Where 10 GOP presidential hopefuls stand on Ukraine’s defensive war against Russia
Jamie McIntyre
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In an interview last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed concern that the election of a Republican U.S. president next year could result in America stepping back from its leadership of the Western coalition that is funding and arming Ukraine’s effort to liberate its occupied areas from Russian control.
“In a situation like this, when there is support, you are afraid of changes,” Zelensky told the Wall Street Journal. “And to be honest, when you mention a change of administration, I feel the same way as any other person — you want changes for the better, but it can also be the other way around.”
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Zelensky’s fear is not ungrounded: The field of declared GOP hopefuls includes several who have declared qualified support, and at least one who has said “not one dime more” should go to Ukraine.
Here’s where the contenders stand, as best can be determined from their own words.
Donald Trump
The undisputed front-runner for the party’s 2024 nomination has given the cagiest answers to the question of whether he would continue President Joe Biden’s promise to supply Ukraine with arms and money as long as it takes.
At a CNN town hall last month, the former president repeatedly dodged the question, until finally when pressed, saying his focus would be bringing the war to a quick end. “I don’t think in terms of winning and losing. I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people,” he said, boasting as he has many times, “If I’m president, I will have that war settled in one day, 24 hours.”
In his recent interview with Trump, Fox anchor Bret Baier questioned how he’d pull that off.
“I would tell Zelensky something and I would tell Putin something, and I’d get him into a room, and I’d tell him again, and again. I would have a deal done very quickly,” Trump said. “I became very rich by doing deals,” he added. “That’s what I do.”
Trump’s critics argue the only deal Russian President Vladimir Putin would readily accept would be one on his terms, in which he could keep all the territory he now occupies. They also point out that Trump’s previous boast that he could negotiate nuclear agreements with North Korea and Iran, and a deal for Mexico to pay for a border wall all failed during his administration.
Ron DeSantis
The Florida governor drew the ire of congressional Republicans who have been sharply critical of President Joe Biden for slow-rolling weapons to Ukraine when in response to a questionnaire from Tucker Carlson in March, DeSantis dismissed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “territorial dispute” that was not a “vital national interest.”
At the time he strongly opposed sending F-16s and long-range missiles to Ukraine, which he argued would allow it to “engage in offensive operations beyond its borders” and risk drawing the United States into a “hot war” with Russia.
Just over a week later in an interview with Piers Morgan on Fox Nation, DeSantis tried to clarify his comments saying he was referring only to Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region and Crimea “where the fighting is going on now.”
On Fox last month, DeSantis was asked how he would address the war if elected. Like Trump, he stopped short of promising more aid to Ukraine or expressing the need to hand Russia a defeat. But he did say Russia’s invasion was “wrong” and that Putin was a “war criminal.”
“I’d like to see a settlement of this. I do not want to see a wider war,” DeSantis told the Fox host, former South Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy. “I think it’s completely unknowable what it will look like in January of 2025, but I would not want to see the United States with our troops get enmeshed in a war in Russia or in Ukraine.”
Mike Pence
In contrast to Trump and DeSantis, the former vice president gave a full-throated defense of uninterrupted aid to Ukraine at a June 8 CNN town hall, where he took a dig at Trump for his penchant for praising Putin.
“When Vladimir Putin rolled into Ukraine, the former president called him a genius. I know the difference between a genius and a war criminal. And I know who needs to win in the war in Ukraine. And it’s the people fighting for their freedom and fighting to restore their national sovereignty in Ukraine. And America, it’s not our war, but freedom is our fight.”
Pence pointed out he has a son in the Marine Corps and a son-in-law in the Navy who, if a wider war with NATO were to come, would likely be in the fight. “I know that some in this debate have called the war in Ukraine a territorial dispute. It’s not. It was a Russian invasion, an unprovoked Russian invasion,” he said. “And I believe the United States of America needs to continue to provide the courageous soldiers in Ukraine with the resources they need to repel that Russian invasion and restore their territorial integrity.”
“I think it’s in our national interests to make this fight, to give them the ability to fight and win against the Russians,” Pence argued. “Anybody that thinks Vladimir Putin will stop if he overruns Ukraine has what we say back in Indiana ‘another thing coming.’ He has no intention of stopping. He’s made it clear that he wants to recreate that old Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.”
Nikki Haley
In her town hall on CNN on June 4, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador staked out a clear position in favor of sticking by Ukraine, at least when it comes to providing weapons and ammunition as part of a coalition of NATO and other nations.
“This is about preventing war. And so, the way you prevent war is not that we give cash to Ukraine, not that we put troops on the ground, but that we get with our allies, and we make sure that we give them the equipment and the ammunition to win,” Haley said.
“We have to finish it,” she continued. “What we have to understand is a win for Ukraine is a win for all of us, because tyrants tell us exactly what they’re going to do. … When Ukraine wins, that sends a message to China with Taiwan. It sends a message to Iran that wants to build a bomb, sends a message to North Korea testing ballistic missiles. And it sends a message to Russia that it’s over. That’s what we have to do.”
Chris Christie
The former New Jersey governor has used his unabashed support of Ukraine as a way to distinguish himself from Trump and as a rhetorical cudgel to bludgeon his former friend mercilessly as a Putin patsy.
“He wouldn’t say last night that Ukraine should win the war,” Christie told radio host Hugh Hewitt the morning after Trump’s CNN town hall. “I was stunned. It was, to me, it was the most stunning moment of the debate. If you won’t say that you think Ukraine should win the war, I don’t know where you stand with Putin.”
“And you know, to say that he could settle it in 24 hours is the same kind of bravado that we heard eight years ago when he said that he would build the wall across the entire border of Mexico and the United States and Mexico would pay for it.”
“I think it’s very clear what we need to do. We need to give the Ukrainians every piece of military hardware they need to protect themselves against this aggression, and we need to continue to do it until they are ready to resolve the conflict with Russia,” Christie said in an appearance on CNN on June 7.
“This is a proxy war with China. It’s what it is. China is buying Russian oil like no one else in the world is doing. They’re funding the murder of Ukrainians by the Russian army. President Xi goes to Russia, stands with Putin, and says there’s no limits to the Chinese friendship with the Russians,” Christie told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
“This is a much bigger deal than just Ukrainian territory, it is a much bigger deal. Our friends around the world are going to see, do we stick, do we stand with our friends, and do we give them the tools they need to protect themselves from authoritarian aggression?”
Tim Scott
The South Carolina senator with a reputation for having a sunny disposition says he “absolutely would” support Ukraine’s fight to protect its sovereignty, with one small caveat. “We do nothing with a blank check,” Scott told Fox News last month. “We need to have accountability as a part of the apparatus that we’re using in order to continue to provide resources to the Ukrainians.”
But on the campaign trail and in interviews he’s consistently argued that seeing Putin defeated in Ukraine is in America’s “vital national interest.” “Degrading the Russian military is in America’s best interest and solves two problems at the same time without American boots on the ground,” Scott said in a May 12 campaign speech in Greenville, South Carolina.
“First, it prevents or reduces attacks on the homeland. Second, as part of NATO and land being contiguous to Ukraine, it will reduce the likelihood that Russia will have the weaponry or the will to attack on NATO territory, which would get us involved.”
“One of the most important priorities that we should have is degrading the Russian military. By degrading the Russian military, we are preventing attacks on the homeland, as well as our NATO partners that are contiguous with Ukraine. That means America’s soldiers are safer,” Scott told Fox’s Neil Cavuto on May 23.
Vivek Ramaswamy
The 37-year-old former biotechnology investor and executive has staked the most extreme position on Ukraine assistance, vowing that as president he would “not spend another dime of American money on a war that does not affect our interests.”
“I do not think it is a top foreign policy priority for us. I don’t think it is preferable for Russia to be able to invade a sovereign country that is its neighbor. But I think the job of the U.S. president is to look after American interests,” Ramaswamy said on ABC’s This Week on June 4.
And, he argues, the bigger threat to U.S. national security is the growing alliance between Russia and China.
To force Ukraine to capitulate to Russian territorial demands, Ramaswamy would suspend U.S. military assistance to Ukraine and block its bid to join NATO, according to a draft of a policy speech obtained by CBS News. As an incentive to Putin, he would lift sanctions against Russia, withdraw all U.S. troops, and close all U.S. bases in Eastern Europe.
“What I think we need to do is end the Ukraine war on peaceful terms that, yes, do make some major concessions to Russia, including freezing those current lines of control in a Korean War-style armistice agreement,” Ramaswamy told ABC’s Martha Raddatz.
“I think that by fighting further in Russia, by further arming Ukraine, we are driving Russia into China’s hands. … And what I’ve said is, I would end this war in return for pulling Putin out of that treaty with China.”
Asa Hutchinson
The former Arkansas governor told Fox News last month that despite some members of the Freedom Caucus calling for an end to aid to Ukraine, he believes there is still “broad support” for Ukraine in the Republican Party.
“I’m supporting our funding of the fight in the Ukraine because if you show weakness there, you’re going to have our aggressors take more significant action, like China towards Taiwan, but Russia will not stop at Ukraine,” Hutchinson told host Lawrence Jones. “You don’t need to draw a red line, you need to support those who are being oppressed against the oppressor, and right now that is Ukraine. Hopefully, we can stop it there.”
Hutchinson also scoffed at Trump’s assertion that he could quickly broker a deal to end the war. “He basically talks about himself being a great negotiator. Well, he set the stage by saying, ‘We can end this in one day, if I’m president.’ That gives away [any] negotiating leverage that he has because he tells Putin that, ‘You’re going to win, you’ve got the leverage as we go into the negotiation,’” Hutchinson said on CNN. “It’s a terrible mistake, a terrible position, not supporting Ukraine.”
Francis Suarez
As mayor of Miami, a part-time job that some people describe as mostly ceremonial, Suarez doesn’t have a deep foreign policy record to run on. But he did lay out his views on Ukraine in an opinion essay in National Review in which he argues, “This war is about more than just Ukraine. It is a war that is now local and global, hot and cold. It’s a war about the type of future we want for our children and ourselves.”
“It doesn’t take a Harvard lawyer to see that the war in Ukraine is not a territorial dispute. It is a moral and geopolitical struggle between two visions of the world. Both are competing for our future,” Suarez writes. “The first vision respects human rights and democracy; the second rejects it.”
But, like many Republicans, Suarez is not willing to commit to a blank check. “Republicans must ensure that the funding for Ukraine goes to fighting for Ukraine, not to special interests or partisan ones. Any funding must tie future investments with real reforms of NATO, ensuring that Europe will carry an equal share in funding and forces.”
Doug Burgum
The two-term North Dakota governor is running as a traditional conservative who says his focus will be national security and the economy.
“Russia cannot have a win coming out of this because if it’s a win for them, it’s a win for China,” Burgum told Bismarck TV station KFYR earlier this month. “And so I just say again, every time the U.S. spends dollars, whether it’s defense or whether it’s on healthcare or any program, there ought to be transparency and accountability.”
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“Essentially, we are in a proxy war with Russia. We’re doing everything but sending our own troops over there, but yeah we’re in a battle, and one thing I’d say for sure we’ve to make sure this isn’t a win for Putin,” he told a local radio station.
“I think that folks are right to be concerned that we got to make sure that we got accountability on every dollar that we spend.”