Stalled US aid for Ukraine underscores GOP’s shift away from confronting Russia
Around 2 a.m. last Tuesday, Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin stood on the Senate floor and explained why he was opposed to sending more aid to help Ukraine fend off the invasion launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2022.
“I don’t like this reality,” Johnson said. “Vladimir Putin is an evil war criminal.” But he quickly added: “Vladimir Putin will not lose this war.”
That argument — that the Russian president cannot be stopped and thus there is no point in using American taxpayer dollars against him — marks a new phase in the Republican Party’s growing acceptance of Russian expansionism in the age of Donald Trump .
The Republican Party has softened its stance on Russia since Trump won the 2016 election after Russia hacked his Democratic opponents. There are several reasons for the shift. Among them, Putin profiles himself as an international advocate of conservative Christian values, and the Republican Party is becoming increasingly skeptical about foreign entanglements. Then there is Trump’s personal embrace of the Russian leader.
Now the Republican Party’s ambivalence toward Russia has stalled additional aid to Ukraine at a crucial moment in the war.
The Senate last week approved a foreign aid package that included $61 billion for Ukraine on a 70-29 vote, but Johnson was among a majority of Republicans who voted against the bill after a late-night vote in support of it pronounced to block it. In the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, Speaker Mike Johnson said his chamber will not be “rushed” to pass the measure, even as the Ukrainian military warns of a dire shortage of ammunition and artillery.
Many Republicans are openly frustrated that their colleagues do not see the benefits of helping Ukraine. Putin and his allies have been counting on fed-up democracies to help Kiev, and Putin’s Republican Party critics warn that NATO countries in Eastern Europe could be targeted by an emboldened Russia that believes the US has no answer will give.
“Putin is losing,” Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina said before Johnson’s speech. “This is not a standoff.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was among 22 Republican senators who supported the package, while 26 opposed it.
Divisions within the party were in stark relief Friday with the prison death of Russian opposition figure and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, which President Joe Biden and other world leaders blamed on Putin.
Tillis responded to the death by saying in a message: “History will not be kind to those in America who apologize for Putin and praise Russia’s autocracy.”
Johnson, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, released a statement calling Putin a “cruel dictator” and promising that he would “meet united opposition,” but he did not offer any way out of passing the aid to Ukraine.
Within the Republican Party, skeptics about the confrontation with Russia appear to be gaining ground.
“Almost every Republican senator under the age of 55 voted NO on this America Last bill,” 2022-elected Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt posted on the social media site voted NO. Things just aren’t changing fast enough.”
Those who oppose additional aid to Ukraine are accused of doing Putin’s job. They claim that they take a sober look at whether it is worth spending money to help the country.
“If you are against giving a blank check to another country, I think that makes you a Russian,” Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama said on the Senate floor, after posting that conservative commentator Tucker Carlson’s recent controversial interview with Putin shows that “ Russia wants peace” as opposed to “DC warmongers.”
Rep. Matt Gaetz, a leading opponent of Ukrainian aid in the House of Representatives, described the move as “a generational shift in my party away from neoconservatism and toward foreign policy realism.”
In interviews with voters waiting to see Trump speak in Waterford Township, Michigan, on Saturday evening, no one praised Putin. But no one wanted to spend more money to confront him, trusting Trump to deal with the Russian leader.
Even before Trump, Republican voters expressed dissatisfaction with foreign conflicts, said Douglas Kriner, a political scientist at Cornell University. That’s one reason why Trump’s 2016 promise to avoid “stupid wars” resonated.
“Some of it may be a change from below in a key part of the Republican base,” Kriner said, “and some of it reflects Trump’s hold on that base and his ability to influence its opinions and policy preferences in dramatic ways. ”
Trump has long praised Putin, calling his invasion of Ukraine “clever” and “clever” and recalling this month that he had told NATO members who had not spent enough on defense that he would “encourage” Russia to “do some whatever to do’. they want” for them. He repeated that threat days later.
Despite the reluctance within the Republican Party to continue supporting Ukraine, Russia remains deeply unpopular in the US. A July 2023 Gallup poll found that only 5% had a favorable view of Putin, including 7% of Republicans.
But Putin has positioned his country as a symbol of Christian conservatism and opposition to LGBTQ rights, while portraying himself as an embodiment of masculine strength. The combination has appealed to populist conservatives across the Western world. Putin’s appeal in some right-wing sectors is demonstrated by Carlson’s recent tour of Russia, after which the conservative host posted videos admiring the Moscow subway and a supermarket that he said would “radicalize you against our leaders.”
“The goal of the Soviet Union was to be the beacon of left-wing ideas,” says Olga Kamenchuk, a professor at Northwestern University. “Russia is now the beacon of conservative ideas.”
Kamenchuk said this is most visible not in Putin’s U.S. polls, but in declining Republican support for Ukraine. About half of Republicans said the U.S. is providing “too much” support to Ukraine when it comes to Russia’s invasion, according to a Pew Research poll in December. That’s up from 9% in a Pew poll from March 2022, just weeks after Russia invaded.
When Putin attacked Ukraine, there was bipartisan condemnation. Even a year ago, most Republicans in Congress pledged support. But around the same time, Trump complained that US leaders were “suckers” for sending aid.
By autumn the party was divided. Republicans refused to include a new round of funding for Ukraine in the government spending bill, insisting that Democrats needed to include a border security measure to earn their support.
After Trump condemned the compromise border proposal, Republicans dropped the bill, leaving Ukrainian supporters no choice but to offer the aid as part of a foreign aid package with extra money for Israel and Taiwan.
Several experts on Russia note that the Republican Party’s rhetoric against aid to Ukraine may mirror Putin’s: that Ukraine is corrupt and will waste the money, that the U.S. cannot afford to to look beyond the borders and that Russia’s victory is inevitable.
“He’s trying to create the perception that he will never be defeated, so don’t even try,” Henry Hale, a political scientist at George Washington University, said of Putin.
Skeptics of aid to Ukraine argue that the war has already decimated the Russian military and that Putin will not be able to target other European countries.
“Russia has shown over the past two years that it is incapable of marching through Western Europe,” said Russell Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget and now president of the Center for Renewing America, which focuses on opposition to additional funding for Ukraine.
But several experts noted that Putin has hinted at plans to retake much of the territory of the former Soviet Union, which could also include NATO countries like Lithuania and Estonia, which the U.S. is obligated to under the treaty to defend militarily.
Sergey Radchenko, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, noted that Russia had hoped for decades that the US would lose interest in protecting Europe: “This was Stalin’s dream, that the US would simply withdraw to western hemisphere.”
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Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti in Waterford Township, Michigan, and Mary Clare Jalonick and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.