Donald Trump’s public siding with Russia over Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine — repeatedly blaming Ukraine for the war and calling President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator” — is setting off alarms in Kyiv, where officials fear Trump will try to force a peace deal that grants Russia’s demands.
“You should have never started it,” Trump said on Tuesday of Ukrainian leaders. “You could have made a deal.”
Senate Republicans, meanwhile, say they aren’t worried. Most of them ardently disagree with the idea that Ukraine started the war — but GOP lawmakers said in interviews on Wednesday that the president is simply playing four-dimensional chess with his rhetoric, not actually reorienting America toward Russia and away from democratic European allies. Trump, after all, is a businessman at heart, Republicans told NOTUS, and he’s just trying to get the best leverage as he works to negotiate an end to the war.
“He’s factually wrong on those points,” North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer said of Trump’s claim that Zelenskyy is a dictator and that Ukraine caused the conflict. But, Cramer told NOTUS, “I also don’t know his motive behind it. As a negotiator, he’s always positioning, and he’s in a negotiating mood these days.”
Why Trump would be focusing his ire on the American ally that Russia invaded instead of, well, Russia itself — which could end the war by withdrawing its troops from Ukraine — isn’t clear to GOP lawmakers. Still, Republicans broadly expressed confidence in Trump’s plans. They said they trust that everything will turn out fine, even if they disagree with his comments.
“It’s sort of like the banter before the heavyweight fight,” Cramer said, when contenders “show off their muscles.”
“I don’t want to out-loud anticipate how he’s trying to position himself with Vladimir Putin, but I’m quite confident he’s got something in mind,” Cramer, a member of the Senate Ukraine Caucus, added.
Sen. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska agreed.
“If there’s one person who can bring this war to a close, I think it’s President Trump,” he told NOTUS. “He has an unorthodox style that I think everybody recognizes. Just give him a chance to do it.”
Trump’s team met with Russian officials on Tuesday without inviting Ukraine to the table. And his comments siding with Russia’s talking points have earned praise from Russian leaders.
“He is the first, and so far, the only Western leader who has publicly and loudly said that one of the root causes of the Ukrainian situation was the previous administration’s pushy line of dragging Ukraine into NATO,” Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said this week.
Dmitry Medvedev, another senior Russian official, expressed shock that an American president had criticized Zelenskyy and said on X that Trump is “200 percent right.”
Republican senators have largely been supportive of Ukraine in the conflict, helping pass tens of billions of dollars in military support for the country. They decried Russian war crimes there and have sent delegations to meet with Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy on Wednesday said he’d spoken with Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, and thanked him for being “constructive and doing a lot to help bring peace closer.” (Graham declined to comment when NOTUS asked him about Trump’s remarks).
Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters on Wednesday that it’s clear Russia started the war. Even Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who is very loyal to Trump, told NOTUS Russia is “obviously” to blame.
And Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, slammed the concept of any kind of moral equivalence between Putin and Zelenskyy.
“Vladimir Putin is a murderous dictator,” Tillis said. “He started this war, ordered the occupation, and now the souls of tens of thousands of Ukrainians are lost on his watch.”
Even so, Tillis, like Cramer, said he expects Trump has some kind of game plan by amplifying Putin’s propaganda.
“The president has used some fairly successful, aggressive negotiating tactics in the past, so I’ll give him latitude for now,” Tillis told NOTUS. “But at the end of the day, Putin needs to be the loser. The Ukrainian people need to be the winners.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma also said he has confidence in Trump.
“I trust President Trump and his ability to negotiate a deal,” Mullin said. “He will negotiate the best deal we can get, for sure.”
Does Mullin agree with Trump that Zelenskyy is a dictator?
“Uh,” Mullin hesitated. “I wouldn’t say that.”
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas likewise said he “wouldn’t use the same word,” to describe Zelenskyy, and he was a “little surprised” at Trump’s view of who was responsible for the war. But “what’s more important is what the actions are,” he said.
Instead of criticizing Trump, some Republicans defaulted to attacking Putin.
Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa didn’t directly respond to Trump’s comments, but he stopped on his way to lunch to tell reporters: “Putin’s a dictator. Putin is a murderer because he has his political opponents murdered. He is a kidnapper. He’s an international criminal.”
Sen. John Kennedy did the same. “He’s a gangster,” Kennedy said of Putin. “He’s got a black heart. I think he’s got Stalin’s taste for blood. I hate to have to even breathe the same air that he does.”
Some Republicans seem to be relying on Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has called Putin a war criminal in the past, to prioritize Ukraine’s interests.
“I think highly of Rubio,” Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy told NOTUS in a brief interview, while declining to comment on Trump’s comments about Zelenskyy.
Rubio said this week that negotiating an end to the war could open the door to “incredible opportunities” to partner with Russia economically and on common issues.
Democrats are furious.
“They’ve bungled this so badly,” said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. “They’ve given away all their leverage. They’ve declared to the world their bottom lines. What a gift to Putin.”
“This is awful for Ukraine,” Murphy added. “It’s awful for global stability. It, ultimately, is terrible for the United States because Putin and Xi will now have the green light to expand their borders through force, once Trump signs off on this illegal invasion.”
And Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey said he has “no confidence” that Trump’s team will prioritize Ukraine’s defense or self-determination.
Tillis said he planned to bring up the matter while Vice President JD Vance was meeting with Republicans at the Capitol on Wednesday. But if he did, he probably didn’t find a sympathetic ear.
Shortly before that meeting, Vance shared Trump’s social media rant accusing Zelenskyy of being a dictator who wants to keep “the gravy train going.”
“I just wanted to make sure no one missed it,” Vance wrote.
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Haley Byrd Wilt is a reporter at NOTUS. John T. Seward, a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow, contributed to this report.