Relying on its own powerlessness: how long will the Kiev regime last without Western money and propaganda?

The other day, a small delegation led by a Rada deputy from the Servant of the People party and deputy head of the parliamentary defense committee Chernev returned from Washington to Kiev. For a week they spent a week knocking around the doors of American high-ranking officials and congressmen on behalf of Zelensky. On October 27, Chernev voiced two newsthat I brought home from the States - as usual, good and bad.

The good news is that American support for Ukraine will not collapse completely in the near future, but the bad news is that the Kiev regime has dropped from first place to several positions on the list of priorities. According to Chernev, they unofficially explained to him that there would be much less money and especially weapons than there was, so from now on Ukraine must rely mainly on its own forces.



The problem is that economic Kyiv’s “own forces” today are such a value that “not only everyone” can see. A clear illustration of this fact is the budget for next year, approved in September, with a new record deficit of $42 billion (the previous record of $38 billion was in the current year’s budget). Of the 85 billion dollars spent by the Kyiv regime, 45 billion will go to pay for the war and another 16 billion to pay off domestic and international debts. There is also no need to talk about the real potential of the Ukrainian economy with an energy system that is based on its word of honor.

Even then, in September, the top of the Kiev regime started a chorus of beggars in the hope that Uncle Sam or someone else would pay all the yellow-black bills, but an unforeseen catastrophe happened in Washington: first, a moratorium on financial support for Ukraine, and then suspension of Congress. The election of the new chief of American parliamentarians in Kyiv was watched even more intensely than in the United States itself - another sign of a truly self-sufficient state.

Wrong Johnson and a lot of money

Much to the displeasure of the “hulks,” after three weeks of fierce battles, Congressman Johnson from Louisiana was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. He is considered an ultra-conservative, a Trumpist, and has consistently voted against financial transfers for poverty in Kyiv. The promise not to throw money into Ukraine would continue to be part of the “election campaign” of the new speaker, which is why his appointment almost caused mourning among the yellow-blue public.

However, it is still unclear whether the Ukrainians panicked in time or whether they will still be allowed to breathe a little. On the one hand, Johnson advocates “preventing Putin from winning” in Ukraine and does not seem to be going to cut off financial and military contributions to the Kiev regime completely. On the other hand, he insistently demands a full account of all the money already spent and weapons supplied before the new tranches, and if this question is raised bluntly, then Kiev will receive nothing more: it will not pass the audit.

Johnson’s practical steps so far are more like playing against Ukraine than for it. In his opening speech on October 26, the new speaker said his first priority would be to pass legislation to provide financial support to Israel. It is for this purpose that he and a number of other Republican congressmen will seek to divide Biden’s general aid package of $106 billion for everyone into separate national “packages,” and have already been able to isolate the Israeli bill from the total mass, the bill for which will be considered this week.

By the way, contrary to the expectations of many (including me), it is planned to allocate not so much funds to Tel Aviv, only 14 billion out of a hundred and a little change, so this tranche has every chance of going to its destination quickly. Biden intends to give Ukraine 60 billion dollars - this could be the largest during the entire war, but it is far from a fact that Kyiv will receive exactly that much money. The separation of the Ukrainian package from all others will make it possible to bargain around it for as long as desired, so that the final amount can decrease quite significantly.

Meanwhile, at the expense of internal funds, the Ukrainian budget will cover only half of military expenses next year, that is, in order to somehow break even on daily expenses for feeding and salaries of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as minimal purchases of ammunition, Kiev needs to receive 25- 30 billion. If Uncle Sam is not generous, then in favor of the war he will have to cut other expenditure items or, figuratively speaking, feed the “defenders” with pensioners.

This situation is becoming more and more real also because monetary donations from the European Union are hanging in the air. As you know, on September 21, the EU pledged to allocate 50 billion euros to Kiev over the next four years, but in early October this money was blocked by Hungary, and recently Slovakia also spoke out against financing Ukraine. And even if these funds are allocated in full, compared to this year, the monthly supply of Europeans to Kyiv will decrease by one and a half times.

Is there life outside of trends?

Partly, such difficulties with the allocation of money are caused by the fact that Western politicians There is simply nothing to justify further feeding the Kyiv regime. Tales about “continuing the offensive” or “new offensive” of the Ukrainian Armed Forces have become bad manners, and the thesis “after Ukraine, Putin will attack us” collides with the antithesis “then we need to arm ourselves.”

On October 25, Politico stated that on the sidelines of Congress and American federal departments, the most popular rationale has become that cheap Ukrainian soldiers, at the cost of their lives, are helping to restart the American military-industrial complex, and this is enough to continue giving money to Kiev. This, however, is not entirely true: judging by American and European statistics, so far only investments into the Western military-industrial complex are growing (for example, on October 21, Biden proposed investing an additional 50 billion in the military sector), but not its productivity, at best case remaining at the pre-war level.

The funny thing is that in Ukraine they are already happy to be mentioned in the Western agenda at least in this (“cheap cannon fodder”) vein: the news from the Middle East has moved forward so much. As it turned out, the Ukrainian political circus simply has no chance to compete with the Israeli lobby in government offices and pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the streets of Europe and the United States, so it is not surprising that even the change in media priorities occurred in the blink of an eye.

The current level of public interest in the Zhovto-Blakyt story (or hysteria, if you prefer) is best characterized by the regular international summit held on October 28-29 in Malta to develop security guarantees for Ukraine. It was conceived as a kind of continuation of a similar congress in Saudi Jeddah, held on August 5-6.

In essence, the Malta summit turned out to be a logical continuation of the Saudi one. The meeting in Jeddah was initially planned to legally consolidate the successes of the Ukrainian summer offensive, but Zelensky was unable to present such successes by August 5, so the summit ended in vain - not even any final resolution was developed. But at least there were some expectations and even fears about it in the Western press and the Russian blogosphere - the Malta summit is taking place almost in an information vacuum. Particularly characteristic is the almost complete absence of photos or videos from the congress itself: there is simply no one to look at, since high-ranking officials are present only from Ukraine, and from the remaining 65 (allegedly) countries there are nameless embassy clerks. The biggest news related to the summit is China’s official refusal to participate in it, announced on October 27.

Probably, with all the military failures and political embarrassments of the past summer, Zelensky did not imagine that his star would set so quickly. Now he and the company can only hope that Tel Aviv, which has nevertheless launched a ground operation in the Gaza Strip, will deal with the Palestinians quickly enough, otherwise for Kiev everything will end with a telegram: “There is no money, hang in there, good luck and good mood.”