The Washington swamp is full of lamentations about the GOP's waning interest in funding the Ukraine war.

According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty:

The U.S. Congress has been unable to pass a new Ukraine aid bill since September as Republican support wanes, forcing the Biden administration to curtail the size of the fortnightly military equipment shipments to the embattled country. That is raising concerns that Ukraine’s performance on the battlefield could soon be impacted. The United States is by far Ukraine’s largest supplier of weapons.

Congress this week approved a supplementary spending bill to keep the U.S. government open that once again failed to include new funding for Ukraine, triggering dire warnings from the White House.

“Each week that passes [without a new bill], our ability to fully fund what we feel is necessary to give Ukraine the tools and capacities it needs to both defend its territory and to continue to make advances, that gets harder and harder,” White House national-security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on November 13.

Sounds nice. But those nice thoughts from Sullivan run head on into the reality that no matter how much cash the U.S. shovels -- some $77 billion for weapons, training, and legitimate military operations, as well as bureaucrats, swamp consultants, pensions and refugee "services" the war isn't being won. It's another Afghanistan, another quagmire, another permawar that perpetuates itself because the funds keep flowing.

It's also going to what may not be a nation at all. Here's a disturbing report on Breitbart News:

Huge numbers of young Ukrainian men fled the country to avoid being drafted in the army to fight Russia, a report states, with many swimming border rivers or walking cross-country to avoid detection.

Under Ukraine’s martial law, for the vast majority of Ukrainian males, it has been illegal to leave the country since the Russian invasion, a step taken by Kyiv to maintain its access to conscripts for the fight against Moscow’s occupation. Yet figures reveal tens of thousands have attempted to flee and avoid fighting.

Data from the border services of Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia acquired for an investigation by British state broadcaster the BBC claims 19,740 men aged between 18 and 60 are known to have “illegally crossed” into their territories from Ukraine since the start of Russia’s invasion last year. In addition to those that made it to a European neighbour, the Ukrainian government has claimed 21,113 people trying to flee Ukraine illegally have been caught during the war.

If Ukrainians don't want to fight this war -- either because they flee, or they only sign up because there's a draft -- then why should we be paying for it?

Nations that are really, truly cohesive and which are under mortal threat are very likely to see an upsurge in popular support for defending their nation from invaders. Ukraine had some of that at the beginning, but the war has dragged on now, without results. Some 40,000 Ukrainians said they wouldn't defend the place at all. Seems a large number of Ukainians don't think Ukraine is worth fighting for, and with Joe Biden's open border now packing them in, many young men have chosen emigration over defense of country. That they don't think their country is worth fighting for tells us a lot about what kind of a "country" this is. Maybe it really is part of Russia as the Russians claim.

David Goldman has noted in an essay published about a year ago that this war is coupled with a Ukrainian quest for European Union membership. Why is EU membership so important and popular in Ukraine? Goldman noted it was because such membership permits Ukrainians to emigrate to other European Union countries, which apparently a lot of them dream about. That's a pretty sad reason to seek a major alliance.

A third factor that seems to be draining Ukraine of the willingness to fight is that the army seems to be a meat grinder, with about half of its professional troops now dead:

According to Mossad, 53% of the Ukrainian Army is dead or injured.https://t.co/Q8dVvrJKwn pic.twitter.com/3E8GZUGOQ5

— Tony Heller (@TonyClimate) February 6, 2023

If it's a nation you don't care about, and all you do is dream of moving to Europe or the states, and the prospect of death is 50-50 with the good soldiers gone, why would you stay?

As Congress goes to consider yet another package of Ukraine aid, one can only ask what we are handing it over for? Maybe it's time for Ukraine to get going with peace negotiations with Russia, take a half a loaf if they have to, get realistic about their prospects, and work to make themselves a good country people will want to fight and die for. Right now, they have to a noticible extent, failed on that front.

Image: Twitter screen shot