David Cameron has urged US lawmakers to pass a bill including support for Ukraine and warned them not to show “the weakness displayed against Hitler”.
The foreign secretary said Congress should vote through the foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan for the sake of global security. The bill has passed through the senate but faces a deeply uncertain future in the House of Representatives, where Republicans aligned with presidential frontrunner Donald Trump oppose the legislation.
“Right now in Congress, the American support for Ukraine is being debated, and I urge those congressmen and women to pass that bill to provide that money, to provide those weapons to Ukraine,” Lord Cameron said on a visit to the Bulgarian capital, Sofia.
“They are fighting off illegal Putin aggression and they need our support. We should be standing up for freedom, standing up for the right of this country to defend itself and making sure that Putin doesn’t win.
“I hope that will happen. But be in no doubt, we’re going to back Ukraine for as long as it takes.”
Republican rightwinger Marjorie Taylor Greene responding by telling Sky News: “David Cameron needs to worry about his own country, and frankly, he can kiss my ass.”
Cameron is visiting Bulgaria and Poland this week before travelling to the Munich Security Conference, where he will encourage counterparts to boost defence production for Ukraine.
In an opinion piece for The Hill also published on Wednesday, he called on US legislators to pass the bill which “matters greatly to UK and European security”.
On Hitler, Cameron added: “He came back for more, costing us far more lives to stop his aggression.
“I do not want us to show the weakness displayed against Putin in 2008, when he invaded Georgia, or the uncertainty of the response in 2014, when he took Crimea and much of the Donbas – before coming back to cost us far more with his aggression in 2022.
“I want us to show the strength displayed since 2022, as the west has helped Ukrainians liberate half the territory seized by Putin, all without the loss of any Nato service personnel.”
The foreign secretary made a similar intervention last December, when he warned during a visit to Washington DC that blocking a package of support for Ukraine would be a “Christmas present” for Putin.
Cameron denied claims that he was “interfering” with US politics, saying he had come “as a friend of America” to argue that voting through the funding is “the right thing to do”.
The aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan has passed through the Senate 70-29, despite a group of Republicans opposed to $60bn (£47.5bn) for Kyiv arguing that the US should focus on its own problems before sending more money overseas.
Ukrainian attacks on Russian aircraft and ships in the Black Sea have helped push Moscow’s naval forces back from the coast. On Wednesday, Kyiv claimed to have severely damaged and sunk a Russian landing ship in its latest drone attack on Moscow’s Black Sea fleet.
