European lawmakers leave Washington concerned about state of US support for Ukraine

CNN —

Top lawmakers from Estonia, Iceland, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden left meetings in Washington Thursday concerned and frustrated about a lack of urgency from their American colleagues about the need to support Ukraine.

The Nordic-Baltic delegation, comprised of the chairs of each of the country’s parliamentary foreign affairs committees, has traveled to the US capital on numerous occasions to meet with US lawmakers in both the House and Senate to rally for Ukraine as Russia’s full-scale invasion rages on.

“We came here, obviously, to show unity, to show our commitment and hoping that the Americans would hear us,” Diljá Mist Einarsdóttir of Iceland told reporters at a roundtable Thursday morning.

“We are leaving America a little bit sad,” she said.

The issue of US assistance to Kyiv – which received widespread congressional approval at the outset of the war – has faced growing Republican opposition. Congress has yet to pass legislation for additional funding to Ukraine after last year’s funding was expended.

A Senate bill that tied Ukraine funding to border security measures was blocked on Wednesday. Following that failure, the Senate voted on Thursday afternoon to begin debate on a security spending package with aid to Ukraine.

The European lawmakers, who were in Washington when the vote on the border and funding bill failed, said they are concerned that their US counterparts do not recognize the imperative for Ukraine to quickly receive continued US military support.

Rihards Kols of Latvia noted that “there wasn’t a sense of urgency of what is happening.”

“I got the notion that the war in Ukraine is something very far away, distant from the US,” he said.

“We are so united as