Ukrainian leader's rude awakening: In Washington, his country's destiny is a bargaining chip

A U.S. senator looked at Ukraine's president in a meeting and informed him: This problem is nothing personal.

He was referring to the potential expiry of American military support — tens of billions of dollars' worth of weapons transfers — that has sustained Ukraine's self-defence for nearly two years against Russian forces.

"It's got nothing to do with you," Republican Lindsey Graham told Volodymyr Zelenskyy, attempting to reassure him during his Washington tour Tuesday.

"You've done everything anybody could ask of you."

It's caught up, he explained, in a domestic American dispute. It's the poisoned politics of migration, which now risks killing a security bill lumping together funding for Ukraine, Israel and the southern U.S. border.

Meanwhile, military aid for Ukraine runs out in a couple of weeks, leading defence analysts to predict the country at war with Russia would be lucky simply to hold the territory it already has.

Zelenskyy left town without any commitments.

It was not the celebratory welcome he received just a year ago on his first Washington visit. This time, Zelenskyy was subjected to insults on social media from Donald Trump Jr. and from the head of a Trump-aligned political committee who called him an "ass" for not wearing a suit.

So is the funding package dead? Not necessarily.

The dimmest glimmer of optimism emerged from a late-afternoon meeting on Capitol Hill, which unfolded while Zelenskyy was across town meeting President Joe Biden.

At the Capitol, a few Democratic and Republican senators met with White House staff and secretary of homeland security in an effort to find some sort of migration compromise.

While leaving the meeting, top Democratic negotiator Chris Murphy said, "We made progress." Kirsten Sinema, a former centrist Democrat that is now Independent, concurred — calling it "substantive progress."

What's left to be determined is whether that progress winds up overcoming four towering political obstacles.

One is getting a deal with the necessary bipartisan votes to pass the Senate. Then, can it pass the far more conservative Republican-led House? It will need Democratic votes, but how many will be lost in a progressive backlash? And, finally, can this happen before a looming deadline as Congress departs this week for its holiday break? Ukraine funds could run out during the holidays.