BELFAST — The pace of US military aid to Ukraine is likely to ramp up if Democrats win control of the House of Representatives and Senate in November’s midterm elections, according to the top Democrat on the House’s intelligence committee.
A switch in power “does change things,” Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said today at the Warsaw Security Conference.
“It means that aid packages [to Ukraine] move not in nine months, but in nine days or nine weeks on the outside, and that the message [of support to Ukraine] is very different,” he said.
Himes comments come amid reports that the Trump administration has threatened to stifle the procurement system supplying weapons to Ukraine in a bid to pressure Kyiv into ending deep strikes against Russian energy infrastructure. On Sunday, US President Donald Trump announced an energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia. He has also received bipartisan criticism for temporarily lifting restrictions on Russian diesel exports.
Under NATO’s Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) initiative, NATO allies and partners fund the purchase of US-sourced weapons and equipment for Ukraine, with NATO coordinating deliveries. The mechanism depends on Washington making those weapons available for purchase, meaning the Trump administration could still affect the flow of European-funded military assistance by restricting access to US equipment.
If Democrats gain control of both chambers and the budget, Trump could be forced to negotiate with the party to fund his priorities, Himes said. In exchange for accepting those terms, Democrats would “demand” that the president adopts a “much more affirmative and consistent policy in support of Ukraine.”
Himes said polling and prediction markets suggest the midterms could deliver “a fairly massive repudiation of the president,” though he argued that the result would not be driven directly by Trump’s Russia-Ukraine policy.
“It will be because, in a remarkable political experiment,” Trump said he would not go to war in the Middle East and would lower living costs, he said.
“And he did precisely the opposite of both those things,” Himes said. “What happens in November is going to be almost certainly a switch of control in the House of Representatives, and quite likely a switch of control in the Senate.”
Speaking in Warsaw on Monday, Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, chair of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, deferred to NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, when offering thoughts on Ukraine and Iran.
Grynkewich “thinks we’re up to the task with regard to helping Ukraine and finishing whatever the President [Trump] intends to do after the election in Iran,” Wicker explained. “My viewpoint, and I’ve expressed this publicly and told the president, my viewpoint is that the memorandum of understanding and stopping and starting [peace negotiations] was not a good idea with regard to Iran.”
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