Ukraine would like continued free-of-charge assistance from the United States, but would also agree to a loan, Zelensky has said.
“As for American assistance, it is critical in any case. I still believe we can get a favorable vote from the US Congress. Unfortunately, we have kind of become hostages in this situation,” Zelensky said, suggesting that the Russia-Ukraine crisis has “become a domestic political issue for the United States, even though it’s about the security of the world,” and complaining about Congress’s “immature approach.”
“One senator recently came to us and asked ‘would you agree to a loan’? ‘What options are there?’ I asked. He said ‘well if you were told that either you get loan money or nothing’. I said ‘why do we need these kinds of choices if there is no choice?’ Therefore, we will agree to any option,” Zelensky stressed.
“Furthermore, if Ukraine was offered the choice of getting everything on credit today or free in a year’s time, we would say ‘only today’. We have one choice: to survive and win,” Zelensky said.
Zelensky did not reveal any further details on his conversation with the US senator, or who it was that he spoke to.
However, infamous neocon senator Lindsey Graham is known to have met with Zelensky in Kiev in March to discuss Ukraine’s new mobilization law and the details of US assistance.
Graham, known for highly controversial comments last year that US aid to Kiev was resulting in “dead Russians” and was therefore the “best money we’ve ever spent,” altered his position on assistance to Ukraine in February to more closely match that of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, who proposed turning further US assistance to foreign countries into loans.
Zelensky’s comments come in the wake of a report in Politico last month citing sources close to the Ukrainian president’s office that the idea of a loan for aid was “offensive.” Kiev hasn’t “heard any specific proposals for such a strategy” and would like “to know the conditions under which Ukraine will not have to pay it back,” one source told the outlet.
President Zelensky’s rhetoric regarding Western weapons aid deliveries has become more and more desperate in recent months. Last week, he warned that Kiev is not ready to defend against an expected “major” Russian offensive in the spring or summer, and complained that Ukraine lacked the “rounds, artillery rounds, a lot of different things” needed to “stabilize the situation” on the front, something he said would make Kiev’s partners “really happy.”
Ukraine has reported severe shortages of howitzer shells and other munitions, with Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrsky acknowledging earlier this week that his military is facing a “difficult” situation, and that Russia has been capitalizing on its superiority in air power, missiles and artillery stocks.