Joe Biden’s departing administration is trying to leave its mark on the war in Ukraine before it cedes power to Donald Trump’s team on January 20th. But officials—both in Washington and Kyiv—appear to be ignoring him in public, unwilling to give way to the man who would not have to suffer the consequences of his final pronouncements.
Biden this week sent Secretary of State Antony Blinken to what is most likely to be the final high-level NATO foreign ministers’ meeting of his administration. Rallying support for Ukraine has been at the top of the agenda.
As part of this process, Blinken said on Wednesday that Ukraine must lower the age of the men it will send to the firing line—from 25 to 18—in order to succeed against Russia. He expressed apparent concern that “right now, 18- to 25-year olds are not in the fight,” adding
Getting younger people into the fight, we think, many of us think, is necessary.
NATO chief Mark Rutte echoed the same view, saying that “we [or, rather, Ukraine] need probably more people to move to the front line.” But President Volodymyr Zelensky has so far resisted such calls, and appears not to have been moved by the pleas of Biden’s team.
The outgoing Commander-in-Chief also moved to pass $24 billion (€22.79bn) in additional aid for Ukraine by the end of the year, but this was rejected by Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who said “it is not the place of Joe Biden to make that decision now.”
We have a newly elected president and we’re going to wait and take the new commander-in-chief’s direction on all that so I don’t expect any Ukraine funding to come up now.
Johnson suggested that it was wrong for Biden to push last-minute alterations to the U.S.’ stance on the war in Ukraine given that Trump’s election has “change[d] the dynamic.”
Of course, in the same month as Trump’s stunning victory, Biden allowed Ukraine to carry out its first strike against Russia with U.S.-supplied ATACMS missiles. The president-elect has said he would move to end the conflict as quickly as possible.
