Exclusive: As Congress Reels, Senator Paul Warns Against Growing American Involvement in Ukraine, Saying: ‘We Don’t Have Money To Give’

Consider it a denouement, of a kind, to a rollercoaster 48 hours in American politics that has Washington on its toes and the world on the edge of its seat — and it’s not even election time. One of the issues behind the ouster of Speaker McCarthy and the ensuing paralysis on Capitol Hill is the conflict in Ukraine, and President Biden is now in jeopardy of losing the effort to secure $24 billion in fresh funding. If you doubt that, just ask Senator Paul.We did. On Wednesday, in a video call between Athens, where your correspondent is based, and Washington, we had a wide-ranging interview about the war with the junior senator of Kentucky. Dr. Paul reiterated that it has always been his point of view that “we don’t have any money to give to Ukraine, we don’t have a rainy day fund or a surplus — we essentially have to borrow the money from China to send to Ukraine.”Yet, he added, “we’ve already sent an extraordinary amount, over $100 billion, and I don’t know of any time in our history when we’ve ever sent that much to a country. It’s being sent with very little oversight.”Dr. Paul averred that he was “not privy” to a reported “secret deal” in respect of funding for Ukraine by year’s end made between Mr. Biden and Congressman Kevin McCarthy, the now-toppled speaker of the House.Such a deal is a subject of speculation despite the House’s approval of a spending bill that averted a government shutdown but omitted $6 billion in military assistance for Ukraine as it continues to battle the Russian invasion. “I do know,” Dr. Paul said, “that, whatever or whoever Republican becomes the speaker, a majority of Republicans in the House now are opposed to funding. That’s crept up over the last year. I think it was more like a third were opposed initially to the funding, but with the latest vote, last week, about the new funding and it was over half of Republicans voting against new funding for Ukraine.”“Now, could they try to ram it through on an end-of-the-year spending proposal?” he posited. “In all likelihood that’s what they’ll try to do, and it’s another reason to hate these conglomerations called omnibuses or end-of-the-year proposals.”Dr. Paul’s doubts about more aid for Ukraine stem largely from concerns over lack of an audit. “To me,” he says, “it’s kind of reprehensible that so much money would go without any inspector general.” He calls himself “a big fan” of Sigar — the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction — and of the inspector general for Afghanistan, John Sopka. He thinks that Mr. Sopka would be “perfect” for the Ukraine assignment and said that he had “been asking for over a year to have him involved.”Like Senator Graham, the Republican of South Carolina, Dr. Paul has some misgivings not only about an entrenched culture of corruption in Ukraine, despite President Zelensky’s ongoing attempts to rectify it. He also has concerns about the prospect of skipping elections in the country as the war grinds on. According to Dr. Paul, Ukraine has “canceled the presidential elections for next year, and the advocates for more Ukrainian aid say in our caucus every day ‘they’re not going to have elections because the opposition doesn’t want elections.’”Dr. Paul thinks that’s “absurd” and likens it to “the Republicans saying, ‘Well, we’d really like to defeat Biden because we’re in turmoil right now, but let’s just not have the elections in 2024.’ No opposition group ever argues against elections, to my knowledge.”Dr. Paul has been outspoken about calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine. A letter that the senator and other Republican lawmakers sent to the White House last month read in part; “the longer this conflict continues, the greater the risk that miscalculation or purposeful escalation draws the United States into direct conflict with Russia.” From his office on Capitol Hill, Dr. Paul elaborated on that view, acknowledging “that war is messy and typically doesn’t end in unconditional surrender, it typically ends in negotiation … you know, the ending of the Korean war in this situation is more likely than the end of our war with Japan. I think that there needs to be more realization that you can be in support of Ukraine and Ukrainian people and less devastation and also be in support of ending the war.”What would a peace deal look like? For Dr. Paul, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, “ultimately the peace agreement might involve some sort of internationally monitored elections in eastern Ukraine where everybody gets to vote but there needs to be a ceasefire before you even think about that. But Zelensky’s proposition that Crimea be returned I think is a non-starter.”The notion of a federalist solution to the eastern Donbass region, home to many native Russian speakers, is not new, of course. Russian-occupied Crimea is more complicated. In 2010, Ukraine actually extended Russia’s lease on its naval base there until 2042, a deal that collapsed when Russia seized the peninsula in 2014.“The thing the Russians feared there was the loss of their only warm-water naval base, and that led by many accounts to the taking of Crimea,” Dr. Paul said. He characterized their worry as being that the “rent was going to be increased or the rent was going to be dangled as something to be leveraged.”That much is history now, and though the senator’s views veer toward the contrarian they are no less eagle-eyed for the different perspective: “I think there is an answer within all of this to finding peace — it’s harder now because of how bloody the war has been, and frankly that is Putin’s fault for invading.”As far as Mr. Zelensky’s announcement last month at Washington that Ukraine is preparing “to create a new defense ecosystem with the United States to produce weapons to strengthen further freedom,” Dr. Paul says his first thought is, “Who will pay for it?”Correction: Dr. Paul is a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. His affiliation with the committee was misstated in an earlier version.

Exclusive: As Congress Reels, Senator Paul Warns Against Growing American Involvement in Ukraine, Saying: ‘We Don’t Have Money To Give’

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