WASHINGTON — While Republican lawmakers in Congress are largely publicly loyal and supportive of President Donald Trump’s actions since his return to the White House, some have begun to balk at his decision to reopen the U.S. relationship with President Vladimir Putin and start negotiations to end the war in Ukraine without the involvement of the Ukrainian government.

But while they disagree with Trump’s assessment of the war and Putin as a leader and negotiating partner, few Republicans in Washington are willing to critique the U.S. president’s strategy as he seeks to cut off Ukraine from U.S. support and restore ties with Russia in a bid to end the three-year war. Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine beginning in February 2022 after nearly a decade of fighting in the country’s easternmost regions and the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

“When it comes to blame for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I blame Putin above all others,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally known for his hawkish foreign policy, wrote on Wednesday. “If you’re looking for American politicians to blame, Biden and Obama are at the top of my list. They were pathetically weak in handling Putin and failed to protect Ukraine from invasion.”

Despite Trump declaring Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelenskyy the true dictator of the two countries and blaming Ukraine for starting the war, he is still — according to Graham — “Ukraine’s best hope to end this war honorably and justly. I believe he will be successful and he will achieve this goal in the Trump way.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said in a radio interview on Thursday morning that he had no “questions about this. Putin and Russia are very clearly the aggressor in this conflict,” but declined to criticize Trump’s stance. At a news conference on Wednesday, Thune was asked if he was concerned about Trump’s rhetoric blaming Ukraine for starting the war, but did not answer directly. 

“What I’m in support of is a peaceful outcome and result in Ukraine and I think right now the administration, the president and his team are working to achieve that. And I think right now, you gotta give them some space,” Thune said, later adding, “the president speaks for himself.”

Trump and Vice President JD Vance have long bought into the argument among a growing subset of Republicans that Ukrainian leaders were manipulating the Biden administration into funding and expanding the war for a variety of corrupt, ill-intended and financial purposes egged on by European allies eager for an expanded U.S. military investment on the continent. 

“Neither Europe, nor the Biden administration, nor the Ukrainians had any pathway to victory. This was true three years ago, it was true two years ago, it was true last year, and it is true today,” Vance wrote on social media on Thursday morning. “Russians have a massive numerical advantage in manpower and weapons in Ukraine, and that advantage will persist regardless of further Western aid packages.”

“We must pursue peace, and we must pursue it now. President Trump ran on this, he won on this, and he is right about this,” the vice president added. 

But after decades of aligning themselves with the foreign policy of President Ronald Reagan and a Cold War mentality, many Senate and House Republicans are hesitant to embrace Putin’s Russia over post-World War II European alliances, even as the Republican Party has begun to orient itself around a more isolationist and transactional foreign policy.

“Putin is a war criminal who should be in jail for the rest of his life, if not executed,” Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, the Republican chair of the Senate Armed Services committee, told CNN on Wednesday. 

“I don't know what the scheme is. There may very well be a method to all of this," Wicker said of U.S.-Russian negotiations in Saudi Arabia, but argued European leaders and Ukrainian leaders should be part of the conversation, according to CNN.

The criticisms inside Washington are gentler and more conciliatory than Trump’s Republican foils outside of the capitol — Vice President Mike Pence and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley are among the notable former officials to slam the president’s Ukraine policy. Even Wicker, who called for Putin to be executed for war crimes just days after Trump said he would begin negotiations with the Russian leader, declined to specifically criticize his party’s leader and said Defense Secretary “Pete Hegseth and I are getting along fine” after the U.S. military’s senior-most civilian official appeared to take future NATO membership for Ukraine off the table and rule out Ukraine’s hope to reclaim all of its territory from Russia.

Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy similarly labeled Putin “evil” and said he had a “black heart” and “Stalin’s taste for blood,” but agreed with Trump that European allies “got to start paying their own bills” for their national defense after decades of relying on U.S. military friendship. 

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, who is up for reelection in an increasingly purple state next year and just returned from a visit to Ukraine over the weekend, defended Zelenskyy in the press and said that “Putin’s a murderer… who needs to be stopped,” but that he will give Trump “latitude for now” as he carries out his negotiations. North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer struck a similar tone, telling reporters on Wednesday that Trump was “factually wrong” about Zelenskyy being a dictator and that Ukraine started the war, but that the president was merely flexing his negotiating skills in public and told Ukrainians to “watch Donald Trump masterfully bring an end to the war in your country.”