Deliver Patriot system, more HIMARS and other essential military hardware. PELOSI praised Biden.

HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI AND UKRAINE PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKIY
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will be greeted with pomp and applause when he enters the U.S. Capitol to address a joint meeting of Congress on Wednesday (December 21), but it will be up to him to persuade lawmakers to keep funding his country's defense against Russia.

Following a meeting at the White House with Democratic President Joe Biden, Zelenskiy's speech will need to resonate with a bipartisan audience of senators and House Republicans, who have voiced increasing skepticism of continuing to spend tens of billions of dollars on Ukraine.

Zelenskiy will join a long list of world leaders to address a joint meeting of the Senate and House of Representatives, a tradition that began in 1874 with a visit by Hawaiian King Kalakaua, included wartime visits by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Afghanistan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, as well as kings, queens and one pope.

It will also mark one of the last times House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, presides over the chamber before Republicans take the majority on Jan. 3 and the returns to the rank and file of her caucus.

The planning for Zelenskiy's speech began in October, according to a Pelosi aide, when she met with Ruslan Stefanchuk, chairman of Ukraine's parliament, the Verkhovna Rada. Pelosi was attending the First Parliamentary Summit of the International Crimea Platform in Zagreb, Croatia, at the time.

Exactly 300 days after Russian troops invaded and amid intensified rocket attacks that have left Ukrainian cities in ruins, Zelenskiy arrives knowing that the Senate and House control America's purse strings.