Conservatives need a better reference point
I recently logged on to a Zoom call to talk to a friend in Ukraine. She was visibly upset. A Ukrainian language teacher, she had taken on some students in the U.S. Apparently one had decided that Ukrainians were Nazis and Russian President Vladimir Putin was therefore justified in his war on Ukraine. My friend was particularly shocked and hurt because this student’s father was born and raised in Kyiv; she also knew, however, that the mother was a MAGA conservative, and she suspected this had influenced her student’s views.
Sadly, this anecdote is not an isolated event. Rather, it reflects a real and growing conservative backlash against Ukraine. Although there is something deeply wrong with the conservative response to Russia’s invasion, this backlash gets one thing right: The left has captured the narrative on Ukraine.
My ties to Ukraine go back fifteen years. As an Olympic figure skater competing with a Ukrainian ice dance partner, I represented Ukraine for seven years and came to know and love my adopted country. I later pursued graduate studies in international relations with a focus on Russia and Ukraine. I am American and conservative, but my first-hand knowledge of Ukraine has made me immune to the pro-Putin sentiments common in many conservative circles.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, I hoped that tragedy had jolted conservatives back to reality. There were exceptions to conservative support for Ukraine, but these fell outside the mainstream. For once, it seemed that liberals and conservatives agreed on a morally substantive issue: Russia’s actions were evil, and Ukraine’s cause was just.
All this is a distant memory now. Continued Congressional support for Ukraine is uncertain. Several Republican primary contenders are opposed to U.S. military or financial support to Ukraine. Of course some conservatives claim to be personally supportive of Ukraine but opposed to any U.S. funding or involvement; however, their arguments are often surprisingly disconnected from the actual moral, historical, and geopolitical stakes of the conflict. Instead, conservative opposition to US support for Ukraine often goes hand-in-hand with indifference or outright antipathy. Many conservatives have even bought into the Kremlin’s narrative that Ukrainians are Nazis—a gross mischaracterization of a fringe group as representative of a whole society, which, ironically, is reminiscent of some liberals’ efforts to paint all conservatives as white supremacists.
When I listen to Ukraine-skeptical conservatives, their sentiments often have little to do with Ukraine. Some are angry with President Biden and believe his mishandling of the Afghanistan withdrawal invited Russian aggression. They believe that Trump would have deterred Russia and that the 2020 election was rigged. Others simply distrust Biden, so they worry about his handling of Ukraine funding. Some think NATO should be doing more. The list goes on. When their complaints center on Ukraine itself, they often betray ignorance of Ukraine’s history, culture, and people. Some conservatives seem to think that the war is a sibling rivalry that could be easily settled by granting Putin a chunk of eastern Ukraine—if only peace-loving conservatives could talk sense into those corrupt war hawks in the White House and the Ukrainian government.
What is increasingly keeping conservatives from supporting Ukraine? Back in 2015 I was talking with some conservative acquaintances. Our conversation turned to Russia and Putin, and one of my interlocutors commented, “I don’t know much about this, but I figure the enemy of our enemy is our friend.” In other words, he considered the Obama administration to be the enemy of conservatives, and since Obama and Putin were not exactly chummy, Putin was “our friend.” To his credit, my acquaintance listened as I explained my perspective on Putin and Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine; however, I think this anecdote sheds light on some conservatives’ current sentiments.
Many American conservatives have come to define themselves in opposition to liberals; thus if a cause is embraced by the left, conservatives must automatically reject it. The more that cause becomes identified with the left, the more entrenched conservatives become. By 2022, some combination of Putin’s “savior of Western Civilization” propaganda, the Ukrainegate debacle, the Hunter Biden scandal, and wariness of all things NATO and European Union had predisposed many conservatives to be unsympathetic toward Ukraine.
For many, the shock of Russia’s brutal, genocidal invasion was enough to overcome this tendency and secure their strong support for Ukraine’s cause. Pockets of conservative resistance remained, though, and these were amplified in online echo chambers and by popular media personalities. There has been some outstanding conservative media coverage of Ukraine, as well as some courageous demonstrations of support from conservative politicians; however, even in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s march on Kyiv, conservatives never formed a unified, coherent message on Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the left was busily solidifying support for Ukraine using every means at its disposal: the presidential bully pulpit, mainstream media, social media, and even flags and signs on houses. As a result, many conservatives have increasingly come to identify support for Ukraine with the political left and have concluded that they must run as far in the other direction as possible.
In some ways, this response is understandable. I share much of my fellow conservatives’ frustration with mainstream media and the Biden administration. In an article in National Review, Douglas Murray puts it perfectly:
For many conservatives who have gotten into the habit of reacting to the Left more than thinking from first principles, Ukraine and the Ukrainian flags seemed to come on too suddenly and pervasively. It was too much like the last flag-imposition. One month it’s the pride flag, another month the trans flag, another the Ukrainian one. I can see why there is suspicion of this.
Yes, I can see why, too. If I had not already been proudly waving the Ukrainian flag long before the war began, perhaps I would have fallen into this trap. Yet standing at the uncomfortable intersection between American conservatism and wholehearted support for Ukraine, it is painfully clear to me that the “friend of our enemy is our enemy” mentality is compromising conservatives’ ability to think critically about issues of the utmost importance.
I do not enjoy criticizing the conservative movement. As a Christian I am particularly saddened that much of this reactionary anti-Ukraine sentiment is coming from conservative Christians, who should be committed to seeking objective truth in light of eternal Truth. Defining truth in relation to whatever liberals believe at the moment is an odd sort of relativism, but it is relativism nonetheless.
The fact that the strongest, most consistent support for Ukraine is coming from left-leaning media and politicians does not mean that support for Ukraine is fundamentally at odds with conservative values. It means that conservatives have made a moral and strategic error by failing to stand with Ukraine in its hour of need. As the primary season continues and Republican lawmakers duel over Ukraine policy, I can only pray that conservatives will have the humility to do the most radical thing possible in American politics: Admit that some evils are so great they demand bipartisan opposition.
Siobhan Heekin-Canedy is a freelance writer with a background in international affairs. She represented Ukraine as an elite-level ice dancer from 2008 to 2014, including at the 2014 Winter Olympics, and served as the North America Regional Director of the World Youth Alliance from 2020 to 2022.