Washington, DC, December 12, 2023 --  

Fighting in Gaza is creating even more casualties thousands of miles away in Ukraine.

When Hamas militants launched deadly raids into Israel on October 7, consequences quickly spread beyond the Middle East. Initial local casualties were horrific. In addition to the 1200 Israeli residents killed, thousands more wounded, and hundreds of hostages taken by Hamas, the inevitable Gaza invasion by Israeli forces has so far killed tens of thousands of residents.¹ To make matters even worse, troubles didn't stop there.

Thousands of miles to the north, on the snow-covered battlefields of Ukraine, resistance to the Russian invasion has fallen under the shadow of the Gaza War. Ukrainian units defending the city of Avdviivka from Russian invaders have begun rationing fire of their dwindling supply of artillery shells² as Russia relentlessly launches human wave attacks. Additional American military aid has been stalled by congressional infighting, exacerbated by the war in Gaza.

Further aid to Ukraine has been blocked by congressional Republicans using the issue as leverage for funding fortification of Amerca's border with Mexico against immigrants. After voting for a package of military aid to Israel (but no Ukraine funding), House Republicans demanded Senators pass a compromise bill that also funds border security. Such a bill, which included $61 billion in Ukraine funding, $14 billion in Israel funding, $14 billion in border funding and $7 billion in Taiwan funding³, was rejected by the Senate with Republicans leading the opposition arguing Ukraine funding was too much.

Dropping Fast: Ukraine news stories per week. Source: Google News.

One day later, the Biden administration used emergency authority to resupply Israel with tank ammunition in absence of congressional approval.⁴ But despite a personal appeal by Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky on a visit to Washington Tuesday, aid to Ukraine remains stalled⁵, and the U.S. Senate is scheduled to recess for the remainder of the yaer this week.

Using Ukraine aid as a political football makes sense for Republicans because the party's rank-and-file support for aid to Ukraine has steadily eroded over the past two years. In the most recent Pew poll, 48 percent of Republican or Republican-leaning Americans said the country is sending too much aid to Ukraine, compared with just 8 percent at the start of the war.⁶ Such attitudes are likely inflamed by the pro-Putin rhetoric of former President Donald Trump, as well as nativist "America First" sentiments. "Why are we spending so much money for those people way over there, anyway?"

As the Ukrainian war has dragged on for nearly two years, and devolved into a First World War-like stalemate, apathy was bound to kick in. The headline-grabbing atrocities from the Gaza War just make matters worse by diverting the public's limited attention span. Google indexed news stories about Ukraine have dropped by half since August, with a precipitous drop around the time of the October 7 Hamas raids on Israel.⁷ News stories about the Ukraine war, once mainstream, are now far more likely to be found in elitist publications with largely non-Republican readership -- think the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Economist and the Guardian.

This bad situation is unlikely to improve. The days of overwhelming American public sympathy for Ukraine are behind us. The Ukrainian flags, once a commonplace sight in neighborhoods across the country -- even those also flying Trump flags -- are becoming increasingly concentrated in wealthy coastal regions that are strongholds of the Democratic party. The ability of the American government to send blank checks to Ukraine to fight the Russians are now gone.

Finding a sustainable path forward that doesn't abandon Ukraine means that Europe must shoulder more of the burden for supplying a long and grinding war in Ukraine. America must find ways to keep supplying the country where it matters most, in order to help it hold back Russia without depleting America's arms stockpiles in ways that put other strategic interests like Taiwan at risk.

All of this, of course, presumes avoiding the looming specter of a second Trump presidency, an event that would spell doom on many levels, including the ability of Ukraine to resist the Russian invasion. Whether right or wrong, the Republican party's support for Israel far exceeds its support for Ukraine. Each day the Gaza War continues is not only a tragedy for the people of the region, but for those who continue to suffer across Ukraine.

Related Web Columns:

Striking a Nerve, September 5, 2023

Trench Warfare Rebooted, May 30, 2023

Notes:

1. Associated Press, Gaza Death Toll Tops 17,700 and Yemen Rebels Threaten Ship Traffic to Israel, December 9, 2023

2. Business Insider, A Ukrainian Soldier Says He Stopped Shelling Small Russian Units Because He is Running Out of US-Made Artillery Ammo, December 9, 2023

3. New York Times, An Aid Package That Invests in American Security Goals, December 8, 2023

4. Financial Times, US Bypasses Congress to Approve Sale of Tank Shells to Israel, December 9, 2023

5. Washington Post, Zelensky Unable to Win Over Congress as Biden's Ukraine Package Stalls, December 12, 2023

6. Pew Research Center, About Half of Republicans Now Say the U.S. is Providing Too Much Aid to Ukraine, December 8, 2023

7. Google News, Count of non-duplicate news stories matching "ukraine" by week, as indexed December 12, 2023