Maintaining political support for billions of dollars in annual aid to Ukraine in the United States and in the European Union will be challenging.

While Ukraine's partners in the USA and the EU discuss future assistance, Ukrainian officials should actively work on increasing national independence and self-sufficiency.

Read more the column by former member of the US House of Representatives (1983-1995) Jim Slattery – Why Kyiv should care not only about U.S. assistance.

Putin is betting the West will lose interest in Ukraine and terminate aid.

Instead, the author believes, he grossly underestimated the courage and determination of Ukrainians to defend their country. Now all friends of freedom around the world must work together and set aside political differences to prove Putin wrong again.

"If the U.S. could fund the Marshall Plan and defend Korea for nearly 75 years we can certainly find the resources with our partners in the EU to help Ukrainians defend their country and protect the freedom of Europe," the columnist writes.

The United States is now absorbed in domestic political issues, and the closer it gets to the elections in November 2024, the more complex it is.

Jim Slattery reminds us that "Republicans are demanding significant changes in the Biden administration's border and immigration policies as a precondition for approving aid to Ukraine. The senate responded with a compromise bill that contained historic improvements but when former President Trump expressed his opposition to the bill the Republicans withdrew their support."

But he remains confident that a major aid package for Ukraine will be approved in the next 30-60 days.

He is reminded that Churchill once observed that "Americans will always do the right thing but only after they have tried everything else".

As Ukraine’s partners in the U.S. and the EU debate future aid, officials in Ukraine would be wise to intensely work on increasing their national self sufficiency.

Ukraine has made amazing progress in increasing its domestic weapons and ammunition production. The West must assist this effort in every way possible. In the final analysis Ukrainians will win their battle for national independence from Russia.

According to Jim Slattery, as this struggle continues, efforts to implement budget reforms, reduce financial risks, ensure financial transparency, manage public investments and root out corruption must be accelerated even during this time of national crisis.

"These efforts will demonstrate to Ukraines partners in the U.S. and the EU that money being sent to Ukraine is being efficiently managed," he notes.

He warns that stories about waste, fraud or corruption will do more than anything else to undermine U.S. support for Ukraine. Putin’s agents around the world are digging day and night to find such examples and broadcast them to the world.

For example, net effect is that borrowers have had the benefit of loans for up to ten years without making any interest or principal payments. 

In one case this has prevented the bank involved from being able to repay the Guaranty Fund that had to spend millions of dollars to protect depositors when the Russian invaders destroyed or stole 35% of the bank’s assets.

"Supporters of aid to Ukraine in the U.S. Congress care about these matters and will be following the outcome. If these cases are not settled promptly and in a manner that will result in the Guaranty Fund being repaid by the borrowers, from Washington it will look like either incompetence or corruption or both," he concludes.