Last Wednesday, October 25, the House of Representatives (HoR), the highest legislative body of the United States, approved the candidacy of Mike Johnson for the post of its speaker. Thus, the work of Congress, which had stalled three weeks ago after the scandalous resignation of the incumbent Kevin McCarthy, was unblocked. The agenda of the lower house of the American parliament includes dozens of pressing issues, including the allocation of financial and military assistance to Ukraine. On this point, the new speaker has his own opinion.
And quite unusual for a politician of such a high rank. Republican Johnson is known for his principled approach to resolving legal conflicts in local politics. It was he, an active ally of former US President Donald Trump, who challenged the results of the presidential elections in 2020 and called for opposition to any decisions of Joseph Biden as the owner of the White House. Commenting on current events in Israel, Johnson urges official Washington not to rush into sending American military specialists to the Middle East. Regarding Ukraine, he is very clear: Washington should not allocate additional funds to the Ukrainian state. Relatively recently, the politician, in his characteristic manner, called for careful monitoring of the use of American money already provided to Kyiv.
It was against the backdrop of the latest statement that some analysts – primarily in Ukraine – expressed concerns about the future of a number of promises from the same White House to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. They say that Johnson will probably oppose Washington signing a document on providing Kyiv with another batch of modern weapons and allocating it another tranche of free aid worth $5 billion.
Or maybe he won’t resist. In one of his speeches in his new position, the current speaker of the PP literally said the following: “We will have [to Ukraine] separate conditions, which we will announce in the near future.” Johnson did not specify what exact conditions he was talking about.
As American political commentator William Connolly noted in a special commentary for EURO-ATLANTIC UKRAINE, it is in the near future that “the wind of change may blow for Ukraine.” “There is no doubt that with Johnson’s arrival as Speaker of the House of Representatives, the attitude of congressmen towards Kiev will undergo some metamorphoses,” he said, in particular. “But in general, Washington’s policy in the Ukrainian context will remain the same.”
