Ukraine aid back on US agenda but still at mercy of unruly House Republicans

With the government funding fight resolved, the US House is expected to soon turn to a long-stalled national security package that would send military assistance to Ukraine, Israel and other US allies.

Despite increasingly desperate pleas from Kyiv, the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, had refused to bring the Senate-passed wartime aid bill to the floor until Congress finalized a government funding bill, which it did on Friday, before leaving Washington for a two-week recess.

Support for Ukraine is broadly popular in the House, but a faction of hard-right lawmakers opposes sending additional aid to the country, and Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has put pressure on Johnson not to bring the bill to the floor for a vote. The aid bill passed by the Senate includes about $60bn for Ukraine as it defends itself from the Russian invasion that began nearly two years ago.

Trump instead has floated the idea of sending Ukraine aid in the form of a no-interest loan. The idea has gained traction with some of his allies, including the Republican senator Lindsey Graham, who proposed it to the Ukraine president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, when he met him in Ukraine last week.

“During my meeting with President Zelenskiy, I informed him that given the crisis at the United States’ southern border and our overwhelming debt, President Trump’s idea of turning aid from the United States into a no-interest, waivable loan is the most likely path forward,” Graham said in a statement. Johnson has called it a “commonsense suggestion”.

Ukraine aid has sharply divided congressional Republicans, who were once united in toeing a hard line against Russia. But Trump’s hostility to the Nato military alliance and his flattery of Vladimir