able to win its war, and probably being better off hashing out some kind of deal with Russia are happening now.

With Poland pulling arms sales in the name of saving itself, should Congress be handing Ukraine another $24 bil without audits or plans to victory? It sure doesn't sound like it. Zelensky will arrive like a conquering hero to Joe Biden and his White House, but his act is getting old. It won't belong before Congress eventually pulls the plug.

Image: Twitter screen shot

 

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