Midterm elections in the United States: how would support for Ukraine’s war effort be affected if Republicans win?

The U.S. now has a difficult social and economic situation — like many other countries, it is facing an inflation leap, surging energy prices, and a threat of recession. This has a negative influence on voters’ sentiments and gives an advantage to the opposition party.

However, even if we disregard all this, midterm elections in the U.S. are typically won by the opposition party. Therefore, it’s highly likely that Republicans will take the majority in the House of Representatives.

As for the Senate, experts believe that the parties will stay on roughly equal footing, as only part of the seats are up for election.

Republicans have a chance to take control of at least one of the two chambers. However, it’s hard to foretell the way it will happen. If Republicans get the majority in either of the chambers, it will naturally mean their weight in American politics will increase. For a bill to be passed, both chambers must vote for it. It’s not the first time the U.S. has encountered such a situation.

On the contrary, the constitutional system of the United States has been designed to preserve the balance between the President and Congress. It is, in fact, an extremely rare situation where one party controls everything: the president’s office and both chambers of Congress, to say nothing of state legislatures and governors. This is more of an exception.

Donald Trump has quite a peculiar stance with respect to Ukraine. During his tenure, American weapons started to be delivered to Ukraine. However, he never really understood our country, regarding it as being in Russia’s shadow.

Trump’s policy is very capricious and sketchy. Those in his party who share the same standpoint are the Trumpists. So some Republicans support Ukraine while others say, let’s reduce foreign aid or have more oversight of it. Support for Ukraine, in this case, may be questioned.

We should understand that votes in Congress aren’t always strictly aligned with party lines. There can even be a situation where Democrats support a Republican president or vice versa.

It means that, if Democrats support Biden’s course to aid Ukraine, a significant number of Republicans will also back it up. That’s why I think support for Ukraine will remain.

Certain risks may arise because there are Republicans, especially Trump’s backers, who stand for paying more attention to domestic problems.

This is a classical isolationist position: "Money should be spent on our own needs," "We have to be less involved in external affairs," and "America first." There was a time before World War II when this standpoint prevailed, and President Roosevelt had to override it (however, the circumstances favored him as Japan attacked and Germany declared war).

Isolationist positions have long existed in the U.S. Now they are actively promoted among Trump’s faction, but there are also Republicans who are vocal supporters of Ukraine. There are also numerous advocates for the U.S. to pursue an active foreign policy aimed at countering and deterring Russia and China.

This is where Republicans are going to have a problem. They don’t have a consolidated position on these issues. Even those who stand for such an isolationist policy aren’t opposed to helping Ukraine. They would rather speak up as an opposition party to make this assistance more reasonable, more transparent, and to imply no "blank checks", as they say.

I believe there will be no critical changes in the U.S. support of Ukraine, but the process may, in some cases, become slower or more complicated when certain decisions will require legislative approval.

There were several times in U.S. history, both under Obama and under Trump, when debates around the federal budget became so heated that it stuck for several months. This was when the lower house, which was controlled by the opposition party, didn’t adopt a budget prepared by the presidential administration.

In theory, such problems may arise this time too, because a large part of the assistance is implemented through budget allocations. There’s a problem here. There is indeed Lend-Lease, which will be working, but the adoption of specific bills or additional discussions may be slowed.

However, it can also be to the contrary. On some issues, the same republicans may stand for more active support for Ukraine. In particular, it may be the provision of aircraft to Ukraine. At one time, Obama was opposed to giving Ukraine any lethal weapons, which has proved to be an erroneous position.

When reacting to the criticism of his pro-Russian position, he denounced it in practice by giving Ukraine Javelins. So there may be some paradoxical effects here. Some budgetary issues may take more time to be resolved or incite discord between the lower house of Congress and Biden’s administration, which would imply major risks for us. There may also be some legislative initiatives to the benefit of Ukraine.

Therefore, the effect will be ambiguous. Bipartisan support for Ukraine will endure as there’s a consensus regarding it, but the number of representatives sharing isolationist views may increase, implying additional risks for us.

We have to clearly demonstrate that, even in a time of war, Ukraine remains a democratic country, that we proceed with transformations and fight corruption, and that American aid is generally effectively used.

The only thing we shouldn’t interfere in is the U.S. domestic political struggle. This was the case in 2016, when most Ukrainian politicians supported Hillary Clinton, and she eventually lost. After that, Donald Trump tried to involve us in his domestic partisan campaign against Biden, and we narrowly escaped trouble.

Let’s recall the year 2019 when Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected, and Andrii Yermak was tasked with international affairs, for which he absolutely lacked experience. It could have negative results for Ukraine. Back then, we managed to resist and not get involved in that domestic American debate.

I think this is an important and necessary thing to do in the future. It means that while we have bipartisan support for Ukraine, we need to work with both Democrats and Republicans to maintain this support.

I believe Congress needs more active and targeted diplomacy from Ukraine, and we’ll have to work more with Republicans and convince them to be our allies since we do have allies and partners there.

We’ll have to increase their number and thus influence the decisions of the Republican caucus in Congress.