America's Talking - Biden Makes Surprise Visit to Ukraine

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv, Ukraine on Monday as the nation nears its one-year anniversary of repelling the invasion of Russian troops. Biden met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and held a joint press conference to “reaffirm our unwavering and unflagging commitment to Ukraine’s democracy, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.” The Russian invasion of Ukraine hits its one-year anniversary this week, and lawmakers want to know: where has all the money gone? With $113 billion allocated by Congress to help Ukraine in the past year, House Oversight Committee Chair U.S. Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., sent a letter to the Biden administration demanding oversight of how those funds are being spent. Join The Center Square's Dan McCaleb and Casey Harper on this episode of America in Focus. --- Listen to Other ATN Productions: America's Talking: An interview podcast hosted by Austin Berg. Guests include professors, journalists, artists, business and nonprofit leaders, authors, and more. Everyday Economics: Join economist Dr. Orphe Divounguy and Chris Krug as they discuss global markets, inflation, and everything else that will help you understand the economic world around you. Future of Freedom: Future of Freedom is a bi-weekly podcast highlighting the work of the non-profits which are shaping the future of the freedom movement. Listeners will hear civil, intellectual conversations about why the organizations exist, what their mission is, and how they work to achieve it. Hosted by Scot Bertram. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to America in Focus. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today is Casey Harper, the Center Square's DC Bureau Chief. We are recording this on Friday, February 24th. Casey, today is the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. There's all kinds of chatter in Congress about the U.S. spending aid to Ukraine, some criticism, some concerns about accountability of how the more than $100 billion is going to be spent. What's going on? Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a tragic anniversary, not one you want to celebrate for sure. We've seen Ukraine really torn apart.

You've seen the footage, the images come in of a lot of civilians dead, just cities torn apart. In that time, you know, you probably remember Dan, we talked about at the time. it was kind of assumed that Russia would just steamroll Ukraine, maybe in a matter of weeks and quickly conquer it. But of course, that hasn't been the case. And Ukraine did have some U.S. help. But in the beginning, Ukraine really had to prove that it would even have a chance in this fight before I could get some more Western buy-in, especially from other European nations. So Ukraine stood up long enough to get some foreign money.

And now this has really become a drawn-out conflict. One of the things I wanted to find out at the center square.com was how much money have we actually spent and what's happened to it? You know, where is it gone? And so we've had, you know, we've had four different pieces of legislation totaling about $113 billion, which is no small amount. It makes Ukraine, you know, by far our biggest recipient of foreign aid at this point. And a lot of that has been just outright handing of weapons, right? So of the 113 billion, 67 billion has been, has gone towards defense. And about 46 billion has gone to non-defense. That seems like, you know, helping the government, economic aid, refugees, that kind of stuff. Food, probably energy, oil and gas.

I would think President Biden also made a surprise visit to Ukraine this week on Monday. He was in the war-tattered country. Took a little bit of criticism for that because of, you know, his lack of concern about the U.S. border, for example, and what's been going on. Were you surprised when you found out that Biden made the trip to Ukraine? Yeah, he took fire for that and for not visiting Ohio, which has really become one of the big stories of the month that train derailed and the toxic chemicals were burned off. Yeah, I mean, to your point about the politics of it, Biden's, it took Biden two years to

visit the border once, right, and he still hasn't visited Ohio. At that time, it looked like Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was not going to go either to Ohio now because of all the political pushback, you know, that's kind of changed things. But yeah, he did take fire that. And it was on president's day. And there's just something, you know, in some, in one sense, no matter who's president, there are people who are always going to find a way to attack it. Every time the president goes golfing, regardless of party, people pull out, you know,

how much is the president gone golfing? I mean, people always want to criticize what they're doing. But I think the Ohio thing was made it particularly salient because it wouldn't be hard to go to Ohio and to see what's going on there. We're going to talk a little bit more about, I think, well, I'll just say that former President Trump has really probably taken advantage of this criticism the most because he's gone to Ohio. He's there on the ground saying, you know, Biden doesn't care about you, but here I am.

So it has had political costs. But I think Biden just prioritizes this Ukraine conflict. You know, he was a senator. I mean, he's been in politics so long that I think the Cold War, is really just a big part of how he views the world still. Maybe the younger Americans don't really think of that as such a big deal or don't have that so in their mind when they think about foreign politics. But Biden has been around so long. I think the Cold War is still a forming thing that shapes his worldview when he looks at the globe.

And so I think he's operating still in that kind of Cold War mindset. Well, let's get back to the Ukraine and the $113 billion that the Congress has allocated to, aid Ukraine in its efforts to defend itself against Russia. Republicans this week essentially called for some oversight hearings on how that money is $113 billion. It's a lot of money. Of course, it's U.S. taxpayer dollars shipping and overseas to Ukraine. Of course, Russia is considered a threat to U.S. national security, so there's certainly some justification for it. But Republicans want an accounting on how that money being spec. Tell us about that. Yeah, that's right. Republicans are raising question. We've seen some Republicans peel off and say they're not going to support funding for Ukraine. You know,

enough is enough. But the House Oversight Committee has sent, you know, some letters to the Biden administration saying, hey, we need some accountability. We need to not what happened in places like Afghanistan where there was a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse. So they're looking at the Department of Defense, the State Department, USAID, which was a big aid group. the, you know, a lot of the main recipient and channeler of funnel aid overseas, right? And when it's over $113 billion, I mean, this is sort of unrelated, but we saw when the money gets such a big pot like that in such a short period of time, it just kind of disappears. We saw that with COVID unemployment.

You know, we've written a lot about that. There's this big pot of money. Yeah, there's a big pot of money for COVID unemployment benefits. Maybe a good, you know, reason, you know, I mean, I think the people who support it we're trying to do the right thing. And now that we look at the accounting, you know, it's all, there's just huge chunks of it that just disappeared or went to people. And this is probably the biggest concern that people who received it weren't actually, you know, didn't need an appointment in the same of Ukraine. The people who are receiving this money, the groups and

things, are they actually contributed to this conflict or are they just filling out applications doing lip service and getting the money? And we, you know, this kind of thing that we learned from Afghanistan. So it's also worth pointing out in the Oversight Committee, Chair James Comer of Kentucky, he points this out as well that the president of Ukraine just had to fire some Ukrainian government officials for bribery. So this is already, you know, Ukraine is definitely has a history of corruption. I know that we have our own corruption here in the U.S., but when you get in some of these overseas countries, some regions of the world, and, you know, Eastern Europe is definitely one of them. Corruption is on a different level.

on a level that might really surprise Americans. I mean, it's almost normal in some of these countries. So this is the kind of thing they're on the lookout. We don't want to, you know, turn around and find out that, you know, 20 billion of the 113 billion, you know, we don't really know where it went. And there's no way to recover it because it's in some Eastern, you know, Europe bank account somewhere. Yeah, and we know from past experiences that the federal government isn't necessarily good at many things, but there's one thing that they're really good at, and that is spending American taxpayers' money.

That's right. But they're not so good at accounting for how that money is spent. You referenced, you know, Afghanistan when President Biden pulled our troops from Afghanistan. We left like hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons and equipment and other things in the hands of the Taliban. Right. I mean, we just actually handed over an arsenal to a terrorist organization. And so, you know, they say they kind of disabled it and things, but it's still worth a lot of money and could easily be used for nefarious purposes. So, you know, and then there's also the foreign policy angle of how does.

how far is too far as far as pushing Russia? And, you know, this right now, we're not technically at war with Russia, but we're fighting this kind of proxy war. We're giving them our weapons directly. It's not even just money. It's one thing to give money to Ukraine. But I don't think people maybe realize this, but we're directly handing them American guns, American, you know, bullets, American weapons so they can use against Russia. And I think Russia takes this more personally than we might think. And Biden, when he was in Ukraine this week, made comments about Crimea that really upset a lot of Russian officials. And they took it as, you know, some of the more hyperbolic ones just saying it was basically an act of war because Biden was talking about strikes

and supporting strikes in Crimea, which Russia considers, you know, might as well be Moscow from their perspective. Well, certainly don't want to get into World War III here. But it's nice to see, at least, in Congress, that some elected officials are concerned about accountability when it comes to spending U.S. tax dollars overseas. Of course, it does not look like now we're a full year into the war. It does not look like this is going to end anytime soon, barring a Russian retreat from Ukraine, but that doesn't seem to happen with the Vladimir Putin in charge over there. Appreciate your insight. Casey will continue to follow your reporting at thecenter square.com. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McLeod. Please subscribe. Thanks for listening.