U.S. House approves $300 million tranche for Ukraine

The House of Representatives on Thursday night voted to allocate $300 million in support for Ukraine.

This is reported by Politico, Ukrinform saw.

The tranche for Ukraine was removed from the draft defense budget so it was voted separately.

The $826 billion defense bill passed in a near-party-line vote of 218-210.

The decision to create a separate bill for Ukraine marked a major U-turn after most Republicans helped defeat an identical proposal just a day earlier to remove those funds from the Pentagon bill.

While the about-face ultimately helped both bills pass, it also drew recriminations from Democrats, who warned the move could be portrayed by the Kremlin as Congress abandoning Ukraine.

“The Russians are good at propaganda,” said House Armed Services ranking Democrat Adam Smith. “It will be played as America backing off of its commitment for Ukraine.”

As Ukrinform reported earlier, $300 million for Ukraine could be excluded from the defense funding bill due to dissent from right-wing Republicans.

Also, the Senate voted to start the debate on the next year’s budget bill, which should allow for avoiding the government shutdown on October 1, and also provides $6 billion in aid to Ukraine.