How to convince MAGA Republicans to support Ukraine

The passage of $61 billion of life-saving supplemental aid for Ukraine by the U.S. Congress in April was a much-needed victory for Ukraine’s supporters. After spending eight months laser-focused on passing Ukraine aid, my team at Razom for Ukraine saw up close how support for Ukraine is evolving in American politics. To safeguard the U.S.-Ukrainian relationship in a tumultuous election year in America, Ukrainian policymakers should understand how to reach out to the most skeptical Americans.

First, the role of constituent pressure in American politics cannot be understated. It may be hard to believe it has a genuine impact, but ordinary constituents picking up the phone to angrily call the office of their member of Congress matters. It matters even more when they show up to town halls to berate or thank their representative.

That’s why Razom focused on the constituents of key members of Congress, especially Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. Across Johnson’s home state of Louisiana, Razom brought Roman Rubchenko, a Ukrainian athlete who took over for Shaquille O’Neill on the Louisiana State University basketball team – a nearly-sacred institution in the state – for a tour with the speaker’s constituents to discuss why supporting Ukraine’s victory matters for them. While Americans tend to be mistrustful of national-level political figures, figures from their own community have far more credibility.

Speaker Johnson is also a devout Evangelical Christian, and his faith is the key driver of his politics and decision-making – after ascending to be speaker of the House, he declared that the best way to understand his worldview is simply by reading the Bible. One day, across the street from the speaker’s church in Shreveport, we made sure a billboard appeared with an image of a destroyed Evangelical church in Berdyansk paired with Johnson’s favorite Bible verse reading, "Speaker Johnson: ‘For Such a Time as This’: Esther 4:14." 

After Razom learned that Speaker Johnson’s favorite Bible verse is a call to aid those in need, the links to Ukraine were clear given Russia’s brutal persecution of Ukraine’s faithful in occupied territories. There were numerous factors that convinced Speaker Johnson to support and eventually pass aid to Ukraine. But highlighting his spiritual connection to Ukraine helped make the need to pass aid deeply personal.

Almost two and a half years into the full-scale invasion, Ukraine and its allies around the world need to adapt their messaging. In the U.S., one of the most important groups to reach out to are former president Donald Trump’s MAGA followers. Many of their primary news sources are eager to spread misinformation about Ukraine, priming them to believe that Ukrainians aren’t deserving of support.

However, we found in polling and firsthand experience that religion is a key way to get through to self-described MAGA voters. While MAGA voters tend to be hostile to aiding Ukraine, sharing stories of how Russian forces persecute, torture, and kill Evangelical Christians in the temporarily occupied territories makes them support Ukraine seven points more than the average American.

The Ukraine Freedom Project is one noteworthy organization working to bring stories of Christian persecution to Republican audiences in America. The Kremlin works hard to portray Vladimir Putin as a devout defender of the traditional Christian faith in part because it is fighting to influence Christians across the world. Russia sees religion as worthwhile messaging space to contest – while it must lie to gain support, Ukraine only needs to share the truth of its religious pluralism and freedom and the reality of how Russia disproportionately targets Protestants and Evangelicals for persecution.

Maintaining bipartisan support for Ukraine is a high priority this year, especially as politicians in the 2024 U.S. elections will work to exploit divisive issues for political gain. Republicans are particularly receptive to messaging that focuses on Ukrainians as a people fighting for freedom against a tyrannical dictator, just as the American colonies did in 1776.

Ukraine continues to occupy a unique and delicate position in American politics. Polls continue to find that the majority of Americans support aid to Ukraine – enough that even former president Donald Trump has dialed back his hostility to Ukraine during the 2024 presidential election.

For years, support for Ukraine has been and continues to be a rare bipartisan issue in Congress. When the Ukraine aid package passed in April, it passed with significant bipartisan support – all Democrats and about half of Republicans. But Ukraine is no longer treated as an exception from the norm of Washington politics. While Ukraine aid easily sailed through Congress in the first 18 months of the full-scale invasion, numerous Republicans in Congress were willing to hold it hostage to extract other political wins – a tactic they increasingly use with "must pass" legislation such as the U.S. government budget.

When Speaker of the House Mike Johnson announced he would put Ukraine aid to a vote because it was the right thing to do, regardless of whether it would cost him his job, he did so because the political winds had shifted. Johnson had been convinced for months of the need to pass Ukraine aid, but he was searching for political cover to advance the legislation.

After a meeting with Trump – who backed Johnson against a leadership challenge – along with promises from Democrats that they would save the speaker if his own party revolted in exchange for Ukraine aid, Johnson felt his job was safe enough to move ahead.

Trump’s blessing was key to passing Ukraine aid. Despite his past statements that he would let Putin "do whatever the hell [he] want[s] with NATO allies not paying their "fair share," Trump remained silent on Ukraine at that moment. Reporting has since emerged that UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron told the former president that if he sabotaged Ukraine aid now, a Russian breakthrough on the battlefield in the early months of a hypothetical second Trump term – early 2025 – could be harmful to Trump politically. Cameron presented a political dynamic similar to how the fall of Kabul to the Taliban was a political disaster for Biden after Trump negotiated the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

For now, neither Biden nor Trump seem interested in campaigning on support (or opposition) to aiding Ukraine. This is, in some ways, beneficial for Ukraine – if support for Ukraine became too closely identified with one presidential candidate, it could become seen as a "Biden issue" or vice versa and alienate voters on the other side. But in the meantime, advocates for Ukraine can and will continue making the case to the American public that regardless of who leads the United States, it isn’t just the right thing to help Ukraine win, but the smart thing for American interests.

This is a critical moment for Ukraine. Russia seeks to exploit America’s failure to arm Ukraine in a timely manner by launching further offensives, such as the current campaign against Kharkiv. Ukraine must endure and shape the battlefield conditions and ready its armed forces to get back on the counteroffensive to liberate those suffering under occupation. The outcome of the U.S. election will in no small part determine the future of international support for Ukraine’s victory. Ukrainians can rest assured that in the United States, someone continues to beat the drum calling for their victory.