Republicans resist confronting Putin
Stalled Ukraine aid underscores shift in accepting Russia’s expansionism
At about 2 a.m. last Tuesday, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin stood on the Senate floor and explained why he opposed sending more aid to help Ukraine fend off the invasion launched in 2022 by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I don’t like this reality,” Mr. 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 so there’s no point in using American taxpayer dollars against him — marks a new stage in the Republican Party’s growing acceptance of Russian expansionism in the age of Donald Trump.
The GOP has been softening its stance on Russia ever since Mr. Trump won the 2016 election following Russian hacking of his Democratic opponents. There are several reasons for the shift. Among them, Mr. Putin is holding himself out as an international champion of conservative Christian values and the GOP is growing increasingly skeptical of overseas entanglements. Then there’s Mr. Trump’s personal embrace of the Russian leader.
Now the GOP’s ambivalence on Russia has stalled additional aid to Ukraine at a pivotal time in the war.
The Senate last week passed a foreign aid package that included $61 billion for Ukraine on a 70-29 vote, but Mr. Johnson was one of a majority of the Republicans to vote against the bill after their late-night stand to block it.
In the Republican-controlled House, Speaker Mike Johnson said his chamber will not be “rushed” to pass the measure, even as Ukraine’s military warns of dire shortages of ammunition and artillery.
Many Republicans are openly frustrated that their colleagues don’t see the benefits of helping Ukraine. Mr. Putin and his allies have banked on democracies wearying of aiding Kyiv, and Mr. Putin’s GOP critics warn that NATO countries in eastern Europe could become targets of an emboldened Russia that believes the U.S. won’t counter it.
“Putin is losing,” Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of
North Carolina said on the floor before Ron Johnson’s speech. “This is not a stalemate.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was one of 22 Republican senators to back the package, while 26 opposed it.
The divide within the party was on stark display Friday with the prison death of Russian opposition figure and anti-corruption advocate Alexei Navalny, which President Joe Biden and other world leaders blamed on Mr. Putin. Mr. Trump notably stood aside from that chorus Monday in his first public comment on the matter that referred to Navalny by name.
Offering no sympathy or attempt to affix blame, Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social that the “sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country. It is a slow, steady progression, CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction.”
Nikki Haley, his Republican presidential primary rival, said Monday that Mr. Trump is “siding with a thug” in his embrace of Mr. Putin.
Mr. Tillis responded to Navalny’s death by saying in a post, “History will not be kind to those in America who make apologies for Putin and praise Russian autocracy.”
Mike Johnson, the House speaker, issued a statement calling Mr. Putin a “vicious dictator” and pledging that he “will be met with united opposition,” but he did not offer any way forward for passing the aid to Ukraine.
Within the Republican Party, skeptics of confronting Russia seem to be gaining ground.
“Nearly every Republican Senator under the age of 55 voted NO on this America Last bill,” Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt, elected in 2022, posted on the social media site X after the vote last week. “15 out of 17 elected since 2018 voted NO. Things are changing just not fast enough.”
Those who oppose additional Ukraine aid bristle at charges that they are doing Mr. Putin’s handiwork. They contend they are taking a hard-headed look at whether it’s worth spending money to help the country.
“If you oppose a blank check to another country, I guess that makes you a Russian,” Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville said on the Senate floor, after posting that conservative commentator Tucker Carlson’s recent controversial interview of Putin shows that “Russia wants peace” in contrast to “DC warmongers.”
Rep. Matt Gaetz, a leading opponent of Ukraine aid in the House, described the movement as “a generational shift in my party away from neoconservatism toward foreign policy realism.”
In interviews with voters waiting to see Mr. Trump speak Saturday night in Waterford Township, Mich., none praised Mr. Putin. But none wanted to spend more money confronting him, trusting Mr. Trump to handle the Russian leader.
Even before Mr. Trump, Republican voters were signaling discontent with overseas conflicts, said Douglas Kriner, a political scientist at Cornell University. That’s one reason Mr. Trump’s 2016 promise to avoid “stupid wars” resonated.
“Some of it may be a bottom-up change in a key part of the Republican base,” Mr. Kriner said, “and part of it reflects Trump’s hold on that base and his ability to sway its opinions and policy preferences in dramatic ways.”