British Foreign Affairs Secretary David Cameron during a two-day visit didn’t meet with a White House official and anybody in the lower legislature chamber of the House of Representatives where a bill for Ukraine funding has stalled for nearly two months.
The purpose of his visit was to offer a “plea” to continue US support for Ukraine as it withstands an all-out onslaught by invading Russian forces.
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Britain’s former prime minister met with his counterpart Antony Blinken and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as is customary to speak with the political opposition by visiting British envoys.
However, President Joe Biden’s top foreign policy official, Jake Sullivan cancelled a meeting and instead held a phone call with the British diplomat.
A meeting was held with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Cameron didn’t get to meet with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who has for 60 days sat idle on a Senate funding bill that includes more than $60 billion for Kyiv.
“We know what works, we know what they [Ukrainians] need, and we know what is right for us,” Cameron said at a joint press availability with Blinken on April 9. “We know that if we give the Ukrainians the support they deserve, they can win this war.”
The reception Cameron received in Washington was underwhelming, Peter Dickinson, the British publisher of Business Ukraine Magazine told the Kyiv Post.
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Cameron’s visit “was a failure, it was an embarrassment, he was frankly snubbed essentially,” he said. “He didn’t get the key meetings with the key people…the message was quite clear that this is purely a domestic affair, it looked bad for Britain, it looked bad from an optic point of view.”
His visit came as Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is being surgically destroyed by Russian aerial attacks amid air-defense shortages. Kyiv’s forces have had to ration weaponry and is running short of manpower.
America’s top US general in Europe, Christopher Cavoli, told a House Armed Services Committee on April 11 that Russia currently enjoys a five-to-one- ratio in artillery against Ukraine. In the coming weeks Moscow could increase that ratio to ten-to-one.
Since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Kyiv has been mostly reliant on US military support, which has mostly dried up.
“They’re [Ukrainians] are mostly dependent this year on us,” Gen. Cavoli told the House committee.
The last Congressional funding bill for Ukraine was passed in 2022 and included $113 billion in security and financial aid to Ukraine, of which, $67 billion was allocated toward defense needs.
Prior to Cameron’s truncated Capitol Hill swing, he met with former President Trump.
The latter’s campaign summary noted that both parties discussed “the upcoming US and UK elections, policy matters specific to Brexit, the need for NATO countries to meet their defense spending requirements, and ending the killing in Ukraine.”
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