Ukraine Should Fear Skeptical Republicans, Expert Warns

Ukraine must demonstrate that its American support has been put to good use, and work to ensure that whoever wins the White House in November keeps the country's conflict on the U.S. agenda.

One expert told Newsweek that the prospect of a Trump presidency, combined with America's increasing concerns over China and a potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific, may have given Ukraine an added impetus to secure some high-profile wins over Russia.

"If I were the Ukrainians, I would be concerned about both the mood more generally in the U.S., which does show a higher degree of skepticism, and the Republicans, who've got some people way out on the fringes who seem to be far too enamored with Russia and far too skeptical of Europe and Ukraine," Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, told Newsweek.

The U.S. has provided a significant amount of assistance to Ukraine—around $175 billion according to the Council on Foreign Relations—since the Russian invasion began in February 2022.

Savill noted that, while Europe has provided "just as much, if not more than the U.S." to Ukraine, "the most significant capabilities and the most significant quantities of those capabilities all come from the U.S."

However, he said that a looming conflict in the South China Sea has signaled to American policymakers that the country cannot "fight a war on two fronts," and that they must concentrate on the "larger strategic threat" of China.

While Savill noted that America's increasing focus on the Indo-Pacific will likely continue "regardless of who the president is," he said that a Trump administration could accelerate this geostrategic tilt.

"A Harris presidency probably looks like a continuation—or at least the way that they talk—a continuation of the current support, and the current type of support, which is strong," Savill said. "On the Republican side of the house, I think the picture is more mixed."

He noted that the Trump administration was "inconsistent" when it came to the Ukraine question, the president both "fawning over Putin in public," while supplying arms to Zelensky and expelling dozens of Russian diplomats following the 2018 Skripal poisonings.

However, Savill said that there was a contingent within the Republican camp, including his running mate JD Vance, who believe that the U.S. "cannot fight a major war on two fronts," and should concentrate on the threat posed by China while sidelining the issue of Ukraine.

He said that this position was exemplified by people such as Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development under Trump, who has been touted as a key foreign policy figure in a hypothetical Republican White House.

Colby has frequently called for the U.S. to pivot from Ukraine to Asia and, last year, penned an article for Time in which he argued that the U.S. "must urgently shift to prioritizing readying for conflict with China."

The upcoming election, therefore, "creates a high degree of uncertainty around exactly what position the U. S. would take under a Trump presidency," Savill said. "And I think that probably increases some of the urgency around what Ukraine might try and do this year."

According to an early-July report by the Wall Street Journal, NATO has already been trying to put measures in place to shore up support for Ukraine in the event of a Trump presidency.

"If you were Ukrainian right now, you might feel the need to potentially demonstrate something to Republicans to reassure them," Savill said, adding that this might be the kind of imperative that leads to operations such as Tuesday's Kursk operation, in which Ukrainian forces launched a surprise offensive into Russia's southwestern territory.

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