President Donald Trump is trying to chart a path forward for the war-torn nation of Ukraine, and while Republicans lawmakers aren’t exactly sure what path that is, they’re enthusiastic about the president’s vision.
On the record, they have been generally effusive about Trump’s Ukraine strategy — even as it continues to evolve and sometimes contradict itself.
Asked what she thought about Trump’s handling of Russia and the war in Ukraine, Rep. Virginia Foxx simply offered that Trump had been doing “a terrific job of trying to bring this war to an end.”
“It really is a horrible situation,” Foxx said Tuesday. “I know there’s a lot that the president knows and understands that the rest of us don’t know, but we need to move this as quickly as possible, and I think he’s doing that.”
But granted anonymity to discuss how Trump has handled the war in Ukraine, other Republicans were more frank.
Asked what they thought of the president’s strategy, one GOP lawmaker admitted they were “still trying to figure that” out.
“He’s been all over the place,” this lawmaker said.
This past week, Trump has been working the phones and meeting with both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin in an attempt to quell the ongoing conflict between the two nations. Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and in the years that followed, the U.S. has sent multiple rounds of aid to Ukraine.
But since Trump returned to the White House, that flow of aid has stopped. And when Trump last met with Zelenskyy in February, their Oval Office gathering devolved into a bitter public squabble, with Vice President JD Vance accusing Zelenskyy of being ungrateful.
Trump is now seemingly trying a new approach.
On Friday, he held a bilateral meeting with Putin in Alaska, which was the Russian president’s first visit to America since 2015. And following the Alaska meeting, Trump met with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office on Monday. There was then a larger meeting with European leaders to discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“I have never seen anything in my entire life like what took place yesterday,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden told NOTUS on Tuesday. “The most powerful leaders in Europe got on a plane and flew over to meet with the president in his office. That meeting was put together within 48 hours. That’s just unheard of.”
Still, there are some Republicans less amazed by Trump’s actions. Rep. Don Bacon, frequently one of the GOP lawmakers most critical of Trump, said that the president “seems to forget that Zelenskyy was rightfully elected and wants to lead his country to democracy, free markets and rule of law.”
“Putin opposes all of this,” Bacon said. “We should have moral clarity on who is on the right side and who is on the wrong side.”
But for most Republicans, whatever Trump’s strategy is, they support it — even as Russia’s war with Ukraine marks a long-standing divide among congressional Republicans.
Old-school defense hawks see aiding Ukraine as critical to U.S. national security, with fears that NATO-allied nations just beyond Ukraine’s border could fall next. Conservatives argue their America First ethos is antithetical to getting involved in another nation’s war — and on another continent, no less.
“I know President Trump’s trying to do the right thing, but people in Europe have to take responsibility for this,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville told reporters on Tuesday. “We’re so far away from Ukraine.”
Tuberville added that putting boots on the ground in Ukraine would be an “impossible” sell for the American people, who he said “can’t fathom that after 20 years of war over in the Middle East.” Trump on Monday offered his “assurance” that no U.S. troops would be deployed to Ukraine.
“I’m president and I’m just trying to stop people from being killed,” Trump said on Fox News.
Trump has, however, signaled that European allies are willing to deploy troops as part of a security agreement, and that the U.S. was “willing to help” with certain security parameters.
Tuberville said he’d be fine with that, as longer as it doesn’t go any “deeper.”
“President Trump enjoys taking over and trying to help, but he knows he can only go so far with all this,” Tuberville said. “And it was great to see he at least got a meeting with Putin and tried to listen to him face-to-face of, ‘What do you want, what do you need? How can we get out of this?’”
“Hopefully,” Tuberville added, “they work something out.”
Some Republicans, however, are skeptical of anything Putin says and want to ramp up pressure on the Russian president in an attempt to force him to end the invasion of Ukraine. That potentially includes economic pressures — like placing sanctions on Russia, something the European Union is preparing to do for the 19th time.
“Generally, I want sanctions levied on Putin,” Rep. Zach Nunn told NOTUS in a text message. “I don’t trust him and don’t want him leveraging ‘peace as a potential’ for ‘wins at the expense of war crimes.’ I don’t believe POTUS does either.”
“President Trump is offering a pathway to peace. Hundreds of thousands dead and we must remember Putin has broken his word time and again,” Nunn added.
Congress has been at a standstill on a Russian sanctions bill for months. Prior to the August recess, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he was putting the bill on hold in the upper chamber to allow for Trump’s talks to continue, though Thune said Monday on X that “the U.S. Senate stands ready to provide President Trump any economic leverage needed to keep Russia at the table to negotiate a just and lasting peace in Ukraine.”
Still, some Republicans insist that the bill, which is led by Sen. Lindsey Graham in the Senate, should have already moved forward.
Prior to the Zelenskyy meeting, Sen. Thom Tillis on Friday told reporters that, “for the life of me, I don’t know why we can’t go ahead and pass the Graham bill.”
“If the president makes progress in this Alaska meeting, and ultimately, with a serious meeting that has both of the key stakeholders in the room, have that ready so it can be passed directly out of the House,” Tillis said. “I’ll be advocating for that.”
Others aren’t so sure.
“I worry about that,” Tuberville said. “I think President Trump can handle more of that himself … he can put more pressure on people, use the tariffs as a chip to play in the game. He doesn’t have a lot of cards to play. We don’t need to be over telling him what to do.”