Biden, Zelensky and a 10-year U.S.-Ukraine empty security deal agreement about nothing

Biden to Scholz: Look! We have signed a paper that is worth nothing. Ha-ha…
Photo: sudouest.fr

The agreement — which Trump could undo if reelected — commits Washington to give Kyiv long-term support. Unlike NATO, it doesn’t require a U.S. military response if Ukraine is attacked, writes ‘The Washington Post’.

Yes, President Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have signed a 10-year security agreement that will commit Washington to supply Kyiv with a wide range of military assistance, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said, in a bid to bolster Ukraine’s fight with Russia.

The deal aims to commit future U.S. administrations to support Ukraine, even if former president Donald Trump wins November’s election, officials said.

Officials said that they hoped the agreement would transcend political divisions within the United States, but acknowledged that Trump or any future president could withdraw from the legally binding executive agreement, because it is not a treaty and will not be ratified by Congress. Nor does it make any new commitments about Ukraine’s prospects for joining the NATO defense alliance, which remain distant.

With Trump leading Biden in many election polls, the future of the agreement remains unclear. Trump has at times expressed skepticism of Ukraine’s continued fight, saying at one point that he would end the war between Russia and Ukraine within 24 hours, and he has pushed for Europe to take on more of the burden of supporting Kyiv. But he also eventually signaled his assent to congressional passage of aid for Ukraine this spring.

The agreement comes after months of negotiations that started in August last year, the month after a NATO summit where the Biden administration was among the most reluctant to offer Ukraine a speedy path to alliance membership. Officials instead proposed a series of bilateral security agreements as a way of creating a different form of organized, binding long-term support for Kyiv.

Not long after negotiations started, though, the billions of dollars of short-term military aid that the United States sends Ukraine got tangled in Congress, with skeptical House Republicans delaying approval of new funding until April — a seven-month period that put on hold discussions about the 10-year deal. U.S. officials felt it made little sense to talk about long-term commitments to Ukraine when they could not muster support for the immediate fight.

The pact does not commit Washington to supply troops to defend Ukraine if it is attacked, unlike NATO’s all-for-one, one-for-all mutual defense promises, an administration official said, speaking like others on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details of the agreement before they have been made public. There is also not a dollar figure attached to the support Washington will supply Ukraine.

But it commits the United States to hold high-level consultations with Kyiv within 24 hours if Ukraine is attacked again in the future, and it promises that the U.S. president will work with Congress to implement the security agreements, the official said.

…Something should know about G-7: