Zelenskyy says he’s confident Ukraine will get more U.S. support for its war with Russia

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday he’s certain the United States will make good on its promise to provide billions of dollars in further aid for Kyiv to continue its fight against Russia, and he bluntly replied “No,” to a question about whether his country might lose the war.

Speaking at an end-of-year news conference in Kyiv, Zelenskyy also dismissed suggestions that Moscow’s forces have come out of 2023 on top after mostly beating back Ukraine’s counteroffensive and stepping up its military production.

“Russia failed to achieve any of its goals” this year, he said, although he conceded Ukraine still faces “lots of challenges” after expending Western military hardware in the counteroffensive that failed to make an impression on the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line.

The U.S. Congress has left town for the holidays without a deal to send some $61 billion to Ukraine, and the U.S. Defense Department says it is almost out of money to help Kyiv after almost 22 months of fighting. The European Union, too, had to push into the new year a plan to supply Ukraine with $54.5 billion after a veto from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban,

But Zelenskyy insisted he isn’t worried.

“I am confident that the U.S. will not let us down and that what we have agreed with the U.S. will be fulfilled,” Zelenskyy said.

Western support is crucial for Ukraine’s fight against its bigger and better armed neighbor, and the U.S. is by far the biggest single source of help. Russia still outguns and outnumbers Kyiv’s forces.

Ukraine has received additional U.S.-made Patriot surface-to-air systems and advanced NASAMS anti-aircraft systems, providing medium- to long-range defense against Russian missile attacks, Zelenskyy said, declining to elaborate.

Those weapons will help fend off expected Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power grid over the winter.

While Zelenskyy was upbeat about receiving further military and financial help from European Union countries, he was less optimistic about Ukraine’s chances of joining NATO.

“NATO is the most powerful option for us. But we’re not invited to NATO yet,” he said. “All these signals about our membership so far are nonsense. We didn’t receive a solid offer, not from a single partner of ours. It is hard to imagine at this point, how this can happen.”

Ukraine’s military wants to mobilize up to 500,000 more troops, Zelenskyy said, but he said he has asked the top brass to spell out the…