Top Republican senators tell THE WEEKLY STANDARD they don’t know what a Donald Trump administration will mean for Ukraine, but they plan on urging his team to support the country in its fight against Russian aggression regardless.
Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin exchanged compliments throughout the election and on Monday agreed to improve U.S.-Russian relations. In July, the Trump campaign reportedly pushed to soften the Republican party’s position on providing lethal defensive aid to Ukrainians fighting Russian-backed rebels, despite long-time Republican support for providing such aid. Several lawmakers said Tuesday that they were unsure where the president-elect would ultimately shake out.
“I’m not sure yet,” said Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker, who is being considered for Trump’s secretary of state, when asked what he expected from the Trump administration on Ukraine. “We’re trying to gauge that.”
Corker noted the involvement of Trump’s then-campaign manger Paul Manafort in the push to scale back the GOP platform on Ukraine. Manafort lobbied for years on behalf of former Ukrainian president and Putin ally Viktor Yanukovych.
Arizona senator John McCain, who has led the push for providing arms to Ukraine, also did not know where the Trump administration would be, but said he would keep pushing for lethal defensive aid.
“I honestly don’t know enough about what their position will be,” he said. “I’ll continue to push for providing defensive weapons to Ukraine. I’ll continue that effort. But I can’t guess on what the Trump administration [will do].”
McCain warned Trump about trusting Putin after the two world leaders spoke on the phone this week, advising the president-elect to stand with “those fighting tyranny” rather than someone who has “murdered his political opponents” and “invaded his neighbors.”
South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham said he would continue advocating for the U.S. to arm Ukraine, as McCain has done, regardless of Trump’s seeming resistance.
“I don’t know where President Trump will be on that issue. He seems to have resisted that idea, but I know where I am,” Graham told TWS. “That may be a situation where the Congress works its will differently than the administration.”
Graham warned the president-elect about cozying up to Russia and advised asserting American leadership early in his term, before the Kremlin deepens its incursion into Ukraine.
“He wants to reset with Russia. Maybe he can do it. But here’s my view about Russia: They are a bad actor in the world,” Graham added. “They need to be reined in.”
Florida senator Marco Rubio also did not know where Trump’s White House would be on providing lethal defensive aid.
“I haven’t spoken to them about what their position is on it,” Rubio said. “I know what my position is on it. I’m very supportive of Ukraine.”
Asked about the Trump campaign’s efforts in July to soften the GOP platform, Rubio said he would be judging the administration on their actions “from here on out” rather than “what has happened in the past.”
Oklahoma senator Jim Inhofe, who has consistently expressed optimism about U.S.-Ukraine relations under the Trump administration, had a different take than his GOP counterparts, telling TWS he believed Trump would support giving Ukraine lethal aid.
“I’ve already talked to Trump personally about Ukraine,” he said. “First, he wasn’t familiar with a lot of the issues, and now he realizes that one of his major policy changes is, unlike our current president, he’s going to be respectful of our friends, our allies.”
Alongside the Trump campaign’s reported role in scaling back the GOP platform, the president-elect has previously suggested that he might recognize Crimea, which the Kremlin illegally annexed in 2014, as Russian. He has also said that he would consider removing sanctions on Russia, according to Politico.
Despite such comments, some Ukrainian leaders have expressed confidence that the United States would continue its support for Ukraine. The day after Trump’s phone call with Putin, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko urged the president-elect to “further strengthen the Ukraine-U.S. strategic partnership” and to continue America’s “resolute support of Ukraine in countering [sic] Russian aggression.
