As Russia intensified its aggression toward neighboring Ukraine earlier this week, Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio blasted President Vladimir Putin’s provocations as a “clear violation of international law.”
The co-chair of the Senate’s Ukraine Caucus urged the Biden administration to work with allies to “ensure a coordinated response to this unwarranted continued incursion on sovereign territory of Ukraine.”
But one of the Republicans running to replace the retiring Portman had a very different message.
“I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” J.D. Vance said in a podcast interview. “I’m sick of Joe Biden focusing on the border of a country I don’t care about while he lets the border of his own country become a total war zone.”
The divergent responses to Europe’s most significant foreign policy crisis in generations reflects a divided — and rapidly changing — Republican Party. An old guard, largely centered in Washington, that has long warned of Russian aggression is confronting an ascendant generation of conservatives who openly question why the U.S. should care about Russia’s moves at all.
