In just three weeks, President Donald Trump has exploded long-standing U.S. foreign policy and sided with Russia against Ukraine and the rest of NATO. He sent American diplomats to open negotiations with Russian counterparts—without inviting Kyiv to participate. He falsely blamed Ukraine for starting the war with Russia, and echoed the Kremlin line by calling Ukrainian President Zelensky a “dictator.” Then, in a press conference on Monday, Trump declined to say the same of Putin. “I don’t use those words lightly,” he told a reporter.

Most Republicans strongly condemned Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and have voted on multiple occasions to send the country military aid. But with their party’s leader back in the White House, many of them have grown quiet. Are any GOP lawmakers willing to say, in plain terms, what is true?

I reached out to all 271 Republican members of the House and Senate to find out, asking each of them two straightforward questions: Did Russia invade Ukraine? And is Putin a dictator? So far, I have received 19 responses.

Some members were unambiguous: “Yes and yes,” a spokesperson for Senator Susan Collins of Maine replied in an email. “Vladimir is undisputedly an enemy of America and a dictator,” read part of the statement from the office of Representative Jeff Hurd of Colorado.

Others chose to send excerpts of previous non-answer statements or links to past TV interviews rather than answer either “yes” or “no.” A spokesperson for the GOP’s House leader, Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, replied only with a readout of Johnson’s praise for Trump’s deal-making prowess. A spokesperson for Senator Ted Cruz of Texas replied with a link to an interaction with ChatGPT in which the chatbot noted that Cruz had in 2022 acknowledged Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and did in 2020 call Putin a dictator. (Still, no straightforward “yes” from Cruz today.)

The House Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Representative Brian Mast of Florida, opted to stake out a position that seemed different from Trump’s: The panel posted a screenshot of our questions on X, with the caption: “ON THE RECORD: Russia invaded Ukraine & Putin is a dictator. But that doesn’t mean our European allies shouldn’t match Russian military spending & recruitment.” (Another post referred to our questions as “BS.”) The Atlantic followed up to ask whether this statement represented Mast’s personal view, but received no further response.

Others refused to answer entirely: “Does the Atlantic believe we’re here to answer gotcha questions to advance narrow opinion journalism?” Jonathan Wilcox, communications director for Representative Darrell Issa of California, said in an email.

In fact, it is clearly in the public interest to know how elected officials, particularly those who make decisions about national security, regard foreign powers that have long positioned themselves against the United States. And it is also clearly in the public interest for citizens to know if their representatives’ views have shifted on who is—or is not—a foreign adversary.

What follows is the full list of responses from every Republican member of Congress. It will be regularly updated with any additional responses.

Lawmakers Who Answered the Questions

Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska: A spokesperson pointed to a statement on X from Bacon on February 19, in which he said: “Putin started this war. Putin committed war crimes. Putin is the dictator who murdered his opponents. The EU nations have contributed more to Ukraine. Zelensky polls over 50%. Ukraine wants to be part of the West, Putin hates the West. I don’t accept George Orwell’s doublethink.”

Representative Michael Baumgartner of Washington: “The Congressman expressed all his thoughts on the Russia-Ukraine War to the Spokane-Review on February 19. He was very clear that Russia and Vladimir Putin were the aggressors of the war in Ukraine,” a spokesman said, adding this link.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine: “As Senator Collins has said multiple times, yes and yes,” a spokesperson said.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas: A spokesperson shared this link, pointing to earlier statements the senator had made about Putin and the Ukraine war.

Senator John Curtis of Utah: A spokesperson pointed to Curtis’s bipartisan resolution supporting Ukraine and a February 25 interview on KSL NewsRadio, in which Curtis said, “Ukraine was invaded by a dictator.”

Representative Julie Fedorchak of North Dakota: “Yes, Vladimir Putin and Russia invaded Ukraine and yes, he is a dictator,” the representative told me. “This war has cost countless lives and destabilized the world. I believe President Trump has the strength and leadership to bring peace and restore stability in a way that puts America’s interests first.”

Representative Jeff Hurd of Colorado: “Did Russia invade Ukraine? Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was an unprovoked act of war. Russian President Vladimir Putin is a dictator? Vladimir is undisputedly an enemy of America and a dictator. It is dishonorable and wrong not to stand up against the tyranny of Putin,” a spokesperson said.

Representative Young Kim of California: “Yes to both,” a spokesperson said.

Representative Brian Mast of Florida: A spokesperson for Mast sent a link to a post on X from the House Foreign Affairs Committee calling The Atlantic’s inquiry “BS” and declaring it would cancel its subscription to our magazine. “ON THE RECORD: Russia invaded Ukraine & Putin is a dictator. But that doesn’t mean our European allies shouldn’t match Russian military spending & recruitment. Europe must realize that for our alliance to be the strongest in history, America needs a Europe that can hold its own.”

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska: A spokesperson sent a link to a statement in which the senator said that Russia launched an “unprovoked war on Ukraine.” The spokesperson added: “And yes, she does believe that Vladimir Putin is a dictator.”

Representative Austin Scott of Georgia: “Russia invaded Ukraine and is the aggressor in this war,” the representative told me. “Putin is a dictator who has invaded Ukraine multiple times—this war would end today if he would pull his troops back into Russia.”

Senator Todd Young of Indiana: “Yes and yes,” a spokesperson said.

Lawmakers Who Responded But Did Not Directly Answer the Questions

Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas: A spokesman provided a link to an interview with Piers Morgan in which Crenshaw cautioned against returning to a pre-World War II order allowing “dictators to conquer other countries and take their stuff.”

Representative Warren Davidson of Ohio: A spokesperson said the representative declined to comment.

Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa: “Like all Americans, Ernst wants to see an end to Putin’s unjust war that has cost far too many lives,” a spokesperson said

Representative French Hill of Arkansas: A spokesperson did not address the question of whether Putin is a dictator, but sent a link to an Arkansas PBS interview in which the representative said, “this war was started by Vladimir Putin,” and that “Ukraine has to be at the table” for any peace deal

Representative Darrell Issa of California: A spokesperson said, “Does the Atlantic believe we’re here to answer gotcha questions to advance narrow opinion journalism?”

Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana: A spokesperson sent over Johnson’s recent comments during this week’s GOP leadership press conference about Trump’s dealmaking skills and his desire for peace in Ukraine, but did not answer either question directly.

Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama: A spokesperson did not answer directly but sent a link to an interview with Newsmax, in which the senator said, “President Trump is not a Putin apologist. He just wants to get the war over with.”

Senate Republicans Who Have Not Responded

Jim Banks
John Barrasso
Marsha Blackburn
John Boozman
Katie Britt
Ted Budd
Shelley Moore Capito
Bill Cassidy
John Cornyn
Tom Cotton
Kevin Cramer
Mike Crapo
Steve Daines
Deb Fischer
Lindsay Graham
Charles Grassley
Bill Hagerty
Josh Hawley
John Hoeven
Jon Husted
Cindy Hyde-Smith
Ron Johnson
Jim Justice
John Neely Kennedy
James Lankford
Mike Lee
Cynthia Lummis
Roger Marshall
Mitch McConnell
Dave McCormick
Ashley Moody
Jerry Moran
Bernie Moreno
Markwayne Mullin
Rand Paul
Pete Ricketts
James Risch
Mike Rounds
Eric Schmitt
Rick Scott
Tim Scott
Tim Sheehy
Dan Sullivan
John Thune
Thom Tillis
Roger Wicker

House Republicans Who Have Not Responded

Robert Aderholt
Mark Alford
Rick Allen
Mark Amodei
Jodey Arrington
Brian Babin
James Baird
Troy Balderson
Andy Barr
Tom Barrett
Aaron Bean
Nick Begich
Cliff Bentz
Jack Bergman
Stephanie Bice
Andy Biggs
Sheri Biggs
Gus Bilirakis
Lauren Boebert
Mike Bost
Josh Brecheen
Rob Bresnahan
Vern Buchanan
Tim Burchett
Eric Burlison
Ken Calvert
Kat Cammack
Mike Carey
John Carter
Earl Buddy Carter
Juan Ciscomani
Ben Cline
Michael Cloud
Andrew Clyde
Tom Cole
Mike Collins
James Comer
Eli Crane
Jeff Crank
Eric Rick Crawford
Monica De La Cruz
Scott DesJarlais
Mario Diaz-Balart
Byron Donalds
Troy Downing
Neal Dunn
Beth Van Duyne
Chuck Edwards
Jake Ellzey
Tom Emmer
Ron Estes
Gabe Evans
Mike Ezell
Pat Fallon
Randy Feenstra
Brad Finstad
Michelle Fischbach
Scott Fitzgerald
Brian Fitzpatrick
Charles Chuck Fleischmann
Mike Flood
Vince Fong
Virginia Foxx
Scott Franklin
Russell Fry
Russ Fulcher
Andrew Garbarino
Brandon Gill
Carlos Gimenez
Craig Goldman
Tony Gonzales
Lance Gooden
Paul Gosar
Sam Graves
Mark Green
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Morgan Griffith
Glenn Grothman
Michael Guest
Brett Guthrie
Harriet Hageman
Abe Hamadeh
Mike Haridopolos
Pat Harrigan
Andy Harris
Mark Harris
Diana Harshbarger
Kevin Hern
Clay Higgins
Ashley Hinson
Erin Houchin
Richard Hudson
Bill Huizenga
Wesley Hunt
Brian Jack
Ronny Jackson
John James
Dusty Johnson
Jim Jordan
David Joyce
John Joyce
Thomas Kean
Mike Kelly
Trent Kelly
Mike Kennedy
Jennifer Kiggans
Kevin Kiley
Brad Knott
David Kustoff
Darin LaHood
Nick LaLota
Doug LaMalfa
Nicholas Langworthy
Robert Latta
Michael Lawler
Laurel Lee
Julia Letlow
Barry Loudermilk
Frank Lucas
Anna Paulina Luna
Morgan Luttrell
Nancy Mace
Ryan Mackenzie
Nicole Malliotakis
Celeste Maloy
Tracey Mann
Thomas Massie
Michael McCaul
Lisa McClain
Tom McClintock
Richard McCormick
Addison McDowell
John McGuire
Mark Messmer
Daniel Meuser
Carol Miller
Mary Miller
Max Miller
Mariannette Miller-Meeks
Cory Mills
John Moolenaar
Barry Moore
Blake Moore
Riley Moore
Tim Moore
Nathaniel Moran
Greg Murphy
Troy Nehls
Dan Newhouse
Ralph Norman
Zach Nunn
Jay Obernolte
Andrew Ogles
Bob Onder
Burgess Owens
Gary Palmer
Scott Perry
August Pfluger
Guy Reschenthaler
Hal Rogers
Mike Rogers
John Rose
David Rouzer
Chip Roy
Michael Rulli
John Rutherford
Maria Elvira Salazar
Steve Scalise
Derek Schmidt
David Schweikert
Keith Self
Pete Sessions
Jefferson Shreve
Michael Simpson
Adrian Smith
Christopher Smith
Jason Smith
Lloyd Smucker
Victoria Spartz
Pete Stauber
Elise Stefanik
Bryan Steil
Greg Steube
Dale Strong
Marlin Stutzman
Dave Taylor
Claudia Tenney
Glenn GT Thompson
Thomas Tiffany
William Timmons
Mike Turner
David Valadao
Jefferson Van Drew
Derrick Van Orden
Ann Wagner
Tim Walberg
Randy Weber
Daniel Webster
Bruce Westerman
Roger Williams
Joe Wilson
Tony Wied
Robert Wittman
Steve Womack
Rudy Yakym
Ryan Zinke

With additional research and reporting by Amogh Dimri, Marc Novicoff, Gisela Salim-Peyer, and Annie Joy Williams.

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This week, Donald Trump falsely accused Ukraine of starting a war against a much larger neighbor, inviting invasion and mass death. At this point, Trump—who has a history of trusting Russian President Vladimir Putin more than he trusts the Americans who are sworn to defend the United States—may even believe it. Casting Ukraine as the aggressor (and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “dictator,” which Trump did today) makes political sense for Trump, who is innately deferential to Putin, and likely views the conflict as a distraction from his own personal and political agendas. The U.S. president has now chosen to throw America to Putin’s side and is more than willing to see this war end on Russian terms.

Repeating lies, however, does not make them true.

Russia, and specifically Putin, launched this war in 2014 and widened it in 2022. The information and media ecosystem around Trump and the Republican Party has tried for years to submerge the Russian war against Ukraine in a sump of moral relativism, because many in the GOP admire Putin as some sort of Christian strongman. But Putin is making war on a country that is mostly composed of his fellow Orthodox Christians, solely based on his own grandiose fantasies.

The most important thing to understand about the recent history of Russian aggression against its neighbors, and especially against Ukraine, is that Putin is not a product of “Russia” or even of Russian nationalism. He is, in every way, a son of the Soviet Union. He is a man of “the system,” the kind of person who, after the fall of the U.S.S.R., was sometimes called a sovok, which translates roughly into “Soviet guy”—someone who never left the mindset of the old regime. (This is a man who, for example, changed the post-Soviet Russian national anthem back to the old Soviet musical score, with updated words.)

Some in the West want to believe that Putin is merely a traditional player of the game of power politics. This is nonsense: He is a poor strategist precisely because he is so driven by emotion and aggression. His worldview is a toxic amalgam of Russian historical romanticism and Soviet nostalgia; he clearly misses being part of an empire that dared to confront the West and could make the rest of the world tremble with a word from Red Square. (This Sovietism is one reason for his bone-deep hatred of NATO.) He sees himself as the heir to Peter the Great and Stalin, because the greatest days of his life were the mid-1970s, when he was in his 20s and the Soviet Union he served so faithfully looked to be ascendant over the declining United States.

Putin’s Soviet nostalgia prevents him from seeing the other nations that emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet collapse as actual countries. He knows that their borders were drawn by Stalinist mapmakers in Moscow (as were those of the current Russian Federation, a fact that Putin ignores most of the time), and he resents that these new states fled from the Kremlin’s control as soon as they were able to leave. He is especially stung by the emergence of an independent Ukraine; back in 2008, he made a point of telling President George W. Bush that Ukraine was not a real country.

For years, Putin claimed that he had no interest in reconstituting the U.S.S.R. or the Russian Empire. He may have been lying, or he may have changed his mind over time. But when Ukrainians deposed a pro-Russian leader in 2014 and drove him out of the country, Putin lashed out in fury, ordering the seizure of Crimea, a Russian-majority area that was historically part of Russia but was transferred to Ukraine during the Soviet period. This was the true beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war.

The Russians camped on these territories for years, “freezing” the conflict in place while Ukraine and the West tried carrots and sticks, eventually realizing that Putin was never going to cede any of the ground he’d stolen. The situation might have remained in stasis forever had Putin not decided to try to seize the entire Ukrainian nation of some 40 million people and almost a quarter of a million square miles.

Why did Putin throw the dice on such a stupid and reckless gamble? Trump and many of his supporters answer this question with chaff bursts of nonsense about how the Russians felt legitimately threatened by Western influence in Ukraine, and specifically that Ukraine brought this nightmare on itself by seeking to join NATO. The Russians, for their part, have made similar arguments. NATO membership has for years been an aspirational goal for Ukraine, one that NATO politely supported—but without ever moving to make it happen. (Once Putin invaded, NATO and Ukraine sped up talks, in another example of the Russian president bringing about events he claimed to be stopping.)

Putin himself tends to complicate life for his propagandists by departing from the rationalizations offered by the Kremlin’s useful idiots. Trump and other Western apologists would have an easier time of explaining away the war if the man who started it would only get on the same page as them; instead, Putin has said, many times, that Ukraine is Russian territory, that it has always been and will always be part of Russia, that it is full of Nazis, and that it must be cleansed and returned to Moscow’s control.

One possibility here is that Putin may have dreamed up a quick war of conquest while in COVID isolation, where only a tight circle of sycophants could regularly see him. These would include his defense and intelligence chiefs, along with a small coterie of Russian clerics who have for years been trying to convince Putin that he has a divine mission to restore the “Russian world” to its former greatness, a project that dovetails nicely with his constant anger about the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In any case, the Russian president’s decision to go to war was his own, a plot cooked up in the Kremlin rather than being the unforeseeable result of some kind of ongoing geopolitical crisis. Here, Putin was the victim of his own form of autocratic government: No one around him had the courage (or perhaps even the proper information) to warn him that his military was in rough shape, that the Ukrainians had improved as fighters since the seizure of Crimea, and that the West would not sit by the way it did in 2014. Western experts got some of this wrong too—back in 2022, I was very worried that Russia might win the war quickly—but Putin was apparently fed a farrago of reassuring lies about how Russian troops would be greeted as liberators.

All anyone needs to know about “who started it” is in the conflict’s timeline: In 2014, Putin vented his rage at Ukrainians for actually choosing their own form of government by seizing large swaths of eastern Ukraine—thus ensuring that the remainder of the country would become more united, pro-Western, and anti-Russian than ever before. Eight years later, the Russian dictator came to believe that Ukraine was ready to fall into his hands, and he embarked on a war of conquest. When Ukraine held together in the face of the 2022 Russian invasion and began to inflict severe casualties on the Russians, Putin resorted to war crimes, butchering innocent people, kidnapping Ukrainian children, and attacking civilian targets as a way of punishing Ukraine for its insolence.

This is the reality of the Ukraine war. Some Republicans, such as former Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Roger Wicker, the chair of the Armed Services Committee, know all this, and have told the truth. If only Donald Trump knew it too.

Related:

The party of Reagan is selling out Ukraine. Listen closely to what Hegseth is saying.

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A year ago this week, Senator John Thune and 21 of his Republican colleagues defied Donald Trump and voted to send $60 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine as it tried to ward off Russia’s invasion. “America cannot retreat from the world stage,” the South Dakota senator later said, explaining his vote. “American leadership is desperately needed now more than I think any time in recent history, and we need to make sure that Ukraine has the weaponry and the resources that it needs to defeat the Russians.”

The vote was gutsy: It drew a rebuke from Trump, who was then heavily favored to capture the GOP presidential nomination. And it was taken even though the bipartisan bill faced uncertain odds in the House, until Speaker Mike Johnson backed it two months later. The measure passed, and assistance continued to flow to Kyiv.

Twelve months later, Ukraine’s future is even more imperiled. Over the past week, the Trump administration has made clear that the United States will no longer be Kyiv’s largest and most crucial supporter, and that it might sideline Ukrainians from negotiations meant to bring an end to the war. But the response from Republicans has been noticeably different. Thune, now Senate majority leader, has remained silent, as have many of his GOP colleagues. He did not respond to interview requests this week.

[Read: The accidental speaker]

Republican capitulation to Trump is a familiar story line, but the moment is nonetheless worth marking. With a few, mostly timid exceptions, the party that once prided itself on standing up to Moscow—the party of Cold Warriors Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush—has bowed to a president who himself is bowing to an adversary. And as Trump officials yesterday embarked on negotiations with their Russian counterparts that could reward Vladimir Putin’s gamble on seizing territory from a sovereign neighbor, Republicans faced a new, extraordinarily high-profile test: whether to prioritize their long-held national-security beliefs or their loyalty to the president.

“The founders intended Congress to be first among equals of the three branches of government, [but] you’d be hard pressed to know it though looking at today’s Republican-controlled Congress,” Richard Haas, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, told me. Haass, who worked in three previous Republican administrations, said that Republicans have been “not just subservient but invisible,” while “not holding hearings or otherwise challenging the Trump administration’s unconditional embrace of Putin’s Russia, the dismissal of Europe’s interests and Ukraine’s demands.”

No representatives from Ukraine or other European nations were present at a hurriedly arranged meeting between U.S. and Russian officials yesterday in Saudi Arabia. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters afterward that Russia and the United States had agreed to work on a Ukraine peace deal and to explore “the incredible opportunities that exist to partner with the Russians” both geopolitically and economically. The message amounted to a dizzying change from President Joe Biden’s isolation of Moscow after the Ukraine invasion, which many Senate Republicans broadly supported.

Last week, Trump’s White House signaled a fundamental shift in relations with both Europe and Russia by stridently dismissing longtime democratic allies while looking to re-establish ties with the nuclear-armed autocracy to the east. The president prioritized a call with Putin over one with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and invited the Russian leader, and not the Ukrainian one, for multiple summit meetings. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ruled out Ukraine joining NATO or receiving substantial future American security guarantees as part of the negotiations to end the war. Vice President J. D. Vance upbraided European leaders for freezing the far right out of government in their nations. And then yesterday, at a Mar-a-Lago news conference, Trump chided Ukraine for the conflict, snapping, “You should never have been there,” and ignoring that it was Russia that invaded.

[Read: The day the Ukraine war ended]

Some Republicans in the Senate offered outright support for Trump’s Putin-friendly view of American security. “I don’t think anybody really believes Ukraine should be in NATO now,” Senator Eric Schmitt told reporters last week. “Unless you want World War III.”

Others took a more measured approach, expressing the wish that the U.S. would still support Ukraine—or at least not yield to Putin—while still avoiding outright criticism of Trump. Senator John Cornyn, who voted for the aid package last year, told reporters after Trump’s call with Putin, “Ukraine ought to be the one to negotiate its own peace deal. I don’t think it should be imposed upon it by any other country, including ours. I’m hopeful.” But he added: “I can’t imagine President Trump giving up leverage. I don’t know what his strategy is for negotiating, but he’s pretty good at it. I think it surprises people, including me, sometimes what he’s able to pull off.”

Few represent the Republican Party’s evolution more than Senator Lindsey Graham, who spent years as the late Senator John McCain’s wingman, earning a reputation as a globe-trotting national security hawk. But he has since become one of Trump’s most obsequious supporters, often offering over-the-top praise of the president in a way that McCain would not have recognized. Over the weekend, Graham highlighted Trump’s plan to seize half of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals as payment for the United States’ support of Kyiv in the war, praising the scheme as “a game-changer.”

Zelensky immediately declined the proposal. But only a few Republican senators—including Mitch McConnell and Susan Collins—publicly opposed Trump’s concessions to Russia. “This was an unprovoked, unjustified invasion,” Collins told reporters. “I appreciate that the president is trying to achieve peace, but we have to make sure that Ukraine does not get the short end of a deal.” Senator Roger Wicker criticized Hegseth’s declaration last week that Ukraine would not recover its territory, deeming the statement a “rookie mistake” on the world stage. But the White House believes those voices of GOP dissent will stay in the minority, a senior administration official told me under the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy.

[Read: Trump is remaking the world in his image]

Trump has been eager to strengthen ties with Putin and asked aides to schedule a summit with the Russian leader in the weeks ahead, the official said. The president has told aides he believes that resetting relations with Russia reduces the chances of a nuclear war and will allow the U.S. new economic opportunities. American officials who spoke to reporters after the Riyadh meeting suggested that Biden-era sanctions on Russia could be lifted, and they did not spend much time in their briefing with reporters discussing Moscow’s violation of international law in invading Ukraine or the war crimes allegations against Putin for the attacks.

Instead, Rubio, whose own views have seemingly evolved since his time in the Senate as a Russia hawk who supported NATO, made a point to repeatedly praise Trump’s approach to Russia. “For three years,” Rubio said, “no one else has been able to bring something together like what we saw today, because Donald Trump is the only leader in the world that can.”

Thom Tillis, another Republican senator who strongly supported the funding bill a year ago, has continued to support Kyiv even though he cast the deciding vote to confirm Hegseth. Tillis, in fact, made a trip to Kyiv on Monday with two other senators, pledging support for the war effort even as the Trump team was landing in Riyadh to begin negotiations without Ukraine.

“I believe, first, we should understand that this is just the beginning of a dialogue. There is no specific framework that’s been mapped out yet,” Tillis said. “We expect that that will come to pass very quickly, we hope, and that Ukraine has to be front and center as a part of the negotiations to make sure that it’s something sustainable.”

Tillis then turned to his colleagues for validation. Both assented. But both were Democrats.