The ongoing debate over U.S. aid to Ukraine has reached a standstill, with Republicans refusing to pass President Biden’s multibillion-dollar aid package for Ukraine unless Congress comes up with a compromise bill that addresses both border security at home and aid for an ally abroad.
Money for Ukraine is expected to run out by the end of the year, according to U.S. officials.
Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young warned Congress in a December letter about the detrimental effects of not providing Ukraine with more weapons and equipment, saying it could "kneecap" Ukrainians on the battlefield and increase the "likelihood of Russian military victories."
In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, said stalled aid to Ukraine benefits Russian President Vladimir Putin because he has "all the time in the world to wait."
She also rejected the notion Putin will invade a NATO country should he succeed in Ukraine and said there’s been a Hollywood-like framing of the Russia-Ukraine war that creates hyped rhetoric and expectations.
"You have the Darth Vader of Russia, which is Vladimir Putin, and you have the Captain Marvel of Ukraine, which is Volodomyr Zelenskyy, and of course, good always triumphs," Khrushcheva said. "It’s not realistic."
She pointed to an underwhelming Ukrainian counteroffensive and argued some Republicans are making a populist argument that there needs to be accountability and "convincing numbers" for the U.S. to continue funding Ukraine.
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"Once again, because it was all played in Hollywood terms, I am really not surprised that Republicans — although, of course, for them, that's their own agenda there — but I'm still not surprised that a lot of people just said, ‘really first, we need a plan first, we need accountability, and then we can talk about it,’" Khrushcheva explained. "And I think that's what [President] Biden needs to concentrate on in the next year."
President Biden told reporters earlier this month that "If Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there." He predicted, according to Reuters, that Putin will attack a NATO ally next and then the U.S. would "have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops."
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in February 2022 that Putin has "made clear that he'd like to reconstitute the Soviet empire. Short of that, he'd like to reassert a sphere of influence around neighboring countries that were once part of the Soviet bloc."
Khrushcheva dismissed this "linear" perspective and said such exaggerated rhetoric, including predicting attacks against NATO countries, is counterproductive and only furthers the Hollywood-esque narrative that Putin, as Darth Vader, will try and take the whole galactic.
"Putin has been very clear right from the beginning, even before Ukraine, not even when he said, ‘What are they expecting us to fight with NATO? Of course, we're not going to fight with NATO.’ Because when he went into Ukraine, he was not planning to fight with NATO," she asserted.
"He really didn't plan for that kind of a war. He thought he was exerting a sphere of influence on a country that he thinks he has power over or should have power over. Then it became an East-West war."
Dan Hoffman, a former CIA station chief in Moscow, told Fox News Digital that if Putin does beat Ukraine, it’s "much more likely that he would seek to target other countries in the region, including Baltic NATO members."
Hoffman said the Biden administration needs to do a better job of explaining to the American people why the U.S. is supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression instead of saying things like "as long as it takes" because Americans don’t like "forever wars."
"We should define what victory is. Victory, in part, is making sure Russia doesn't overrun Ukraine, but it might also be Ukraine recovering all the territory Russia annexed by force," he explained. Hoffman added that Russia taking over Ukraine would impact the global economy and show the U.S. can’t stand up for its global allies.
"[Ronald] Reagan would have never stood for this," he said.
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Khrushcheva said she would advise Blinken and Biden to "have a policy, not to have a rhetoric" because politics doesn’t win wars, but it can create them.
The professor of international affairs at the New School in Manhattan added that she believes Biden has a "forever war" on his hands and that Putin will continue his war in Ukraine until he achieves his self-proclaimed "strategic goals," including securing non-NATO status for Ukraine and maintaining control of Crimea, which was illegally annexed in 2014.
"[Putin] will not hesitate to sacrifice Russia for that goal. Is the West ready to sacrifice themselves with Ukraine for that goal?" Khrushcheva asked.
"Putin has all the time in the world. And it's the West that does not have the time. It's Zelenskyy and Ukraine that do not have that time," she told Fox News Digital. "That's why we need a policy. Politics no longer works."
