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Going in the opposite direction to the wishes of US President Joe Biden, the House of Representatives will vote this week on a financial and military aid bill for Israel, said Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Mike Johnson.

His statement was said a day before Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu revealed that the Ukrainian military have suffered more than 90,000 casualties since the counteroffensive began.

“We are going to move a stand-alone Israeli funding bill,” Johnson said on October 29 in an interview with the Fox News network.

“There are lots of things going on around the world that we have to address, and we will, but right now what’s happening in Israel takes the immediate attention, and I think we’ve got to separate that to get it through. I believe there will be bipartisan support for that, and I’m going to push very hard for it.”

Since returning from the Middle East, Biden has been trying to approve a bill for $106 billion in aid for Ukraine, Israel, and national defence projects. In the president’s document, around $61 billion would go to Ukraine, while $14 billion would be allocated to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

So far, the US Congress has approved $113 billion in resources for Ukraine, but opposition from the Republican Party has grown stronger since then, and many no longer want anything to do with financing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the conflict in Ukraine. Johnson believes the Israel-only funding bill will gain strong bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. 

In the same light as Johnson, it is recalled that Republican Senator Ted Cruz said Senate Democrats and Biden are “playing games with Israel funding” during an interview on October 22 with FNC’s Maria Bartiromo.

“I think it’s a big mistake. I don’t know if it’ll pass,” Cruz said about the Israel/Ukraine aid package. “The hostages are not just being held by Hamas. The hostages are also being held by the Biden White House, because he’s taking Israel and saying, you can have Israel military aid if you pass everything I want on Ukraine, if you pass Biden’s funding.”

Evidently, a week later, greater pressure is mounting for Biden to back down from linking aid to Israel with Ukraine. There is a humbling realisation in Washington that Ukraine has no chance of winning the war against Russia, but there remains a stubbornness in the Biden administration from deviating from its failed policy.

Shoigu said at the 10th Xiangshan Security Forum on October 30 that since Kiev launched its counteroffensive in June this year, the Ukrainian Armed Forces suffered more than 90,000 casualties (dead and wounded) without achieving any significant success on the battlefield. 

“Just since June 4 — that is, since the start of the widely publicised and generously Western-sponsored Ukrainian counteroffensive — Kiev has lost more than 90,000 soldiers killed and wounded, around 600 tanks and almost 1,900 armoured vehicles of various types,” Shoigu said.

News of the catastrophic loss in the Ukrainian military will only further fuel calls to end financing Kiev’s hopeless efforts against Russia.

To put the 90,000 figure in perspective, the British Army has 76,220 active personnel, demonstrating how Ukraine has lost more soldiers in a few months than the size of an entire army of a supposed superpower.

At the same time, Shoigu expressed confidence that the Russian Armed Forces will continue to “methodically and confidently perform the tasks assigned to them and ensure the safety of civilians.”

Previously, Russian President Vladimir Putin had already stated that the Ukrainian counteroffensive had no results. At the time, the Russian leader emphasised that Russia was moving forward calmly to complete its objectives in the special military operation.

This is the grim reality of the war in Eastern Europe – Russia has destroyed the Ukrainian military without even going on the offensive yet. It is for this precise reason that Johnson wants the US to shift focus away from Ukraine and onto the Middle East as a priority since Washington’s interests have a chance of being preserved or advanced, unlike in Eastern Europe, where Moscow has successfully countered NATO’s plans.

“My intention is not to use this for any partisan political gamesmanship. This is a very serious matter,” the US House speaker said, adding: “We have got to address this now. We should not waste any more time. And I think we will get it through the House this week.”

Once the bill is passed, it will officially confirm that Ukraine is no longer the top foreign issue for Washington to deal with, marking the beginning of the end of blind Western support for a lost cause.

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: President Joe Biden participates in an impromptu private meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog at the Hotel Kempinski in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, October 18, 2023. (Official White House Photo by Erin Scott)