Ukraine’s fate depends on a handful of MAGA Republicans

On Monday a former Republican congressman called one of his erstwhile colleagues “Moscow Marjorie”. On Wednesday Ukraine’s president Zelensky said Russia had warped “the information field of the world,” including in the US Congress. 

So what? They have a point. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right congresswoman, is putting out demonstrably false statements about Ukraine (more below) as she resists a bill to supply Kyiv with $60 billion in military aid. The fate of Ukraine may depend on that aid. 

The context is the House speaker, Mike Johnson, is expected to table a vote on the Ukraine bill in the coming days. 

• David Cameron, the UK’s foreign secretary, flew west this week in anticipation of a vote, meeting Donald Trump in Florida and Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, in Washington, alongside other Congressional Republicans. 
• Cameron’s decision to meet Trump “may not feel tasteful, but it’s shrewd,” Leslie Vinjamuri of Chatham House tells the NYT. Trump is sceptical of the war effort and believes he could end it by pressuring Ukraine to give up Crimea and the Donbas region. 
• But one person Cameron did not meet was Johnson – who reportedly could not find time in his diary. 

The problem is that Johnson worries – with reason – that a vote on Ukraine could cost him his job. 

• Republicans have a very narrow majority in the House – the party can afford to lose only two votes even when everyone shows up. Two become one when Wisconsin’s Mike Gallagher resigns on 19 April. 
• Johnson (a Trump ally) can pass legislation with Democratic support, which is how a $1.2 trillion spending package got through last month. 
• But it takes just one member to call a vote on deposing a House speaker, which Greene has already threatened to do. 

Word bombs. “The Ukrainian government is attacking Christians,” Greene claimed in a podcast interview. “The Ukrainian government is executing priests. Russia is not doing that.”

Kremlin-linked trolls have been pushing anti-Ukraine content “every single day”, the Washington Post reports, ranging from fake news articles to amplifying statements linking Ukraine funding to “Americans going without baby formula”.

Glide bombs. While Washington fiddles, Kharkiv braces for impact.

In the past year Russia has halted Ukraine’s 2023 counter-offensive, dug in along its 1000-kilometre Ukrainian front, taken Bakhmut and Avdiivka, threatened settlements further west and re-tooled its economy for 24/7 munitions production.

In the past month it has called up 300,000 more reservists, stepped up attacks on eastern Ukraine’s thermal and hydro power plants and launched almost daily strikes on Kharkiv with drones, missiles and steerable glide bombs with payloads of up to 1.5 tonnes.

In the past week at least 22 civilians including a 14-year-old girl have been killed in attacks on Kharkiv and its surroundings that hit a clinic, a shopping centre, apartment buildings and a petrol station. 

In the past day, the most senior US general in Europe has said Russia is firing five artillery shells for every one Ukraine fires back – and that “the side that can’t shoot back loses”.

Russia’s plans for Kharkiv aren’t yet explicit but the worst case scenario should be taken seriously. Vladimir Solovyov, who commands the megaphone of a weekly show on state TV, says the city should be “wiped from the face of the earth”. 

It wouldn’t be the first time Putin had sacrificed infrastructure for control: he regards the destruction of Mariupol (2022) and Grozny (2000) as personal triumphs.

What’s more… One in five of Kharkiv’s 2.5 million people are already classified as internally displaced. If the city fell it would leave the Russian army poised to encircle Ukrainian forces to the south and complete its occupation of the Donbas.

Note to Marjorie Taylor Greene: what you are saying about Ukraine is not true, and puts an entire continent at risk.

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