Republicans mostly mum on Trump's upending of Russia policy

On the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine, the United States voted with Russia in the United Nations General Assembly against a resolution calling for the withdrawal of Moscow’s troops from Ukraine.

The resolution passed anyway.

The United States also supported a resolution calling for an end to the war — without mentioning that Russia started it. After it was amended to reaffirm Ukrainian sovereignty and state that the Russian Federation had launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, that resolution passed, but the United States abstained and Russia voted against it.

The two votes on Monday were the latest sign of a dramatic reversal of America’s bipartisan policy since World War II of standing diplomatically and militarily with Europe to defend against the threat of Soviet and later Russian aggression.

It is a shift that congressional Republicans have, with very few exceptions, silently watched unfold.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, issued the most fulsome GOP dissent to date against President Donald Trump’s position on Ukraine.

McConnell, in a statement, called Trump’s unfolding policy reversal “disgraceful” and “unseemly” and suggested it was a reprise of the appeasement that led to World War II.

“‘Peace for our time’ is a noble end, but hope that appeasement will check the ambitions of this aggressor is as naïve today as it was in 1939,” McConnell said, referring to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s famous remark after signing the Munich Agreement and Germany’s subsequent invasion of Czechoslovakia. “America is right to seek an end to this war, but an end that fails to constrain Russian ambition, ensure Ukrainian sovereignty, or strengthen American credibility with both allies and adversaries is no end at all.”

Such a “hollow peace,” he said, would “invite further aggression,” a reference primarily to the lesson China might take away from a demonstration of wilted U.S. resolve.

Europe regroups

Prior to the launch of negotiations on the Ukraine war with Russia last week (talks that excluded, for now at least, Ukraine and Europe), Trump agreed to Russian wishes that Ukraine would not gain back all its lost territory, and that U.S. and NATO troops would not enforce a peace agreement, among several other concessions to the Kremlin.

Russia has not been publicly asked to make concessions other than not continuing its grinding advance through Ukraine, which continued even amid the peace talks with ground and aerial attacks in recent days.

Trump has also in the last week blamed Ukraine for the war and called that country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a dictator.

And Trump has sought to get Zelenskyy to sign an agreement that would make Ukraine relinquish to America $500 billion of its wealth in underground resources.

The shift is prompting leading European countries to talk urgently in the last week about a post-American security arrangement on the continent.

Hitting Putin, not Trump

While Democrats widely criticized Trump’s foreign policy shift, and a handful of Republicans spoke out against Vladimir Putin, virtually no GOP lawmakers besides McConnell have directly criticized Trump’s emerging plan that would obtain some version of peace in Ukraine for concessions long sought by Russia.

Characteristic of the Democrats’ take was a post on social media by Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, who said: “The weakness being shown by the Trump administration right now is placing Ukraine in jeopardy and jeopardizing U.S. interests. Our country stands with democracy and freedom.”

Some Republicans spoke out, but mainly just to call out Putin’s barbarism, without directly criticizing Trump’s plan to end the war in Ukraine.

Rep. Mike D. Rogers, R-Ala., the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, in a statement marking the war’s three-year anniversary, did not come close to any criticism of Trump’s diplomacy.

“President Trump is rightfully determined to end this terrible war,” Rogers wrote. “I am committed to working with his administration on a deal that ensures a lasting and durable peace in Ukraine and sends a strong deterrent signal to other would-be aggressors like the CCP,” or the Chinese Communist Party.

Last week, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said Putin “should be in jail for the rest of his life, if not executed.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., took to the Senate floor last week to call Putin “a cancer and the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.”

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., called Putin “a gangster with a black heart who makes Jeffrey Dahmer look like Mother Theresa.”

Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, two reliably moderate Senate Republicans, both said Putin is to blame for the attack on Ukraine.

‘Embarrasing’

Rep. Michael R. Turner, R-Ohio, said on social media on the anniversary of Russia’s invasion on Monday that the assault was “brutal and unprovoked,” adding that the conflict “represents a battle between authoritarianism and democracy, and democracy must prevail.”

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a senior member of the Armed Services Committee from a district that is evenly divided between the two political parties, posted an article on X on Monday about Trump’s criticism of Ukraine with the comment:

“This is all embarrassing. We are better than this. Moral clarity: Russian invaded its neighbor because it wanted its territory and couldn’t stand the thought of a Ukraine run by a democracy.”

And, in a reference to Monday’s U.N. vote in which America sided with Russia against a condemnation of its invasion, Bacon wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter: “This Republican does not agree with our vote.”

Oblique critique

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, issued a carefully worded statement on Monday that was critical of Putin’s invasion and hinted at possible misgivings about Trump’s approach without saying so outright.

McCaul said Trump “has answered the call to help put an end to the fighting” but added the hope that any forthcoming agreement “holds the Kremlin accountable for its crimes and contains serious teeth to ensure Putin cannot resurrect his quest to recreate the Soviet Union by taking Ukraine.”

Likewise, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., issued a statement on X that only obliquely suggested possible disagreements with Trump about how to reach peace in Ukraine.

“If Putin is rewarded for his illegal invasion and genocide, this will serve as a green-light incentive to other Dictators, such as CCP Chairman Xi Jinping, to pursue their own conquests (i.e. Taiwan), which will lead to more instability across the Globe,” Fitzpatrick wrote. “Dictators like Vladimir Putin are the Adult Versions of the School Yard Bullies that we all confronted in Grade School. And they must be dealt with in the same exact way. There is Peace through Strength, and there is War through Weakness.”

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(Briana Reilly contributed to this report.)

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