While Trump turns against Ukraine, the Republicans remain calm in the congress

When President Trump contested an abrupt peak towards Russia and the previous generations of American foreign policy, he also defies members of his own party in the congress, many of whom have spent their careers for a Hawkian attitude against Moscow and strong support for allies in Europe exposed to the most direct threats.

The republicans’ reaction to Capitol Hill was steamed in some cases until silence. There was little GOP setback on the efforts of Mr. Trump, President Vladimir V. Putin from Russia, or to blame Ukraine when he tried to end the war, which began to end a short end when Russia in The country entered.

While some Republicans expressed dismay about Mr. Trump’s movements and statements, there were no concerted efforts to challenge him from GOP leaders or senators who play a central role in monitoring military and foreign policy in congress.

“At the moment they have to give him some space,” said Senator John Thune, the Republican and majority leader of South Dakota, on Wednesday at a press conference at Capitol Hill after a Senate lunch with Vice President JD Vance in the Senate of the Senate of Capitol .

The weekly meeting often offers the senators the opportunity to iron out internal disputes. Some senators expressed the desire to use at least part of the time to urge Mr. Vance about Mr. Trump’s obvious willingness to leave American allies, to draw Mr. Putin closer and to denounce President Volodymyr Zelensky from Ukraine as a “dictator” .

But when the time came, the topic did not arise, according to several participants.

“What I support is a peaceful result and leads to Ukraine,” Thune told reporters after the meeting, “and I think the government, the president and his team are working to achieve this.” By Mr. Trump’s labeling of Mr. Zelensky as a dictator, he only said: “The president speaks for himself.”

Mr. Thune was one of the considerable contingents of the Republican senators who have supported legislation in the past three years to send tens of billions of dollars for Ukraine for the war effort. Now that Mr. Trump is in the White House, they fight little when he turns against Kyiv.

Even Senator Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, the former party leader, who committed himself as the main republican of Ukraine and as a counterweight to Mr. Trump’s “America First” approach to foreign policy, has been towards Russia in view of that of the President.

It is a remarkable turn for Republicans who defined themselves as a party of a strong defense for decades and argued that the United States had a crucial role in playing fire and defenders of democracies around the world.

Some GOP legislators have made it clear that they do not agree with Mr. Trump’s approach, but most of them did so as not to criticize the president. Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi and Chairman of the Committee on Armed Forces, said he did not agree to the idea of ​​a personal meeting with Mr. Putin.

“My advice to the president, if he asked me, would not be to give Vladimir Putin the advantage of sitting with a democratically elected head of state” The worst kind. “

Although he heads the Senate Committee that monitors national security, Mr. Wicker made it clear that Mr. Trump did not consult him.

A year ago, almost two dozen republican senators opposed Mr. Trump’s wishes and voted that they continued to send tens of billions of dollars to the military and other help to Ukraine to fight Russia. Few of these legislators have spoken out against his current attitude, and those who mostly offered carefully formulated criticism of Mr. Putin – but not to Mr. Trump.

“Well, it sounds like it is the direction in which they are being directed,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, about the trump government’s push back, diplomatic relationships with Russia.

Ms. Murkowski, who apparently had to speak carefully to criticize Mr. Trump directly, said that she hoped that the country would not lose sight of the fact that Russia, Putin only brazenly and regardless of life or life Limits to Ukraine penetrated ”.

“I think we have to be very careful,” she added.

In the past few days, Mr. Trump has declared that Ukraine is responsible for the beginning of the war and reported reporters from his estate Mar-A-Lago that the Ukrainian leaders could “have done a deal”. On Wednesday he sharpened his criticism and called Mr. Zelensky a “dictator without elections”.

Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, who recently returned from a trip to Kyiv, in which he and two other senators reaffirmed their support for Ukraine, struck the “dictator” remark.

“It’s not a word that I would use,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

“There is no moral equivalence between Vladimir Putin and President Zelensky,” said Tillis about the comments that Mr. Trump made in a post on his social media site.

But Mr. Tillis, who recently considered a confrontation with Mr. Trump because of his Minister of Defense and then retired from the confrontation, also made sure to criticize the President’s approach directly. Mr. Tillis said he was ultimately listening to his consultants and taking note of the Republicans’ complaints on the Capitol Hill, who may ask him privately to avoid Mr. Putin.

When asked whether she supported the idea that Mr. Trump held a personal meeting with the Russian president, Senator Joni Ernst, Republican from Iowa, simply shrugged.

Last year, Ms. Ernst belonged to the republican contingent, who voted to send billions of dollars of military help to Ukraine. At that time she said her support was to project American strength on the world stage, which she said, President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

“By strengthening and equipping America to defend the opponents of the opponents of the opponents, he has made himself for the job that this president did not do,” said Ms. Ernst in a statement.

Now that Mr. Trump is in office, many Republicans have fallen their most Hawkish positions in Russia and Mr. Putin to support Mr. Trump’s advance.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, called Mr. Putin a “racket” and a war criminal and said that he had to be “treated”. Shortly after Mr. Trump announced that Mr. Putin had extended the invitation for the president to travel to Moscow, Mr. Graham changed his melody considerably.

“I don’t care if you will meet Putin in Cleveland,” he said in the past few days with plans to have high -ranking conversations between the White House and the Kremlin. “I don’t care if you talk, I don’t care if you go on vacation. I don’t care what you do as long as you do it right. “

On Wednesday, Mr. Graham wrote on social media that Mr. Trump was “the best hope of Ukraine to end this war honestly and just”, and added that he believed that the president will “be successful and this goal on Trump -Art will achieve ”.