Several key Republicans cried foul after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said that the United States’ support for Ukraine is not a ‘vital’ national interest, highlighting a divide in the party over backing Kyiv in its fight against Russia.

What You Need To Know

  • Republican lawmakers pushed back on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' comments to Fox News' Tucker Carlson that the United States’ support for Ukraine is not a ‘vital’ national interest

  • His comments sparked fury from Republican lawmakers and other GOP figures, with some pushing back on his comment that Moscow’s invasion is a “territorial dispute,” while others said checking Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression is indeed a key national security interest

  • Whether DeSantis’ stance on Ukraine, or the pushback to it, will matter to GOP primary voters is another question entirely

  • According to a poll from Pew Research Center from January, the share of Republicans who say the U.S. has given too much aid to Ukraine has steadily grown since last year; a CNN-SSRS poll released Tuesday found that 80% of Republican or Republican-leaning independent respondents want the GOP nominee to hold the belief that the U.S. "should not be involved in the war between Russia and Ukraine"

Responding to a questionnaire from Fox News’ Tucker Carlson to both declared and prospective 2024 Republican presidential candidates, DeSantis said that “while the U.S. has many vital national interests,” citing competition with China and border security, among other issues, “becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.”

“The Biden administration’s virtual 'blank check' funding of this conflict for 'as long as it takes,' without any defined objectives or accountability, distracts from our country’s most pressing challenges,” DeSantis continued.

The Florida governor’s stance puts him in alignment with the candidate who will likely present him the biggest challenge should he mount a White House bid next year: former President Donald Trump. 

DeSantis’ comments sparked fury from Republican lawmakers and other GOP figures, with some pushing back on his comment that Moscow’s invasion is a “territorial dispute,” while others said checking Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression is indeed a key national security interest.

“To say this doesn’t matter is to say that war crimes don’t matter,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham told CNN. “To say this doesn’t matter is to say that war crimes don’t matter. [Putin is] committing war crimes on an industrial scale.”

“If you think defunding the police is a bad idea, which I do, just forgiving and forgetting war crimes like this is a bad idea, makes the world unstable,” he continued. “He’s going to go beyond Ukraine, Putin, if you don’t get that, you’re not listening to what he’s saying.”

Graham made the case that backing down to Putin would have a wider-ranging impact on global politics, pointing to China’s posturing over Taiwan as an example.

“The statement by the governor is taking it off the table, and that will just incentivize Putin to stay in the game, to fight harder,” Graham told the outlet. “And if you know anything about China, they see weakness in Ukraine by the West, there goes Taiwan.”

The South Carolina Republican also compared DeSantis’ comments to appeasement toward Nazi Germany in World War II.

“The [former British Prime Minister] Neville Chamberlain approach to aggression never ends well,” he told The New York Times, adding: “This is an attempt by Putin to rewrite the map of Europe by force of arms.”

One of the senators from DeSantis’ home state, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, pushed back on his characterization of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “territorial dispute.”

“It’s not a ‘territorial dispute,’ in the sense that … any more than it would be a territorial dispute if the United States decided that it wanted to invade Canada or take over the Bahamas,” Rubio told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday. “Just because someone claims something doesn’t mean it belongs to them.”

“This is an invasion,” Rubio continued, adding: “This is not the same as two countries arguing over disputed boundaries that were settled in some treaty 50 years ago. This is basically the Russians want Ukraine to be under their thumb.”

Rubio said that the U.S. does have an interest in the conflict, but admitted the war is not “the number one interest in the world,” citing competition with China as the country’s “single-biggest foreign policy priority.”

Former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, a member of the House Jan. 6 panel, said that DeSantis is “wrong” about Ukraine and “seems to have forgotten the lessons of Ronald Reagan.”

“This is not ‘a territorial dispute,’” she said in a statement to the New York Times, echoing Rubio’s critique. “The Ukrainian people are fighting for their freedom. Surrendering to Putin and refusing to defend freedom makes America less safe.”

“Weakness is provocative and American officials who advocate this type of weakness are Putin’s greatest weapon,” she added. “Abandoning Ukraine would make broader conflict, including with China and other American adversaries, more likely.”

Texas Sen. John Cornyn told POLITICO that he was “disturbed” by DeSantis’ comments. “I think he's a smart guy. I want to find out more about it, but I hope he feels like he doesn't need to take that Tucker Carlson line to be competitive in the primary.”

“It's important for us to continue to support Ukrainians for our own security,” he added. 

“I think we have to look better than just the conflict in Ukraine,” North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis told POLITICO. “There’s a humanitarian crisis. There are war crimes being committed.”

“I believe the United States should support the effort in Ukraine,” Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo told CNN, adding: “I think that if we don’t hold the line in Ukraine now, we’re simply going to see the issue expand into other European nations.”

DeSantis’ comments came one day before a Russian aircraft collided into a U.S. surveillance drone over the Black Sea. Speaking to reporters about the incident, Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, took a dig at DeSantis over the incident.

“This brazen act by Russian pilots against an American aircraft flying in international airspace makes clear that Vladimir Putin is an adversary,” he told reporters. “This incident should serve as a wake-up call to isolationists in the United States that it is in our national interest to treat Putin as the threat he truly is.”

Republican 2024 challenger Nikki Haley, who has expressed support for Ukraine, used the opportunity to take a dig at both Trump and DeSantis.

“President Trump is right when he says Governor DeSantis is copying him—first in his style, then on entitlement reform, and now on Ukraine,” she said in a statement. “I have a different style than President Trump, and while I agree with him on most policies, I do not on those.”

For his part, Trump — who similarly told Fox’s Carlson that supporting Ukraine is not a vital interest for the U.S. — criticized DeSantis for “following” his stance.

“It is a flip-flop,” he told reporters traveling with him in Iowa, per CBS News. “He was totally different. Whatever I want, he wants.”

But whether DeSantis’ stance, or the pushback to it, will matter to GOP primary voters is another question entirely. 

According to a poll from Pew Research Center from January, the share of Republicans who say the U.S. has given too much aid to Ukraine has steadily grown since last year — from 9% to 40% — while the amount who said the U.S. is not giving enough aid shrank from 49% to 17%. 

And a CNN-SSRS poll released Tuesday — which showed 40% of Republicans backing Trump for the nomination, with DeSantis in a close second at 36% — found that 80% of Republican or Republican-leaning independent respondents want the GOP nominee to hold the belief that the U.S. “should not be involved in the war between Russia and Ukraine.”

Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Republican in the U.S. Senate, seemingly acknowledged that sentiment, telling CNN that while he disagrees with DeSantis, there are “probably” going to be other GOP candidates — and voters — who agree with him.

“I would argue, and I think the majority of people in this country recognize, how important it is that Ukraine repel Russia and stop this aggression and they be a sovereign country,” he said.