{"id":15227,"date":"2023-04-18T21:50:39","date_gmt":"2023-04-18T21:50:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/ukraines-zelenskiy-top-us\/"},"modified":"2023-04-18T21:52:00","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T21:52:00","slug":"ukraines-zelenskiy-top-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/ukraines-zelenskiy-top-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine&#8217;s Zelenskiy, top US House Republican McCarthy discussed Russia sanctions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) &#8211;     Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday he and U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy discussed in a phone call Ukraine&#8217;s need for weapons as well as increasing sanctions pressure on Russia.<\/p>\n<p>On Twitter, Zelenskiy said he thanked McCarthy for bipartisan support in Congress for Ukraine as well as Ukraine&#8217;s defense needs. &#8220;Outlined the situation at the front &amp; Ukraine&#8217;s urgent defense needs in armored vehicles, artillery, air defense &amp; aircraft,&#8221; Zelenskiy&#8217;s tweet said.<\/p>\n<p>He said they also discussed enhancing sanctions pressure on Russia, including in oil and gas.<\/p>\n<p>A spokesman for McCarthy, the highest-ranking Republican in Washington, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<p>With strong support from both President Joe Biden&#8217;s Democrats and McCarthy&#8217;s fellow Republicans, Congress has approved billions of dollars of humanitarian, economic and defense aid for Ukraine since the Russian invasion began in February 2022, including a $45 billion aid package approved in December.<\/p>\n<p>However, some hard-right Republicans have questioned the aid, saying federal funds should be spent on domestic needs or devoted to competition with rising power China.<\/p>\n<p>McCarthy&#8217;s position has been that he backs Ukraine but House Republicans, who took control of the chamber in January, will not provide &#8220;a blank check&#8221; for U.S. assistance to Kyiv.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n<p> (Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/ukraines-zelenskiy-top-us\/ukraines-president-volodymyr-zelenskiy-visits-in-avdiivka-donetsk-region-8\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3H0WW-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3H0WW-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) &#8211; Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday he and U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy discussed in a phone call Ukraine&#8217;s need for weapons as well as increasing sanctions pressure on Russia. On Twitter, Zelenskiy said he thanked McCarthy for bipartisan support in Congress for Ukraine as well as Ukraine&#8217;s defense [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":15228,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1222],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-world-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3H0WW-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15227"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15229,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15227\/revisions\/15229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}