MOSCOW, November 24. /TASS/. The Western countries will be unable to support Ukraine forever and ever, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council has said.

Alexey Danilov acknowledged in an interview that his country would find it ever harder to obtain foreign aid.

Interviewed on a TV channel in the West Ukrainian city of Lvov, Danilov explained that no one had expected Russia's special military operation in Ukraine "will go on for so long."

"The further it goes, the more difficult it will be. This must be recognized," Danilov said. We should not assume that we will be fed all along and keep receiving aid indefinitely."

Earlier, Ukrainian Finance Minister Sergey Marchenko said that ever fewer people in the Western countries were eager to allocate money to Ukraine, and it was becoming increasingly difficult for Kiev to ask for more funding. At the same time, he expressed readiness to carry out all the necessary reforms as long as support from the West kept coming in full and on time.

Funding in question

The US administration sent a request to Congress in October for additional large budget appropriations in the fiscal year that began on October 1, 2024 - primarily to help Ukraine and Israel, as well as to counter China and Russia in the Asia-Pacific Region. President Joe Biden’s administration would like to receive about $106 billion for these purposes. The fate of the request and alternative bills remains in question. Some Republicans in both the House of Representatives and the Senate have publicly voiced their opposition to further financial assistance to Kiev.

As for Europe, the European Commission on June 20 called on the EU countries to make additional contributions to the community’s budget for 2024-2027, needed for the approval of a 50-billion-euro aid program for Ukraine over the next four years and another 20 billion euros in military aid. This proposal aroused no enthusiasm in the EU countries, whose budgets have been hit by economic problems resulting anti-Russian sanctions. The long-term EU aid programs for Ukraine have not yet been adopted.