Bipartisan support for Ukraine still in place in U.S. - ex-DepSecDef

There is still a bipartisan majority in U.S. Congress supporting continued assistance to Ukraine to repel Russian aggression despite the latest turmoil in the House of Representatives where the speaker was axed.

That’s according to Dr. Evelyn Farkas, a former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia in the Barack Obama administration, who spoke during a Q&A at the American University Kyiv on Wednesday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

“There are still enough votes in the Senate and in the House, there is still a bipartisan majority of legislators who support providing assistance to Ukraine – military assistance, economic assistance, and diplomatic resistance. So there's no question there,” Dr. Farkas said, responding to an Ukrinform correspondent’s question of how critical the situation is with continued U.S. support for Ukraine in the wake of the House’s decision to sack Speaker Kevin McCarthy and suspended consideration of an issue of the additional assistance to Ukraine. 

At the same time, the former deputy chief of the Pentagon, who currently leads the McCain Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., says the Republican Party has been “hijacked” by the far-right, who have “no positive agenda” and offer “no logical content for debate”, instead putting forward their “emotional populism.”

Dr. Farkas also slammed radical critics of the aid to Ukraine, noting that they are “wittingly or unwittingly helping Vladimir Putin.”  The political analyst said these actions must be countered by explaining to the American people “with more arguments” what at stake is.

“And I would argue that we need to provide fewer opportunities for these fringe people (in Congress - ed.) to create trouble and that means that the Administration should not ask just $24 billion. They should go back and cross that number out and put in something like $100 billion or whatever it takes to get to the next fiscal year,” Evelyn Farkas said.

Otherwise, she noted, countless negotiations would be “playing into the hands of these extremists.”

As reported earlier, on October 2, U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (GOP) was ousted from his post after the motion was put to a vote by Rep. Matt Gaetz, who represents the so-called MAGA wing of the Republican Party. Gaetz accused McCarthy of making a “side deal” with Democrats to send additional aid to Ukraine. In turn, McCarthy dismissed the accusations.