For Harris, promises to Ukraine are proving more difficult to make amid the Republican Party's backlash

When Vice President Kamala Harris flew to Germany for the Munich Security Conference last year, she made an unequivocal promise. “The United States,” she said, “will continue to support Ukraine, and we will do so for as long as it takes.”

When Ms. Harris returned to the same forum and took the same stage this past week, her message sounded the same, but there was one key difference. “You have made it clear that Europe will stand with Ukraine,” she told the assembled leaders, “and I will make it clear to President Joe Biden and I will stand with Ukraine.”

This time not the United States, but them and Mr. Biden. It was a personal promise she could make on behalf of herself and her president, but she could not be so definitive about her country. For those looking for clues, it was a seemingly subtle change in wording that spoke volumes.

Neither Mr. Biden nor Ms. Harris can yet promise with any certainty that America will truly be in the fight with Ukraine for the long haul. Republicans in the House of Representatives are blocking $60 billion in security aid, while Ukrainian troops without ammunition and weapons have just been forced to withdraw from the city of Avdiivka. And if an election takes place within nine months, former President Donald J. Trump could return to power, no friend of Ukraine or NATO but an avowed admirer of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Ms. Harris did not try to avoid the fight during her trip to Munich; on the contrary, she did everything she could to reassure nervous Ukrainians and Europeans of her government's resolve. But the reality is that political uncertainty at home has destabilized the multinational coalition backing Ukraine just days after the second anniversary of Putin's invasion.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine expressed concern. “The most important issue for us now is maintaining core American support,” he said at a joint news conference with Ms. Harris. “Ukraine and all our fighters must wait for the respective positive vote on the aid package, and I think everyone understands how much depends on this single vote.”

Ms. Harris told him that there was still a bipartisan majority in both houses of Congress in favor of aid to Ukraine, even though Republicans in the House of Representatives did not allow a vote. If the bill made it to the House of Representatives, she told him, she had no doubt it would pass, just as it had already happened in the Senate.

“We have to stand firm and we cannot play political games,” she said. “Political gamesmanship plays no role in what is fundamentally about the meaning of supporting an ally, as it condones unprovoked aggression.”

She would not, at least publicly, entertain the idea that the government might need a Plan B. “There is only Plan A, which is to ensure that Ukraine gets what it needs,” she said.

But few, if any, in Munich had much faith in Plan A anymore. The Europeans, who just passed their own aid package, heard American guarantees for months, but concluded that nothing is so guaranteed after all.

Officially, White House officials have expressed confidence since last summer that the aid would be approved. As recently as December, they dismissed doubters as modern-day Cassandras. Even a few days ago they still thought it would probably go away.

But then Mr. Trump intervened, and they seemed caught off guard. They still publicly express optimism that the aid will eventually pass, as Mr. Biden did when he called Mr. Zelensky from Delaware to amplify Ms. Harris' message, saying: “I'm confident we're going to get that money ”, as the president told reporters afterwards. But in private, the cockiness of a few months ago has turned into deep concern.

In her speech at the Munich Security Conference on Friday, Ms. Harris focused more on addressing the audience at home than the leaders and diplomats in the room. She tried to make the case why it was important to stick with Ukraine and stand up to Mr. Putin, while Mr. Trump talks about encouraging Russia to attack NATO allies who don't pay their fair share.

“Imagine if America turned its back on Ukraine and abandoned our NATO allies and our treaty obligations,” she said. “Imagine if we made it easy for Putin, let alone encouraged him. History offers a clue. If we stand by while an aggressor invades its neighbor with impunity, they will continue.”

Her case was strengthened by a stunning turn of events. Just before she took the stage, news arrived that Russian dissident Aleksei A. Navalny had died in one of Putin's prisons; the news flowed through the Bayerischer Hof hotel where the conference was held.

Nothing more could be done to remind the public of Mr Putin's brutal rule, and Ms Harris quickly added condemnation to her comments. After her speech, however, she was all but chased off stage so that the dissident's wife, Yulia Navalnaya, could make a dramatic surprise appearance, condemning Mr Putin and vowing to bring him to justice.

Mr. Navalny's death raised some hopes among Biden administration officials that the shock would wake up Republicans in the House of Representatives and force them to take action on the aid. They were encouraged to hear that Chairman Mike Johnson had issued a statement saying the United States and its allies “must use all available tools to cut off Putin's ability to finance his unprovoked war in Ukraine.”

Like many in Washington, Ms. Harris has never met Mr. Johnson, the conservative backbencher from Louisiana who was abruptly elevated to chairman a few months ago as a result of a tough Republican revolt, and she was careful not to release him. for criticism in her public comments on Saturday.

But some officials, feeling burned by Republican wrangling over Ukraine, worried they had read too much into Mr. Johnson's statement, especially given that the House of Representatives has left Washington for a two-week recess. That means lawmakers will only return after the initial shock of Mr. Navalny's death has worn off.

Perhaps less optimistically, Mr. Zelensky reminded the conference in his own speech that “dictators don't go on vacation.”

Ms. Harris's meeting with Mr. Zelensky in Munich on Saturday brought the two back to where it started for them. They sat down in the same room on the same couch across the street from the conference hotel where they first met two years ago, almost to the day — five days before the Russians marched across the Ukrainian border.

At the time, Ms. Harris tried to convince Mr. Zelensky to take seriously U.S. warnings of impending Russian aggression. This time she had to convey the message that America would not give up its efforts, regardless of the political situation at home.

“You have shown extraordinary courage and achievement on the battlefield,” she told him on Saturday.

Mr. Zelensky, wearing a black sweater, looked worn, the exhaustion of two years of war visible on his face. But he has learned since the beginning to temper his approach to American well-wishers, who were initially irritated because he never seemed grateful for anything they had done and instead used meetings with the president and vice president to draw up lists of specific military hardware through what he needed. necessary, the kind of details that are usually left to lower levels.

Mr. Zelensky, who appeared in Munich this time, was a leader who recognized that the flow of arms could no longer be taken for granted, and he showered his public and private comments on Saturday with great appreciation.

“We are very grateful,” he said, “not only from me and my team, first of all from all our people, we are grateful to you, the people of the United States, your society, a great society, and President Biden . , his team and of course the support from both parties, we are grateful for this.”

“But,” he continued quickly, “we need your unity now during such a challenging time for us.”

“And of course it is also a “challenging period” in the United States, he added. “We understand everything.”