Republicans on Capitol Hill have deep misgivings about President Trump’s emerging deal to end the war in Ukraine, as key GOP lawmakers fear the administration could set the stage for further Russian aggression toward NATO allies in Europe.
Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense Chair Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) have led the public criticism of the administration’s pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to accept a deal heavily tilted toward Russia’s demands.
This has put them in direct opposition to Vice President Vance, who is exercising increasing influence over U.S. attempts to broker a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, a Vance ally, has taken over as Trump’s top interlocutor with Ukraine.
The complaints from GOP senators — combined with blowback from Kyiv and across Europe — apparently spurred Trump to direct his negotiators to work more closely with Ukraine to get a balanced deal, after initially saying Ukraine had until Thanksgiving to agree to a 28-point plan that favored Russia.
The reworked 19-point peace plan enticed Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials to accept the agreement — at least preliminarily — while reportedly leaving some key sticking points unsettled.
The details of the revised 19-point plan have yet to be released, but a senior Senate GOP aide told The Hill that if it resembles the plan that circulated last week, which Trump said Tuesday was drafted by his administration, it will be met with more resistance from Republican senators.
“The conference still is wanting to do a Russia sanctions package,” the aide said. “That original was pretty divisive. You’re going to have a number of Republicans, if [the new plan] adheres to that original proposal, express some significant opposition to it.”
Danielle Pletka, a distinguished senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute specializing in foreign and defense policy, said McConnell’s and Wicker’s criticisms of the early draft of the peace plan were “valid” and said the administration is now “listening to the Ukrainians.”
She said the initial 28-point plan that circulated was a “strong-arm tactic on the part of certain people inside the administration to try to bring the pro-Russia position to a head, and I don’t think they succeeded.”
She said the talks are now taking place “in pretty good faith between the White House and Ukraine since Sunday.”
Now the big question is whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will accept peace, and if he does, whether he’ll curb his ambitions to expand Russian territorial control and influence further into Ukraine as well as eastern Europe.
Trump in a Truth Social post Tuesday said a “few remaining points of disagreement” remained between Russia and Ukraine. The Financial Times reported that U.S. and Ukrainian negotiators left some of the most contentious points, such as territorial concessions and security guarantees, “in brackets,” pending further negotiations between Trump and Zelensky.
Trump said Tuesday he directed his special envoy Steve Witkoff to meet with Putin to press Russia to accept the deal and ordered Driscoll to seal the deal with the Ukrainians.
“I look forward to hopefully meeting with President Zelenskyy and President Putin soon, but ONLY when the deal to end this War is FINAL or in its final stages,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Key Republican hawks on Capitol Hill have warned for months that Putin can’t be trusted.
“Putin is a pirate; he’s got Stalin’s taste for blood, that’s clear. The man’s got blood under his fingernails. He is not going to come to the table, in my opinion, until you make it more costly for him not to settle than it is to continue to prosecute the war,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said.
He says the way to get Putin to agree to a real peace deal is to “cut off his cash flow.”
“The way you cut off his cash flow is to stop him from selling oil,” he said.
Kennedy is also pushing a proposal to allow Ukraine to access $300 billion in seized Russian assets to continue to defend itself.
“The Europeans need to release that money — perhaps in tranches of $10 billion a month — to Ukraine and let them buy missiles and take out every petroleum refinery in Russia and every manufacturing plant in Russia that is being used to manufacture munitions or weapons,” he said.
Other Senate Republicans have spoken out against trusting Putin in any deal touching upon U.S. national security interests.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said this summer that he urged Trump to negotiate an end to the war that is a “clear and discernible loss for Russia.”
“Putin is not our friend. He is a KGB thug,” he said.
McConnell, who spearheaded the passage of a $61 billion assistance package for Ukraine last year, has been the most aggressive in confronting Trump over what he says would be a weak deal that undercuts U.S. credibility among its allies and is also unpopular with Trump voters.
“The most basic reality on the ground is that the price of peace matters. A deal that rewards aggression wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written on. America isn’t a neutral arbiter, and we shouldn’t act like one,” McConnell posted Monday on the social platform X, following other statements in which he criticized the emerging deal as “appeasing” Russia.
McConnell warned Sunday that “those who think pressuring the victim and appeasing the aggressor will bring peace are kidding themselves.”
“How does limiting Ukraine’s defenses against future aggression increase the likelihood of enduring peace? The price and stability of peace matters, and our credibility is on the line,” he posted on social media, adding that allies and adversaries are “watching” to see if America will “hold firm against aggression.”
Wicker, who is closely allied with McConnell on defense issues, said last week that the 28-point plan initially circulated by the administration, which was highly favorable toward Russia, had “real problems.”
“I am highly skeptical it will achieve peace,” he said. “Ukraine should not be forced to give up its lands to one of the world’s most flagrant war criminals in Vladimir Putin.”
McConnell aimed directly at Trump’s advisory staff Friday by declaring on social media that “if administration officials are more concerned with appeasing Putin than securing real peace, then the president ought to find new advisors.”
Those criticisms prompted a fiery response from Vance, who has long been an outspoken critic of U.S. military aid to Ukraine.
Vance called McConnell’s statement “ridiculous.”
“I wonder if the three candidates to replace McConnell in Kentucky share his views here,” Vance mused, noting McConnell will retire at the end of next year.