Republicans’ topsy-turvy take on aid for Ukraine reveals party in thrall to Trump

Nearly a decade ago, as Russian troops entered the Crimean peninsula, congressional Republicans were in uproar, blaming Moscow’s land grab on then president Barack Obama’s weakness on the global stage. Loudest among the Republican critics was the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who assailed Obama as a “weak, indecisive leader”.

In a pre-dawn vote on Tuesday, Graham joined the majority of Senate Republicans in opposing a foreign aid package that would rush wartime assistance to Ukraine as it approaches the second anniversary of Russia’s full invasion.

It was a shocking – if not entirely surprising – turn for one of the chamber’s leading defense hawks and a steadfast Russia critic. But these days Graham has another distinction: he is one of Donald Trump’s most loyal allies on Capitol Hill, where the former president – and likely Republican nominee – has been whipping up opposition to Ukraine’s war effort.

Just 22 Republican senators broke with Trump to approve the aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other US allies – yet another sign of how thoroughly the former president’s America First vision has supplanted the party’s consensus toward internationalism and interventionism.

There has long been an isolationist strain among hardline Republicans who believe that investment in foreign entanglements risks bringing the US closer to war and diverts money away from domestic challenges. But then Trump came to power and sidelined the defense hawks, ushering in a dramatic shift in Republican sentiment toward America’s allies and adversaries.

Nearly half of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said the US was providing too much aid to Ukraine, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center conducted late last year.