President Zelenskyy Wants Hakeem Jeffries To Visit Ukraine

(NewsReady.com) – House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) recently garnered international attention after he got Ukraine funding through the lower chamber. He managed to get everything Democrats wanted and the credit for the victory. Ukraine’s president now wants him to take a trip overseas.

On April 28, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy released a video address saying he’d “just spoken” to the House minority leader and “thanked him and all the congressmen for their support” in getting the aid package passed. In a follow-up post on X, formerly Twitter, Zelenskyy said that he appreciated the bipartisan support his country received in Congress and asked Jeffries to visit Ukraine.

Zelenskyy also wrote that he stressed the importance of strengthening his country’s air defense to protect it “from Russian air terror.”

I spoke with House Minority Leader @RepJeffries and thanked him for his role in getting the Ukraine aid bill passed in Congress.

I appreciate the bipartisan support for Ukraine in Congress, as well as President Biden's leadership. I invited Congressman Jeffries to visit… pic.twitter.com/p3IrtuVUBA

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) April 28, 2024

The charismatic 53-year-old Democrat has been compared to former President Barack Obama in the past. Jeffries made history as the first elected black lawmaker to lead a political party in Congress. Since 2023, he has been the head of the Democratic Party in the House and most recently, Axios referred to him as the “shadow speaker” because of the Ukraine funding victory.

The minority leader managed to convince his members to cross the aisle on the House Rules Committee, something that almost never happens. The bipartisanship saved the $95 billion foreign aid package. Before Jeffries stepped in, Johnson did not have the votes necessary to get it done. The next day, Democrats once again reached across the aisle and voted with Johnson to pass the funding. Were it not for the Democratic leader’s decision to save the package, it would have died in the Rules Committee.

Jeffries has also come out as an unlikely ally to Speaker Johnson. On April 30, he and his deputies made it clear that the Democratic caucus would not allow the Republican speaker to lose his job because of the Ukraine vote.