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Have Republicans become pro-Russia?

​U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) speaks to the media, on the day of a Senate Republicans' weekly policy lunch on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 19, 2025.

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) speaks to the media, on the day of a Senate Republicans' weekly policy lunch on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 19, 2025.

REUTERS/Kent Nishimura
Willis Sparks
By Willis SparksFebruary 20, 2025
Willis Sparks
Willis Sparks is a senior editor for GZERO Daily. He is also a Director in the Global Macro practice at Eurasia Group, where he has worked since 2005. He has made speeches on international politics on every continent except Antarctica. Willis holds degrees from Brown University, the Juilliard School, Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris. He also holds an honorary degree from the Moscow Art Theatre School. A native of Macon, Georgia, Willis has worked as a stuntman at New York's Metropolitan Opera. As a child, he declined an opportunity to spend an afternoon riding the Great American Scream Machine, a rollercoaster, with Ronald McDonald, for money. He has never regretted that decision.
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Those of us who grew up in a Cold War world have long thought of Republicans as the US political party that is most consistently tough on Moscow. Over the years, both parties have taken tough stances on the Kremlin and its foreign-policy ambitions, but the GOP provided most of the true hawks. It was Sen. Mitt Romney, the last Republican presidential nominee not named Trump, who warned in 2012 that Russia is “without question, our number one geopolitical foe.” At the time, Democrats scoffed.

Last year, before Donald Trump won the 2024 election, nearly two dozen Republican senators ignored his publicly stated opposition and voted to send tens of billions of dollars in military and other aid to Ukraine.

President Trump now says that Ukraine started the war with Russia and that Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, not Russia’s Vladimir Putin, is a “dictator.” He has launched negotiations over Ukraine’s future with Putin’s government — and without a Ukrainian counterpart present.

How have Republican lawmakers responded? Some, like Iowa Sen. Jodi Ernst, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, who serves as chairman of the Armed Services Committee — all of whom strongly supported the defense of Ukraine in the past — have criticized Putin but are careful not to say anything that sounds like criticism of Trump. Other GOP lawmakers have refused to comment.

Perhaps these and other Republicans are simply taking a patient approach to a complex negotiation process, allowing their president maximum room to maneuver. Or maybe Trump’s hold on the GOP is now strong enough to push his party to renounce one of its core foreign-policy convictions of the past 80 years.

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