Republican Congress leader Kevin McCarthy has slammed attempts by his Senate colleagues to fund more arms to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.
The House of Representatives Speaker told reporters that he opposed Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham's motion to override limits on the Pentagon's budget set by the debt-ceiling deal McCarthy struck with President Joe Biden last week.
"Lindsey wants to spend money on every war in the world," he charged.
"You don’t get to just throw money and say somebody needs money," McCarthy added. "What about the money we have already spent? What is the money for and what is victory?"
The House speaker's comments came hours after Ukrainian forces shelled and breached the Russian-controlled Kakhovka hydroelectric dam on the lower Dnepr river — built in Soviet times — flooding several towns downstream.
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu called it "another terrorist crime" by the "Kiev regime," saying its aim was to compensate for huge losses of men and equipment in the first three days of the Ukrainian offensive on the southern front.
Graham is currently wanted on criminal charges in Russia over comments he made on a recent trip to Kiev to meet Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's office.
A video released by the Ukrainian government following the meeting appeared to show the senator boasting that military aid to the regime was "the best money we've ever spent" because "Russians are dying" as a result. Western media quickly claimed that the video was selectively edited by Kiev to quote Graham out of context.
Weapons and armoured vehicles supplied by the US and other NATO members were also used in a recent series of cross-border raids by Ukrainian-sponsored neo-Nazi groups and Polish mercenaries into the Belgorod region of Russia.