UK Government to Ask Citizens to House Ukrainian Refugees
The UK government will ask the British public to open their homes to Ukrainians fleeing the fighting in their country, Prime Minister
Boris Johnson has confirmed.
The Daily Telegraph reported that ministers will ask individuals, charities, businesses, and community groups to offer rooms to Ukrainian refugees through a hotline and a webpage.
Johnson told Sky News on Thursday that Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, will unveil the programme on Monday.
A government spokesman said the details of the scheme are still being worked on.
“The routes we have put in place follow extensive engagement with Ukrainian partners,” the spokesman said. “This is a rapidly moving and complex picture and as the situation develops we will continue to keep our support under constant review.”
Technology minister Chris Philp told Sky News on Friday that the details of the plan will be set out “in the very near future.”
The UK government has come under pressure from both Conservative and opposition lawmakers to do more to take in Ukrainian refugees.
While the European Union allows visa-free travel for Ukrainian refugees, the UK has insisted that visas are necessary to guarantee security.
On Thursday, Home Secretary
Priti Patel announced that the visa procedures for Ukrainian refugees have been simplified.
Under the new rules, Ukrainians with passports will be able to apply for visas “fully online” and will not need to submit their biometric information until they have arrived in Britain.
According to the United Nations, 2.5 million refugees have now fled the war in
Ukraine.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi wrote on Twitter on Friday: “The number of refugees from Ukraine—tragically—has reached today 2.5 million.”
The UN also estimates that about 2 million people are displaced inside Ukraine.
On Thursday, the prime minister warned that the “cynical, barbaric” Russian regime appeared to be preparing to use chemical weapons in Ukraine.
“The stuff which you are hearing about chemical weapons is straight out of the Russian playbook,” he told Sky News.
“They start saying that there are chemical weapons that are being stored by their opponents or by the Americans, so that when they themselves deploy chemical weapons—as I fear they may—they have a sort of a maskirovka, a fake story, ready to go.”
It comes as the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) warned Russia could be re-posturing for a “renewed offensive” in Ukraine.
“This will probably include operations against the capital Kyiv,” a MoD statement said
Wall Street Opens Higher at End of Choppy Week on Ukraine Talks Hope
Wall Street’s main indexes opened higher on Friday after Russian President Vladimir Putin said there were “certain positive shifts” in
talks with
Ukraine, at the end of a week roiled by geopolitical tensions and inflation angst.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 105.65 points, or 0.32 percent, at the open to 33,279.72. The S&P 500 opened higher by 19.98 points, or 0.47 percent, at 4,279.50, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 99.81 points, or 0.76 percent, to 13,229.77 at the opening bell.
UK Sanctions 386 Russian Parliamentarians for Supporting Ukrainian Separatists
Britain has sanctioned hundreds of Russian parliamentarians as the government seeks to further “tighten the screw” on President
Vladimir Putin’s regime over the invasion of
Ukraine.
The government said on Friday that 386 members of the Duma—the lower house of the Russian parliament—are being banned from travelling to the UK and any assets they have in the country will be frozen.
They have been sanctioned for voting in February to recognise the independence of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in Eastern Ukraine and authorise the permanent presence of Russian military there, the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) said.
Announcing the decision, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said: “We’re targeting those complicit in Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and those who support this barbaric war. We will not let up the pressure and will continue to tighten the screw on the Russian economy through sanctions.
“Together with our allies, we stand firmly beside our Ukrainian friends. We will continue to support Ukraine with humanitarian aid, defensive weapons, and diplomatic work to isolate Russia internationally.”
This follows the government’s announcement on Thursday that seven Russian Oligarchs, including
Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich, had been hit with UK travel bans and asset freezes over their close links to Putin.
Since the Russian invasion began on Feb. 24, the UK has sanctioned 18 of Russia’s leading oligarchs with a combined worth in excess of £30 billion ($39 billion), the FCDO said.
Altogether, the UK has sanctioned more than 500 of Russia’s most significant and high-value individuals, entities, and subsidiaries.
In a speech in Washington on Thursday, Truss said Western allies needed to continue to do more—including freezing all Russian banking assets and excluding Russia completely from the SWIFT global payments system.
“We want a situation where they can’t access their funds, they can’t clear their payments, their trade can’t flow, their ships can’t dock, and their planes can’t land,” she said.
Russia has been hit with crippling sanctions that threaten to cast the country into its gravest crisis since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.
More than 2 million people have fled Ukraine since the invasion began two weeks ago, with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg describing the situation as “Europe’s fastest-growing refugee crisis since the Second World War.”
Around 16,000 ‘Volunteer’ Foreign Fighters to Help Russia in War Against Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday gave the green light for “volunteers” from abroad to head to combat zones in eastern Ukraine to bolster Russian forces in the war.
Putin made the remarks at a Security Council meeting,
according to Russian state news agency Tass, which described the move as the “provision of military assistance to Donbass on a no-cost basis,” apparently in a bid to distinguish between volunteer fighters and paid mercenaries. Ukraine and Russia have traded accusations of sending mercenaries into the conflict.
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu was cited by Tass as saying that there have been over 16,000 requests from so-called volunteers, mostly in the
Middle East, who are ready to come to the pro-Russian separatist-controlled regions of Lugansk and Donetsk and take part in “what they believe is a liberation movement.”
The 16,000 figure mirrors the number cited by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky when he announced several days ago that foreign “volunteers” would be coming to Ukraine to help resist Russian forces.
“Ukraine is already greeting foreign volunteers. The first 16,000 are already on their way to protect freedom and life for us, and for all,” Zelensky said in a video posted on Facebook.
Ukrainian law allows foreigners to join the Ukrainian military on a voluntary basis, with incentives including being eligible for Ukrainian citizenship. Around 100 U.S. citizens
have been cleared to join Ukrainian forces fighting against Russia.
Putin, in his remarks to the Security Council, accused the West of openly sending mercenaries to fight on the side of the government in Kiyv.
“As for the mercenaries from all over the world being sent to Ukraine, we see that they do not conceal it, the Western sponsors of Ukraine, the Ukrainian regime, do not hide it, they do it openly, neglecting all norms of international law,” Putin said.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, for its part, has accused Russia of enlisting mercenaries affiliated with the “Wagner” group, an off-the-books private
military outfit reportedly run by Putin associate Yvgeney Prigozhin, to fight in Ukraine. Prigozhin has always denied any links to Wagner.
That followed
a report from British newspaper The Times claiming that over 400 Wagner-linked mercenaries had been sent to Kyiv with orders from the Kremlin to assassinate Zelensky.
There have been reports of a surge in demand for private military contractors in the context of the war in Ukraine.
Robert Young Pelton, a Canadian American author and expert on private military companies
told the BBC that there was a “frenzy in the market” for private military contractors to take on missions in Ukraine, including for help with logistics to extractions.
Tass also cited Putin as saying Russia should meet its “volunteers” half way and help cover the costs of transporting them to combat zones.
Ukraine Civilian Deaths Exceed Military Losses: Defense Minister
Russian forces invading
Ukraine have killed more Ukrainian civilians than soldiers, according to Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov.
“I want this to be heard not only in Kyiv but all over the world,” Reznikov said, without providing further details.
Thousands of people are believed to have been killed across Ukraine since Russian forces invaded two weeks ago. The United Nations human rights office
said Thursday it had recorded the killings of 549 civilians in Ukraine since the invasion began, including 26 children.
Most of the casualties have been caused by “the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area,” it said. It believes the real toll is “considerably higher,” however, noting that the numbers don’t include some areas of “intense hostilities,” including Mariupol.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Turkey on Thursday in a bid to secure a ceasefire so that civilians could be evacuated via humanitarian corridors but this—like prior peace efforts—ended with no progress.
In an extraordinary claim following their meeting, Lavrov claimed that
Russia “did not attack” Ukraine while dismissing concerns about Russian shelling of a Ukrainian children’s hospital in Mariupol as a “pathetic outcry.” Lavrov claimed the hospital had earlier been seized by Ukrainian far-right radical fighters who were using it as a base.
On his way back to Ukraine, Kuleba visited Poland, where he was received by Polish President Andrzej Duda. Their discussions focused on Ukraine’s efforts to join the European Union and on practical steps to protect the people of Ukraine amid the Russian onslaught.
Duda said he was told by his Ukrainian counterpart, President Volodymyr Zelensky, that Russian troops were still not ready to storm Kiyv and were instead bombing residential buildings and hospitals to try to “break” the will of the Ukrainian defenders.
“Tomorrow another attempt will be made to evacuate civilians from Mariupol. RU are shelling non stop. God save UA!” the Polish president
said in a tweet.
The Red Cross on Wednesday estimated more than 400,000 people were trapped in Mariupol without humanitarian aid and evacuation corridors, with a spokesperson describing the conditions in the city as “apocalyptic.”
Ukrainian authorities say they’ve been trying to evacuate their citizens from the besieged city, but that this requires cooperation from the Russian side, which they say has been lacking. They accuse Russian forces of shelling civilian areas to terrorize civilians and pressure Kiyv into capitulation.
Poland has been a staunch ally to Ukraine during the war, taking in around 1.5 million refugees, more than any other country, according to the
latest U.N. data.
A somber milestone was hit on Friday, with the total number of people fleeing the war in Ukraine hitting 2.5 million, according to Filippo Grandi, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
“We also estimate that about two million people are displaced inside Ukraine. Millions forced to leave their homes by this senseless war,” Grandi
said in a tweet.
Top officials from NATO and the U.N.
have called the war in Ukraine the fastest growing refugee crisis since World War Two.
Former President Donald
Trump said Thursday that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is “truly is a crime against humanity.”
“This is something that has to end, and it has to end soon,” Trump told Fox News in an interview.
Roman Brovko, a Ukrainian filmmaker living in Kyiv, told The Epoch Times in a phone interview that he’s witnessed the destruction of civilian infrastructure first-hand by Russian shelling.
He said that, even if Russia prevails in its military campaign, he believes Moscow’s efforts to control the country will be met with staunch resistance via insurgency.
“Ukrainians are ready to give up their lives for freedom. A partisan resistance movement is already starting to take shape,” he said.
“We don’t want to live under a dictatorship,” Brovko added.
100 Americans Approved to Join Fight Against Russia: Ukrainian Officer
Approximately 100 U.S. citizens have been cleared to join Ukrainian forces fighting against
Russia, part of a wave of some 20,000 foreigners who have been approved after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for help.
The Americans include veterans who fought in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including helicopter pilots.
They and other foreigners who have moved to help “really feel that this war is unfair, unprovoked,”
Ukraine’s military attaché, Maj. Gen. Borys Kremenetskyi, said in Washington after meeting with U.S. defense officials. “They feel that they have to go and help.”
Despite top U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken,
discouraging Americans from going to fight in Ukraine, the embassy in Washington has heard from at least 6,000 people inquiring about volunteering for service since Russia invaded Ukraine.
The vast majority of that group are American citizens, according to Kremenetskyi, who oversees the screening of potential U.S. recruits.
Half the potential recruits were quickly rejected and didn’t even make it to a Zoom interview, the general said. They lacked the required military experience, had a criminal background, or weren’t suitable for other reasons such as age, including a 16-year-old boy and a 73-year-old man.
Some who expressed interest were rejected because the embassy said it couldn’t do adequate vetting. The general didn’t disclose the methods used to screen people.
Those approved must make their own way to Poland, where they are to cross at a specified point, with their own protective gear but without a weapon, which they will get after they arrive. They will be required to sign a contract to serve, without pay, in the International Legion for the Territorial Defense of Ukraine.
A source from the legion told The Epoch Times in a Facebook message that volunteers need military or combat experience. At least 550 Canadians and over 1,000 Americans have joined the legion, according to the source.
Fight for Ukraine, a group helping interested Canadians prepare to apply, recommends getting a pack that includes a satellite phone, a battery charger, and a pair of walkie-talkies.
“A lot of volunteers come with many years of military experience. Many have been in various combat situations and thus can help Ukrainian Armed Forces right upon arrival. This saves time that Ukraine would have to spend on training new fighters and can save lives of both fighters and civilians,” the legion source said.
Provided Americans who join aren’t violating international rules or committing war crimes and are adhering to Ukrainian law, they should avoid legal problems, Mary Beth Long, former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs and a professor at the Penn State School of International Affairs, told The Epoch Times.
Under U.S. law, Americans need to steer clear from exporting technology or techniques to Ukraine that the Ukrainians can’t obtain elsewhere. Retired military personnel, meanwhile, aren’t supposed to fight for another country, though getting paid through a third party, if payment is rendered, could help them avoid repercussions for joining the fight.
“As long as they are, as a practical matter, on the Ukraine side of the conflict, and they’re not taking and handing over the kind of technical equipment that Ukraine would not otherwise be authorized to have, they’re pretty safe,” Long said.
The U.S. government has said Americans shouldn’t take part in the war. “U.S. citizens should not travel to Ukraine,” deputy White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters in a recent briefing. “We’ve been very clear for some time in calling on Americans who may have been resident in Ukraine to leave, and making clear to Americans who may be thinking of traveling there not to go,” Blinken added later.
Other countries have
threatened prosecution of certain nationals if they join; still others have encouraged interested citizens to apply to join.
Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, issued a call on Feb. 27 for help from foreigners. The invasion “is the beginning of a war against Europe, against European structures, against democracy, against basic human rights, against a global order of law, rules, and peaceful coexistence,” according to his office, which added that Zelensky was appealing to “all citizens of the world, friends of Ukraine, peace and democracy” while making clear “anyone who wants to join the defense of Ukraine, Europe, and the world can come and fight side by side with the Ukrainians against the Russian war criminals.”
Ukrainian law lets foreigners join the Ukrainian military on a voluntary basis.
The international legion, a group inside the armed forces entirely composed of foreigners, was formed at the time.
Incentives for joining include
being eligible for Ukrainian citizenship. People on their way to the front line have spoken of seeing a need to act.
“Everybody likes to talk about freedom but freedom only really goes to people who are willing to show up and fight for it—whether it be at the ballot box or the war,” Eric Creager, a Minnesota resident, told CTV Canada on his way to Ukraine.
“I’m a little nervous, to be honest,” Michael Ferkol, an American, told Reuters in Lviv. “But at the same time, it’s not about me. It’s about the people that are suffering.”
Ukrainian officials estimated as of Wednesday that some 20,000 foreigners had volunteered. Ukraine was also seeing a response from Ukrainian nationals, with nearly 12,000 arriving in the 24 hours leading up to March 9, according to the legion.
Not everybody who made it to the region ended up fighting.
Keiran Murphy, a Briton who used to serve in the military, wanted to join the Ukrainian military but decided against it because he was told he’d have to stay for months.
“My boy’s 11. So to leave him for maybe six months is too long,” Murphy told The Epoch Times in Poland, near the border with Ukraine.
He is now helping out with a humanitarian mission.
The number of volunteers matters less than their skills, experience, and potential for cohesion Long, the military expert, said. Deploying foreigners in their own groups is a smart move, because they can be used for precision missions “very tactically,” she added.
Russian officials
have warned the “mercenaries the West is sending to Ukraine,” saying they will not “enjoy the status of prisoners of war.”
“At best, they can expect to be prosecuted as criminals,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov told state media recently.
Kremenetskyi, the Ukrainian military official, said the volunteers are “not mercenaries who are coming to earn money,” describing them as “people of goodwill who are coming to assist Ukraine to fight for freedom.”
Europe’s Central Bank to Speed up End to Economic Stimulus
The
European Central Bank (ECB) said Thursday that it will make an early exit from its economic stimulus efforts as it combats record inflation that threatens to go ever higher as energy prices soar during Russia’s war in
Ukraine.
The move was a tough choice because the invasion also has exposed Europe to a potential hit to economic growth. But the ECB chose higher inflation as the bigger threat, surprising many analysts who had expected no change in the bank’s roadmap for the coming months.
The bank was keeping its options open and could modify its stimulus exit depending on what happens with the economy, President Christine Lagarde said. That’s hard to answer right now because of massive uncertainty over the impact of the war.
“The prospects for the economy will depend on the course of the Russia-Ukraine war and on the impact of economic and financial sanctions and other measures,” she said.
“At the same time, other headwinds to growth are now waning,” Lagarde said, pointing to signs some of the supply bottlenecks that have held back business are showing “signs of easing.”
She said the impact of sharply higher energy prices could be “partly cushioned” by savings that people couldn’t spend during the pandemic restrictions.
The bank’s 25-member governing council headed by Lagarde decided to end its bond purchases in the third quarter. Previously, it said it would taper them off to 20 billion euros ($22 billion) per month by the last three months of the year and continue them as long as needed.
The purchases aim to keep borrowing costs low for companies and promote business investment and hiring.
But the bank did not move up its schedule for a first interest rate increase, dropping a promise that rates would go up shortly after the end of bond purchases. Instead it said only that rate changes will take place “some time after” the end of the purchases and “will be gradual.”
During a news conference, Lagarde refused to be drawn out on whether an interest rate increase was possible this year. After the end of the bond purchases, “it can be the week after and it can be months after,” she said, depending on inflation and growth.
“The ECB has signaled that it is more concerned about a further sharp rise in inflation than the negative shock to demand which will result from the war in Ukraine,” said Andrew Kenningham, chief Europe economist at Capital Economics.
Inflation in the 19 countries that use the euro currency is running at an annual 5.8 percent, the highest since statistics started in 1997, and is expected to keep climbing in the coming months. The bank sees inflation running well above its 2 percent target throughout this year but falling to 2.1 percent next year.
The European bank is still behind the U.S. Federal Reserve, which is set to raise interest rates several times this year, beginning with a modest hike next week after inflation came in at a 40-year high of 7.9 percent.
The recovery from the pandemic recession has lagged in Europe, which only reached pre-pandemic levels of output at the end of last year, well behind the United States, where stimulus and support spending was higher.
The European bank’s road map includes ending a 1.8 trillion euro purchase program this month and transferring some of the purchases to an existing program that will now end sooner than planned. The bank used the purchases to support the economy through the coronavirus pandemic.
It had been assuming that high oil and gas prices and pandemic supply bottlenecks were temporary. But that equation is changing as inflation seems to be both worse and longer lasting than originally expected. Fears of oil and gas cutoffs have sent already high energy prices even higher, leading to predictions that inflation can only go higher in the short term.
On the other hand, economic growth is at risk in the eurozone because Europe is more exposed to the war on the continent and is more dependent on Russian oil and gas than the United States and China.
Satellite Images Appear to Show Russian Convoy Near Kyiv Has Dispersed, Redeployed
Satellite images taken on Thursday appear to show that the large
Russian military convoy that had been slowly advancing towards the Ukraine capital city of
Kyiv has dispersed and redeployed into nearby locations.
The convoy, which stretches for as much as 40 miles, was last seen northwest of Kyiv near Antonov airport.
On March 7, U.S. Press Secretary John Kirby said the convoy remained stalled but noted that the Pentagon doesn’t have “perfect visibility” on the convoy.
However,
satellite imagery from U.S. company Maxar Technologies showed the line of vehicles, tanks, and artillery has broken up and been redeployed, with armored units moving into positions in surrounding towns.
Some of the vehicles have moved into forests, Maxar reported, adding that images also show parts of the convoy further north have repositioned near the town of Lubyanka with towed artillery in firing position.
Still, the immediate threat to Kyiv remains unclear.
The convoy originated in Belarus and had been slowly advancing south toward Kyiv but last week it appeared to have
stopped entirely amid reports of food and fuel shortages.
“It’s a very, very long convoy. We don’t even know if it’s all, we can’t even say that, that it’s all one convoy and not several. But it does remain as our best assessment as it remains stalled,” Kirby said during a press conference last week.
Kirby said the Pentagon believes the convoy was heading to Kyiv to “resupply.”
“When you look at the images from the air, you can see a lot of it but they don’t look like armored vehicles so much as they look like resupply trucks. That’s not to say that there aren’t combat vehicles in there,” he said. “We don’t have perfect visibility on it. But the assessment is that it was largely meant to help resupply and it is still stalled. It’s still stuck.”
U.S. officials previously said the large Russian convoy had been targeted by Ukrainian troops with anti-tank missiles, adding that they likely slowed down its progress and even stopped it in some places.
Kirby said the Russian military likely did not anticipate such problems or the extent of Ukrainian resistance.
But on Wednesday, the Institute for the Study of War
said Russian forces “continued concentrating in the eastern, northwestern and western outskirts of Kyiv for an assault on the Ukrainian capital in the coming 24-96 hours.”
Meanwhile, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said that half of the city’s population has fled, and that the city has been “transformed into a fortress” while “every street, every building, every checkpoint has been fortified.”
The convoy’s re-deployment comes shortly after Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko
called for a no-fly zone to be implemented over Ukraine after a reported Russian airstrike devastated a maternity hospital, leaving 17 people injured during what was meant to be a temporary ceasefire in Mariupol.
In a video message posted to Telegram, Boichenko asked for the global community to “close the sky over Ukraine.”
“Today I am asking the global community for help. Close the sky over Ukraine. Our will has not been broken, we will fight to the end,” Boichenko said. “We have motivated soldiers and officers who defend our homeland. But today we need support.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued a stark warning that he would view any country that declares a no-fly zone over Ukraine as a participant in the “armed conflict.”
Meanwhile, Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s first deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, said reports that Russian forces had bombed the maternity hospital in Mariupol were “
fake news” and accused Ukraine of having set up the hospital as a combat site.
On Thursday, the Russian Ministry of Defense
claims that the hospital building, “due to its favorable tactical location close to the city center, was re-equipped into a stronghold of the Azov National Battalion,” an insurgent group with
strong allegiance to neo-Nazi ideology that has been battling Russian forces or forces aligned with Russia. There were “two separate staged explosions near the hospital”—more specifically, “[a]n underground explosion and another of minor power, aimed at the hospital building,” the ministry claims.
Senate Approves $13.6 Billion to Help Ukraine as Part of Huge Government Funding Bill
The
Senate on Thursday night passed a $1.5 trillion budget bill to fund the government through the end of September after months of back and forth between lawmakers.
The Senate voted 68–31 to pass the bill, which will fund the federal government through Sept. 30, with 18 Republicans joining all Democrats voting in support. The billion-dollar spending package had earlier been passed by the House on Wednesday night.
Its passing means the government will avert a shutdown that would have started on Friday night, when funding runs out.
The bill now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk where he is expected to sign the measure into law before Friday night.
Among other things, the bipartisan spending measure contains emergency funding requested by the White House to provide humanitarian and security assistance to
Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion, which has forced millions of Ukrainians to flee their homes.
Specifically, it contains
$13.6 billion in emergency funding to support the people of Ukraine, split between humanitarian and security assistance.
Among the more than $13 billion set aside to help Ukraine, $100 million is for Food for Peace grants “to support in-kind agricultural commodity donations for food assistance to Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees.”
Another $22.1 million has been pledged to support “economic and trade-based analysis, enforcement, and coordination with partners on Russian and American vulnerabilities related to global trade and export ramifications of the conflict in Ukraine.”
Millions more would be directed toward helping Ukraine tackle cybercrime, deploying personnel to the region to offer intelligence support, and replenishing “US stocks of equipment sent to Ukraine through drawdown.”
A total of $4 billion will help displaced refugees.
Ahead of the vote, Republican senators called for the Biden administration to send Ukraine fighter jets after the country’s President Volodymyr Zelensky requested them.
But the Biden administration has expressed reluctance to do so for fear of dangerously escalating the conflict, even if the jets were supplied by Poland and sent to Ukraine by America.
Along with support for Ukraine, the spending measure funds regular U.S. military programs and a number of non-defense operations through Sept. 30, including money for infrastructure projects authorized by an earlier bipartisan package.
About $782 billion is allocated for military spending under the Defense Department, while an additional $125 billion has been allocated to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Notably, the government funding bill does not include the $22 billion that the Biden administration said was needed for things like treatments, vaccines, and other measures in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki called on Congress to provide those funds earlier Thursday, telling reporters at the
White House, “We will need that funding in order to continue to fight the pandemic.”
“Without additional resources from Congress, the results are dire,” Psaki said, adding that testing capacity would decline this month and that in April, “free testing and treatments for tens of millions of Americans without health insurance will end.”
“In May, America’s supply of monoclonal antibodies will run out,” Psaki said. “So, failing to take action now will have severe consequences for the American people. That’s why we requested $22.5 billion to avoid severe disruptions to our COVID response.”
Biden had earlier called on lawmakers to approve the $22.5 billion in new spending during his State of the Union address.
However, the billions of dollars were negotiated down to $15.6 billion before pandemic funding was ultimately left out of the bill entirely as Republicans objected to the additional spending.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also noted that lack of additional spending for COVID-19, but said that the bill “is overflowing with very good things for our troops, for American jobs, for our families, and for America,” NBC
reported.
“It will give our troops a raise, provide more money for schools and Head Start programs and Pell grants, reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, fund the president’s Cancer Moonshot, and open the floodgates for funding the bipartisan infrastructure law,” he said ahead of the vote.
