Biden’s Surprise Ukraine Visit Sends a Message: Ignore the MAGA Haters

President Joe Biden arrived in Ukraine on Monday with a message: “Kyiv stands.” 

“Ukraine stands,” Biden said during a surprise visit to the nation’s capital, days before the one-year anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression against its democratic neighbor. “Democracy stands. The Americans stand with you, and the world stands with you.”

It was Biden’s strongest show of support yet for Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But it comes at a point in the war when the extent of the United States’ continued support is less certain, as a new Republican House majority seeks to flex its muscle against the Biden administration. Indeed, while leading Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham have promised that the U.S. remains committed to Ukraine aid—and have criticized Biden for not going further in helping its military—a vocal contingent of the GOP’s MAGA caucus, operating under the nationalist banner of “America First,” has tried to put that assistance on the chopping block. 

Among the most outspoken is Marjorie Taylor Greene, the eccentric congresswoman from Georgia who has been elevated by Kevin McCarthy as part of his bid to secure the speaker’s gavel. “Biden didn’t go to East Palestine, Ohio on President’s Day,” Greene tweeted on Monday, referring to the site of a train derailment earlier this month that has triggered deep public health and environmental concerns. “He went to Ukraine, a NON-NATO nation, whose leader is an actor and is apparently now commanding our United States military to world war.”

“We must impeach this America Last fool before it’s too late,” Greene added. 

It might be easier to dismiss Greene’s ravings, even with her recent ascendancy in the GOP House, were it not for the foothold such sentiments have found within the lower chamber’s Republican majority. McCarthy himself put Ukraine assistance in question last fall, when he warned that Zelenskyy would not get a “blank check” from the U.S. under his leadership. The California Republican later walked those comments back a bit—mostly in the form of private assurances to national-security leaders in his party that he was merely expressing a need for spending oversight, not suggesting he’d try to withdraw support for Ukraine. “What we’re saying is there’s going to be some thought, there’s going to be accountability, and taxpayer dollars are going to be used appropriately,” one Republican lawmaker told CNN at the time. Nevertheless, McCarthy’s public remarks seemed to expose deepening fault lines in the US government’s Ukraine policy. “These guys don’t get it,” Biden said on the midterm campaign trail in October. “It’s a lot bigger than Ukraine. It’s Eastern Europe. It’s NATO. It’s real serious, serious, consequential outcomes. They have no sense of American foreign policy.”

For now, the US and Europe remain firmly behind Ukraine, which has continued to mount a formidable defense against Putin’s invaders. Germany last month sent tanks to the Ukrainian defense forces in a significant boost for the nation’s army, something Republicans including Graham have called on the Biden administration to do. Biden is still toeing the line, seeking to aid Ukraine without escalating the conflict beyond its borders. But his administration did take a major step over the weekend, when Vice President Kamala Harris formally accused Russia of committing crimes against humanity in Ukraine and warned China against aiding Putin. “Their actions are an assault on our common values,” Harris said of Russia in an address to the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, “an attack on our common humanity.” 

With his surprise Ukraine visit—which included a tour of Kyiv’s St. Michael’s Cathedral and a stop at the Wall of Remembrance, as air raid sirens sounded through the city—Biden underscored US support for the war-torn country at a particularly perilous moment, as it braces for another aggressive Russian offensive expected this spring. “I thought it was critical that there not be any doubt, none whatsoever, about US support for Ukraine in the war,” Biden said, promising that western backing for Ukraine would “endure.” So far, it has, thanks to Ukraine’s strength and to Biden’s efforts to hold together an international coalition of democracies. “Putin’s war of conquest is failing,” Biden said Monday. The challenge ahead will be for Ukraine to continue its resistance and for its allies to remain unified as the conflict slogs on into its second year, with no clear end in sight.