The 10-page bill was drafted by top senators from both parties. Deal on Ukraine elusive on Hill

Congress is set to head home for recess Thursday with no agreement on how to aid Ukraine and punish Russia for its incursion into the Crimean peninsula.

A key Senate panel on Wednesday approved legislation that would provide aid to Ukraine while leveling sanctions against officials responsible for undermining the nation’s sovereignty. The bill is more comprehensive than the House’s Ukraine bill — and the two chambers were nowhere near resolving the vast differences between their two bills as of Wednesday evening.


The vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was 14-3. The legislation includes reforms to the International Monetary Fund requested by the Obama administration and Democrats, despite the objections from some Republicans.

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The legislation now goes to the full Senate for a vote, which hasn’t been scheduled yet.

“I hope so,” Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Wednesday when asked if the Senate will be able to vote on the Ukraine legislation this week. “We’ll see.”

Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, the top Republican on the panel, said he believed the Senate would take up the bill when lawmakers return from recess on March 24. Senate Republicans will insist on a 60-vote threshold to proceed on the legislation, according to GOP Whip John Cornyn of Texas.

The legislation calls for blocking assets and revoking visas of officials responsible for disrupting Ukraine’s sovereignty and those who perpetrated “gross human rights abuses” against anti-government protesters in the Eastern European country.

“President Putin has miscalculated by playing a game of Russian roulette with the international community,” the panel’s chairman, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), said in his opening remarks. “But we refuse to blink, and will never accept this violation of international law.”

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The Senate measure differs greatly from legislation that cleared the House last week, which simply provided loan guarantees for Ukraine. House Republican leadership would prefer that the Senate quickly pass the loan legislation, but on Wednesday, Reid ruled out that option.

“The House bill doesn’t have sanctions in it,” Reid said. “It doesn’t have the money we need.”

The IMF reforms that have been so controversial with Republicans would allow the United States to shift billions from its IMF crisis accounts to its general fund, but some Republicans are worried the change could also dilute U.S. influence within the IMF. Corker called the the IMF language a “poster child for why you want the IMF functioning fully and for us to be able to continue as the only country in the world that has the veto right” over IMF actions.

But not everyone agrees. In a statement, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) pleaded for that language to be pulled from the bill.

“This legislation is supposed to be about assisting Ukraine and punishing Russia, and the IMF measure completely undercuts both of these goals by giving Putin’s Russia something it wants,” said Rubio, a strong backer of aid for Ukraine. “I won’t support flawed legislation that is divisive and actually undermines our efforts to provide quick support to the Ukrainian people in their hour of need.”

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Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he preferred that the bill not include the IMF language, but he will vote for it anyway.

“It’s of tertiary importance to me compared to getting the signal out that we’re supporting Ukraine,” McCain said.

Republicans also objected to how the bill was paid for — by taking some funds away from the Pentagon and the State Department. Menendez said that money was drawn from “underexecuting” programs, but some Hill hawks were quick to criticize the proposal.

“Senator Menendez’s bill to fund reforms at the IMF on the backs of our troops is just looney, and I will strongly oppose it if it comes to the House,” said Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon. “If the Senate is serious about protecting Ukraine, they should work with the House to pass something that can be adopted quickly by both chambers.”

Left out of the equation is a delay of the administration’s proposed rule changes cracking down on the political activities of nonprofits. Corker indicated Tuesday that some of his GOP colleagues were calling for such a provision as a trade-off for the IMF changes, but the legislation considered by the committee did not include it.

“This is at another pay grade,” he added, gesturing toward the offices of GOP leaders.

The package combines assistance to Ukraine, as well as sanctions against officials responsible for the “violence or undermining the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine,” according to the legislation.

Also among the people who would be sanctioned are Russian officials determined to be responsible for “ordering, controlling, or otherwise directing acts of significant corruption in Ukraine.”

The bill also states that Russia’s continued participation in the G-8 should be tied to whether the country respects the “territorial integrity of its neighbors.”

Menendez released many of the details in an op-ed published by The Washington Post on Tuesday. In the piece, Menendez highlighted loan guarantees for Ukraine, as well as $50 million for “democracy, governance and civil society assistance” and an additional $100 million for “enhanced security” for Ukraine and surrounding nations.

According to the copy of the legislation obtained by POLITICO, the $100 million is for fiscal years 2015 to 2017, while the $50 million portion is for fiscal 2015.

The legislation also levels sanctions against Russian officials complicit in “significant corruption” in Ukraine, and it would also allow for more sanctions against both Russians and Ukrainians responsible for undermining the small Eastern European nation’s sovereignty, Menendez wrote in the opinion piece. The senator had not elaborated on what specific sanctions would be included in the package.

Several key senators will head to Ukraine beginning Thursday to meet with the interim government in Kiev and other stakeholders, a Senate aide said.

The delegation is led by McCain, and accompanying him will be Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). McCain hoped that the senators can arrive in the beleaguered country with some good news: Senate passage of an aid bill.

The Senate action came as Secretary of State John Kerry was scheduled to make multiple appearances on Capitol Hill this week to testify on the State Department’s budget. In front of a House Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday, Kerry told lawmakers that he will travel to London on Friday to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Though Kerry said the United States respects Russia’s “deep” ties to Ukraine — particularly the Crimean region — “nothing justifies a military intervention that the world has witnessed.”

Natalie Villacorta contributed to this report.