Desantis says Ukraine’s ‘territorial dispute’ is no ‘vital interest’ for the US
RON DESANTIS has declared that protecting Ukraine is not a “vital interest” for the United States and called the conflict a “territorial dispute” between Kyiv and Moscow.
Florida’s Republican governor echoed the position of Donald Trump as he indicated that Ukraine should not be a foreign policy priority for the US, which should focus on the threat of China and securing its own southern border.
Mr Desantis said: “While the US has many vital national interests ... becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.”
He said vital US national interests did include “securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party.”
His position means the two likeliest contenders for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 have split with senior Republican figures in Congress, including Mitch Mcconnell, the party’s Senate leader, over Ukraine.
A divide is emerging in the party that has traditionally pushed for powerful US engagement on the global stage.
Establishment Republicans are being challenged over a growing isolationist contingent.
Mr Desantis was responding in writing to a questionnaire, issued by Fox
News, which asked probable Republican presidential candidates for their views on the Ukraine war.
Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, posted their responses on Twitter.
One of the questions was whether opposing Russia in Ukraine was a vital American national strategic interest.
Mr Desantis said: “The Biden administration’s virtual ‘blank cheque’ funding of this conflict for ‘as long as it takes’, without any defined objectives or accountability, distracts from our country’s most pressing challenges.”
He said sending F-16 jets and longrange missiles, which Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, has asked for, should be “off the table”.
Mr Desantis said sending them would risk “drawing the United States into the conflict
and drawing us closer to a hot war between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.” He added that the US “cannot prioritise intervention in an escalating foreign war over the defence of our own homeland”.
Mr Trump, responding to the same question on whether US backing for Kyiv was vital for Washington, said: “No, but it is for Europe. But not for the United States.”
On whether the US should support regime change in Russia, Mr Trump responded: “No. We should support regime change in the United States, that’s far more important. The Biden administration are the ones who got us into this mess.”
Establishment Republicans have backed Mr Biden’s position that defending Ukraine is crucial, not just to European security but to US interests.
♦ The head of Russia’s Wagner Group called the Italian defence minister, Guido Crosetto, a “testicle” after he accused mercenaries of driving migrants across the Mediterranean to punish Rome for backing Ukraine. Mr Crosetto said Wagner was waging a “hybrid war” by boosting migration.