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Congress Approves Aid Of $1 Billion for Ukraine | |
(about 5 hours later) | |
WASHINGTON — The House and the Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to approve a $1 billion aid package for Ukraine, but Congress’s near unanimity on its modest package of aid and sanctions on Russia masked deep divisions on what the government should do next to confront President Vladimir V. Putin. | |
The bills, which were nearly identical, passed by 399 to 19 in the House and by 98 to 2 in the Senate. President Obama has said he will sign the legislation, which includes new sanctions against Russians and Ukrainians who provided support to Russia in its annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine. | |
“This bill is a first step toward supporting the Ukrainians and our Central and Eastern European partners, and imposing truly significant costs on Moscow,” the House majority leader, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, said in a floor speech. | |
But the next steps are unclear. Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that “we’re appearing a little bit cautious today.” The United States’ $1 billion in loan guarantees is dwarfed by the $18 billion in loans that the International Monetary Fund has provisionally agreed to provide and the $15 billion promised by the European Union. | |
With Mr. Putin’s troops massed on the border with Ukraine, lawmakers in both parties called for more aggressive sanctions on Russia, including penalties for the banking and energy sectors. Some senators pressed for increased military assistance to Ukraine and an expanded NATO force in Eastern Europe. And Republicans called for flooding Europe with liquefied natural gas to break the Continent’s dependence on Russia. | |
“We’ve got to do this now, because once he goes in, what are we going to do, put boots on the ground?” asked Senator Kelly Ayotte, Republican of New Hampshire. | |
But voices just as adamant urged caution, and few lawmakers said they were eager for a military confrontation. Mr. Corker said more punitive actions should be threatened only if Russia moved farther into Ukraine or threatened neighbors like Moldova. Senator Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, another member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said military assistance to a Ukrainian force of about 6,000 trained troops against the Russian military would be fruitless. | |
“A lot depends on what Russia does,” Mr. Cardin said. “If this becomes a frozen conflict involving only Crimea, I don’t know how much more we will see from us.” | |
Congress will try to reconcile the two bills that passed on Thursday. Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said a path had been cleared to get the bill to the president before the end of the week. | |
To match the two bills, the Senate will move to pass a House bill to authorize the broadcast of Western news programs into Ukraine and the region, and the House will take up the Senate aid-and-sanctions bill in order to pass it by a voice vote on Friday. | |
In addition to providing money to Ukraine, the bills would formalize sanctions authorized recently by Mr. Obama and expand the list of individuals and entities targeted for sanctions. | |
Unlike the president’s executive order last week, the Senate’s sanctions are mandatory and do not grant Mr. Obama latitude to choose which penalties to apply. | Unlike the president’s executive order last week, the Senate’s sanctions are mandatory and do not grant Mr. Obama latitude to choose which penalties to apply. |
The bill also makes mandatory the application of sanctions on any Russian official found to have engaged in corruption in Ukraine, a broader category than any applied by the administration. The Senate measure would give the administration more flexibility to apply economic sanctions against any Russian official engaged in corrupt activity and anyone who assists in such activities. | |
In all, with financing provided by the International Monetary Fund, the United States and the European Union, Ukraine stands to receive up to $27 billion to help it avoid default and to carry it through emergency presidential elections in May. | |