Vance as VP pick spurs fear among Ukraine supporters

by Laura Kelly - 07/16/24 2:19 PM ET

Disappointment washed over Ukraine’s supporters when former President Trump announced Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate.

Vance is an outspoken critic of U.S. military and economic support for Ukraine in its defensive war against Russia, having once said, “I don’t care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.”

“I’m very worried, especially about the message this pick sends,” a Republican congressional aide told The Hill.

Vance’s selection as the Republican candidate for vice president shines a spotlight on the internal GOP battle between Ukraine’s staunchest supporters and the wing of Trump loyalists who view Kyiv as a problem and Russia as a rational actor.

“It’s great to have an opponent of endless wars and more aid to Ukraine on the ticket,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) posted on the social platform X while congratulating Vance’s selection as VP.

The congressional aide, granted anonymity to preserve their career prospects, said the importance of the pick depended on Vance’s influence in a potential second Trump White House — whether he would be elevated like Vice President Dick Cheney during the Bush administration, or relatively sidelined in foreign policy decision making like Vice President Harris.

“If it’s the latter, the State Department, or National Security Council or Pentagon picks would very likely have a lot more sway, especially on foreign policy issues” they said.

One of Trump’s primary motivations for selecting Vance is to win over voters in the battleground states and Midwest, with Vance saying the former president asked him to help out in Pennsylvania and Michigan in particular.

“I think you’re the guy who can help me in the best way — help me govern, help me win,” Vance recalled Trump telling him in an interview with Fox News.

While it’s not yet clear how much influence Vance would have on foreign policy, he has carved out an identity as a full-throated opponent of support for Ukraine, arguing for Europe to shoulder that responsibility while the U.S. maintains support for Israel and pivots to East Asia to protect Taiwan from China.

“He’s another one in a line of new Republican politicians who believe that you can ignore Russia to focus on China. That is tantamount to the U.S. in 1941 claiming they would work with Hitler to focus their interest against Japan. Just doesn’t make sense,” a politician from the South Caucasus, requesting anonymity to maintain working relationships with the GOP, told The Hill.

“And at the heart of it, it shows a deep lack of knowledge of the authoritarian axis in the world: Moscow, Beijing, Hamas, Tehran, Minsk are all one. Washington is supposed to be on the other side, the side of freedom.”

Vance has called for Ukraine to cede territory Russia had seized by force in order to come to a negotiated end to the war.

“I think what President Trump has promised to do is go in there, negotiate with the Russians and Ukrainians bring this thing to a rapid close, so that America can focus on the real issue, which is China. That’s the biggest threat to our country,” he said Monday in an interview with Fox News.

Ukraine and its supporters in the U.S. and Europe insist cooperation must continue regardless of who is in the White House.

“We will work with everyone who is elected by the American people and chosen by the President of the U.S.,” Ukraine’s Ambassador to the U.S., Oksana Markarova, said in a statement to The Hill.

“We appreciate strong bipartisan support of Ukraine in our fight against the Russian aggression to ensure that democracy prevails. We will further work to ensure that this bipartisan support is continued for the benefit of a world free from tyranny and oppression.”

In Congress, there is still broad bipartisan support to maintain support for Ukraine and for keeping the U.S. in NATO, despite Trump’s threats to pull back support for Kyiv and the alliance.

“Article 5 means exactly what it says, I make that commitment now for the United States and the United States is there to meet that commitment,” Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said during the NATO summit in Washington last week, reinforcing support for the mutual defense pillar of the alliance.

Trump has previously encouraged Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies that do not meet their defense spending commitments of 2 percent of gross domestic product.

Still, Risch welcomed Vance’s selection. He called the GOP nominee “a strong representation of the Republican party” adding that with Trump, “their leadership is what our country needs and they have my full support.”

But other Republicans are worried about what influence Vance will hold.

“In terms of hesitancy in supporting Ukraine, he’s just even more intense on that issue than Donald Trump,” former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) told The Hill, adding that he had other preferences for the GOP VP nominee.

And it’s unclear how much that bipartisan support can hold, in particular among Republicans in the House, where a growing isolationist caucus opposes aid for Ukraine and U.S. military and economic support going abroad in general.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said it was the “right thing to do” in passing $61 billion in aid for Ukraine in April, but the majority of the Republican conference voted against it.

And while there was an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the Senate to pass the package — a total of $95 billion in aid for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and more — Vance was one of 18 “no” votes, arguing for the U.S. to cut losses in Ukraine and chastising allies for failing to increase their defense spending.

“If [Russian President] Vladimir Putin is a threat to Germany and France, if he’s a threat to Berlin and Paris, then they should spend more money on military equipment,” he said in floor remarks.

“We’ve basically outsourced our ability to manufacture critical weapons while stepping up our responsibilities to police the world,” Vance added.

While Vance advocates for Europe to build up its own military manufacturing production, U.S. and European officials say governments aren’t investing in long-term contracts with military manufacturers that would incentivize them to brush off the cobwebs of long-dormant military production lines.

Congress’s six-month delay in passing aid for Ukraine — with the majority of funding being invested in U.S.-weapons production to backfill stock — is viewed as a prime example of the uncertainty around commitments to military production.

And Europe and Ukraine, while working to build up defense manufacturing production, still rely heavily on purchases of U.S.-made military equipment — which they argue ultimately benefits American jobs and the economy. But Vance argues the U.S. is “stretched way too thin” in filling U.S. stockpiles, doling out weapons for Ukraine, and supplying Israel and Taiwan.

“Can we possibly fight all of those conflicts at once? No, the math just doesn’t make sense,” Vance said in an interview with CNN in April.

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, said he’s not concerned over Vance’s “individual view” on Ukraine, pointing to bipartisan support for Kyiv.

“As somebody who has been a strong supporter of Ukraine, and will continue to be a strong supporter of Ukraine, obviously, these foreign policy issues will be discussed and debated during the course of the campaign, but I’m not concerned about his individual view,” Lawler told The Hill at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

“A vast majority of members of Congress support aid to Ukraine, and we’re going to continue to work through these issues before the American people.”

Mykola Murskyj, director of advocacy for Razom, a nonprofit that raises medical and humanitarian support for Ukraine, expressed hope that Vance’s views on Ukraine would evolve with access to sensitive intelligence, similar to Johnson’s turn toward support for Ukraine when given access to classified briefings.

“I think that when people get into the top job, the information they have access to changes and it is reasonable to expect that their policy recommendations — if they’re intelligent and honest people — will change as well,” Murskyj said.

“Americans understand that Ukraine is fighting for the same values that make America great. Americans understand that,” he continued.

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“So from our standpoint, while it’s true that Sen. Vance’s record and his past comments are certainly deeply troubling, we do expect that in his new role as the VP nominee, and potentially the vice president, he would take a fresh look at what’s at stake and reevaluate and come to different conclusions about the vital importance of continuing U.S. support to Ukraine.”

Aris Folley contributed.

Story was updated at 4:08 p.m. ET