WASHINGTON (AP) — As the Senate wrapped up its work for the year, Sen. Michael Bennet took the floor in the nearly empty chamber and made a late-night appeal to Congress to double support for Ukraine: “Understand what’s on this Game is on at the moment.”

It was the third time in recent months that the Colorado Democrat kept the Senate working long hours by holding up unrelated legislation to pressure lawmakers into approving tens of billions of dollars in weapons and economic aid for Ukraine. During a nearly hour-long, emotional speech, he urged senators to view the nearly two-year-old conflict as a decisive clash of authoritarianism and democracy and urged them to reflect on what it means “to fight on this icy front line and . “I don’t know if we can get through with the ammunition.”

Still, Congress has paused for the holidays and is not expected to return for another two weeks, while further aid to Ukraine is almost exhausted. The Biden administration plans to send another relief package before the new year but says it will be the last unless Congress approves more money.

As conflict and unrest roil global security, support in Congress is waning and the United States is once again struggling to assert its role in the world. Under the influence of Donald Trump, the former president who is now the Republican Party’s front-runner, Republican lawmakers have taken an increasingly skeptical stance toward U.S. involvement abroad, particularly when it comes to aid to Ukraine.

The leaders of traditional allies Britain and France have implored Western nations to continue their strong support, but Russian President Vladimir Putin is emboldened and gathering resources for a new effort as the war enters its third year.

Ukraine’s lifelines to the West are also at risk from the European Union, which sends 1.5 billion euros ($1.6 billion) every month to ensure macroeconomic stability, pay wages and pensions, and keep hospitals and schools running to hold, to provide accommodation for displaced people and to rebuild the infrastructure that was destroyed by the war.

That package has now expired and the EU executive failed to come up with another one for the new year when Hungary vetoed a 50 billion euro ($55 billion) package this month.

Strengthening Ukraine’s defenses was celebrated at the US Capitol as one of the few remaining bipartisan issues. But now the fate of about $61 billion in funding is tied to delicate political negotiations on Capitol Hill over border and immigration changes. And over the past year, lawmakers have had to labor around the clock to even pass legislation that maintains basic functions of the U.S. government. Bills with ambitious changes were almost entirely out of reach for the narrowly divided Congress.

Still, congressional leaders are trying to enlist their members to tackle global challenges that they say are among the most difficult in decades: the largest land invasion of a European nation since World War II, a war between Israel and Hamas, civil unrest and economic disaster, reaching historic levels of migration and China’s assertion as a superpower.

In the Senate, both Democratic and Republican leaders have called the $110 billion relief package intended to address all of these problems a potential game-changer for democracy around the world. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters last week that “history will look back if we do not support our ally in Ukraine.”

“We live in a time when there are all sorts of forces destroying democracy at home and abroad,” Bennet said.

In a year-end speech, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said: “From South Texas to Southeast Asia and from the Black Sea to the Red Sea, this is a historically challenging and consequential time to protect the interests of America, our allies and our own people. “ .”

The Republican leader, a key proponent of Ukraine aid, has been trying for months to build support for Ukraine within his party. But after a $6 billion military and civilian aid package for Ukraine collapsed in October, McConnell began telling senior White House officials that any funding would have to be accompanied by changes to border policy.

The White House deliberately stayed out of the negotiations until senior officials felt the time was right. But senior Republicans involved in the border talks believe the administration intervened too late, ultimately delaying the prospect of approving additional aid for Ukraine until the new year.

Senate negotiators had to grapple with both explosive border politics and one of the most complex areas of American law.

“It’s a tightrope walk, but we’re still in it,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, the lead Democratic negotiator.

At one point during negotiations, McConnell felt compelled to emphasize the urgency to administration officials and set a deadline for a border agreement so that the agreement could be turned into law before the end of the year.

With negotiations still progressing, McConnell called White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients on Dec. 7 and said a deal needed to be reached within five days — a message the Kentucky Republican shared with President Joe Biden himself emphasized when the two men spoke later that day, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

It wasn’t until five days later, on December 12, that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and senior White House staff came to the Capitol to take part directly in the negotiations. A White House official said the administration stepped in at this point because it felt the talks had moved beyond the realm of unacceptable or unachievable measures — and into a more productive phase.

A second White House official stressed that previous legislative negotiations, such as the bipartisan infrastructure bill, now more than two years old, had started similarly, with Republican and Democratic senators speaking individually and the administration stepping in as soon as they felt like it had that the talks were ready for the participation of the White House.

Still, “It would be nice to have them sooner,” Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, the GOP chief negotiator, said last week.

“We would have made a lot more progress and had the potential to get this done by this week if they had gotten there sooner,” Lankford said. The two White House officials and the person familiar with McConnell’s call to Biden all spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private and ongoing negotiations.

The White House’s strategy of including Republican priorities such as aid to Israel and border security in the package has also raised several thorny questions for Democrats.

Progressive lawmakers who criticize Israel’s campaign in Gaza, which has killed thousands of civilians, have called for humanitarian conditions to be attached to the money for Israel. And Latin American Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives also expressed criticism of the restrictions on asylum applications.

Any package also faces significant uncertainty in the House, where Republican Speaker Mike Johnson has narrow control of the closely divided chamber. Before becoming speaker in October, Johnson had repeatedly voted against aid to Ukraine, but he surprised many by offering his support to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and saying he wanted to find a way to approve the aid.

But Trump’s allies in the House of Representatives have repeatedly tried to stop the US from sending more aid to Ukraine. And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a close ally of the former president, said it was a mistake for Republicans to insist on border policy changes in the first place because it “could give the Biden administration certain political victories in the election campaign.”

As border and immigration talks progress in the Senate, Johnson has spoken from afar, pushing for comprehensive action. On social media, he called for “transformational change to secure the border” and referred to a hardliner bill that was passed in the House of Representatives in a party-political vote.

As senators left Washington, they were still trying to reassure Ukrainians that American help was on the way. White House aides and Senate negotiators planned to work on drafting a border bill over the next two weeks, hoping it would be ready for action when Congress returns.

Schumer told the Associated Press he was “hopeful” but “I wouldn’t go so far as to say confident.” He tried to put pressure on Republicans by saying they needed to be willing to compromise.

Still, Sen. Roger Wicker, an Alabama Republican and Ukraine supporter, expressed confidence that Congress would act. He alluded to the words of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, another European leader who eventually won strong U.S. support to repel an invasion.

“Americans will always do the right thing,” Wicker said. “After they have exhausted all other alternatives.”

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Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.