Garry Kasparov is the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative and was the 13th world chess champion.
On Friday, Senate Republicans showed they support taking a more forceful U.S. approach to Russia, passing the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act, in honor of the late senator from South Carolina, a stalwart ally of Ukraine. President Donald Trump may play along, if the legislation passes the House, because it expands his tariff authority and ability to sanction Iran. But make no mistake: Trump is almost certain to continue seeming to play on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s side.
After meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last month, Trump promised that Ukraine would be allowed to manufacture its own missiles for the U.S.-supplied Patriot air-defense system. Soon after, Trump announced that, actually, he’d have to think about it.
What’s the point of congressional efforts if Trump still has the discretion to do whatever he wants — which so often seems to echo what Putin wants?
It should be noted that Trump, in his first administration or second, has done little to significantly undermine Putin. I’d like to claim ownership of the now widely tossed-around question: What would Trump do differently if he were a Russian agent? It has been difficult to tell, going all the way back to a 1987 Trump visit to Moscow.
Trump’s reluctance to criticize Putin, much less directly oppose him, is mystifying for a man with no shortage of invective for virtually any other world leader or American politician, even those who started out as his most loyal allies.
This president’s most important metric of his performance is how he is perceived in polls — not policy outcomes, not the long-term good of the country, but what people think of him now. Yet, anything to do with Russia, including the war on Ukraine, is the single exception in which Trump seems happy to ignore polling, disregarding the wishes of Americans and, according to an April Economist-YouGov poll, even the majority of Republicans, who support military aid for Ukraine.
The policy implications of Trump’s attitude toward Russia have real and deadly on-the-ground effects in Ukraine. And now he has groomed a new breed of Republican politicians, who cozy up to authoritarians when expedient and appear to have little use for the long-standing American values of freedom and democracy.
So while it’s hard to hold Trump accountable, at least the Marco Rubios and JD Vances of the party could be punished at the polls if they face the public in future elections. The isolationist Vance wing of MAGA Republicanism is at least open about its hostility to aiding a democratic ally under siege from a U.S. enemy. By contrast, Rubio is more cynical. The secretary of state knows full well what he is doing: He has a record of standing up for human rights, and yet now he has become Trump’s mouthpiece, pushing for Russia-Ukraine peace talks just as Ukraine has been gaining momentum on the battlefield and threatening to turn the tide of the war.
The subtitle of Rubio’s announcement could read: America is buying time for Putin. If the talks last a few months, that could allow sufficient time for Putin to wreak destruction that would wipe out Ukraine’s progress in the war. After all, Ukraine, running out of Patriot missiles, is essentially defenseless against Russia’s missile attacks, and Putin is reportedly gearing up for a mass mobilization of up to 500,000 new service members after parliamentary elections in Russia this fall. What would Trump and Rubio be doing differently if they were not part of the Russian war effort?
Kazakhstan’s president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, made a rare public appeal to Putin to freeze the conflict in Ukraine. Putin dismissed him outright, saying not just that he disagreed with the suggestion but that Tokayev doesn’t understand the nature of war. The statement suggested that Putin’s attitude toward Ukraine has only hardened over time; he appears unwilling to stop under any circumstances, until he achieves his objectives of assimilating the entire eastern Donbas region of Ukraine.
It’s clear that Trump is unlikely to try to stop him and might even facilitate his aims. It becomes, then, more imperative than ever to remind U.S. senators that they are the chief representatives of American values today, and must do everything in their power to provide support to Ukraine. The Senate’s levers include its control over nominations; the House’s include the power of the purse. But with Congress still largely in Trump’s grip, principled lawmakers can at least make a stronger moral case for Ukraine and for defending America’s strategic interests. The alternative is allowing America to become a bystander to the slaughter of the Ukrainian people and opening the door to unknown future atrocities.
Putin has shown no sign that he will stop at Ukraine, and every sign that he will continue on into NATO territory. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported on U.S. intelligence suggesting that Putin could mount a small-scale invasion into a NATO country within the next few years to test the alliance’s resolve. Putin will not stop, but, given America’s institutions, Trump can be stopped, whatever his motivations. And it is Congress’s responsibility to stop his undermining of Ukraine’s self-defense, and to prevent a further escalation of Putin’s war.
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