Americans Fighting for Ukraine Urge Congress to Pass Aid Bill

Three Americans who have served with Ukrainian forces have warned of dire consequences in the war with Russia if Congress does not agree to more aid for Kyiv.

The ongoing deadlock in Congress over further funding for Ukraine threatens to hand Moscow a major advantage in the almost two-year-old conflict, according to the trio, who felt compelled to go to Ukraine to fight against the Russians.

"It just gets frustrating when your country is stalling," said one U.S. soldier who joined Ukraine's international legion and arrived in the country in August 2022. He was posted to GUR, the country's military intelligence agency.

"America dictates the outcome of this war. If we decide Ukraine's going to win, then Ukraine will win. If America just sleeps on it, then Russia will just take as much as it can," the soldier told Newsweek, speaking on condition of anonymity.

After returning to the U.S. following three trips to the front lines in Zaporizhzhia, Bakhmut and Kupiansk, he was part of a delegation that went to Washington last month to tell U.S. lawmakers about their front-line experiences and the urgent need for further military aid for Ukraine.

Organized by the R.T. Weatherman Foundation, which has evacuated and repatriated dead and wounded American veteran volunteers fighting in Ukraine, the group consisted of former U.S. servicemen who fought for Kyiv's forces and American families who had lost relatives in the war.

"I'm not particularly political myself. I just work from ideals, the ideal being this is just evil and we're confronting it and it needs to be stopped," the soldier said. "If Ukraine loses, we lose. Everybody loses."

In his view, Ukraine needs artillery, mine detection and better technology to combat drones, as well as ammunition.

"When we were in the trenches, the Ukrainian guys were super worried about running out of ammo," he said. "We would be firing and the Ukrainian commander that was in the trench kept saying, 'Stop, stop, stop, save the ammo.' And so he would keep slowing down the rate of fire."

He said he did not believe that the Russians were well trained as soldiers, "but with time, they're getting better at what they do. They're learning their lessons on the battlefield. They're not afraid to lose hundreds of thousands of men."

Among the delegation in Washington last month was a paratrooper in the U.S. military, who also asked to remain anonymous because he may be returning soon to the front lines.

His experiences in Ukraine between the fall of 2022 and fall 2023—including time near the city of Avdiivka, which Russia could soon capture—gave him insight into what Kyiv's forces needed urgently, such as more drone guns, medical supplies and stretchers.

"Some of my friends on missions had a struggle with artillery when I was on the ground," he told Newsweek. "They didn't have enough, and I think things would have really shaped up differently if we had that superiority."

He continued: "Finding a way to do counterbattery would be a big help, and the obvious thing would be having more and bigger cannons that could knock them out before they knock us out."

The wrangling in Congress over whether to give Ukraine more weaponry assistance continues to deepen as the war enters its third year after February 24. President Joe Biden had worked with Senate leaders on a plan to pair policies to curb illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border with $60 billion in wartime aid for Ukraine.

But with Republicans rejecting a compromise, Biden and Senate leaders have no clear way to advance aid for Ukraine through Congress. Opposition from Republicans is backed by Donald Trump, who has rejected the border proposal as insufficient and criticizes Ukraine funding as wasteful.

"I would tell Republicans, If you don't pass this funding quickly, there will be a massive and historical genocide," said John Jackson, 43, an American citizen who went to Ukraine in 2023 and joined its 130th Separate Battalion of the Territorial Defense Forces. "It's going to waste all the money and investments they've already given."

He went on: "The living owes it to the dead to carry on their work, so they don't die in vain."

U.S. lawmakers' inability to pass funding for Kyiv "will make every sacrifice that Ukraine made, all the civilians that were killed, they will make all that in vain," he said. "If your artillery shells run out and you don't know when you're going to get resupplied—that's a really hard way to fight a war."

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