US House speaker: Aid to Ukraine and Israel should be approved separately

Newly elected Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, said on Thursday that funding to support Ukraine and Israel should be considered separately and not in one package, as proposed earlier by the White House.

Reuters reports that Johnson has concerns about allocating aid to Ukraine and believes funding for Israel will have to be found by cutting spending in other areas.

The speaker said that he met with US President Joe Biden on Thursday and told the White House staff that "our consensus among House Republicans is we need to bifurcate those issues."

Johnson also said he wanted to know "what the object is there, what is the endgame in Ukraine."

"The White House has not provided that," he added.

Aid to Ukraine and Israel

On October 17, Bloomberg reported that Biden would request Congress to allocate funding for a joint aid package to Ukraine and Israel.

On October 20, the White House announced that Joe Biden had asked Congress for $106 billion to help Israel and Ukraine and strengthen the US defense-industrial complex. Of this amount, $61.3 billion is proposed to be spent to aid Ukraine, and $14.3 billion will go to Israel. Politico reported that the Senate could block such a package due to Republican opposition.

Republican Congressman Mike Johnson was recently elected as the new US House of Representatives speaker. He is known as a supporter of former President Donald Trump and a critic of aid to Ukraine. 220 votes were cast for Johnson and 209 for Democrat Hakeem Jeffries. The Republican Party unanimously supported Johnson's nomination.

After his election, Johnson said that he was open to negotiations about Ukraine aid, but "under certain conditions."