America seemingly can’t fully back Ukraine in its war with Russia as long as President Donald Trump favors the Kremlin, Sen. Ruben Gallego and a retiring House Republican said.
Speaking at the McCain Institute’s Sedona Forum on May 2, Gallego, D-Arizona, and Rep. Don Bacon, R-Nebraska, voiced a longstanding, bipartisan frustration that the U.S. has played too small a role in a war many see as vital to American interests in checking Russia.
“I think there was a problem in the Biden administration where they didn’t know if Ukraine could win and what a victory would look like,” said Gallego, who was a member of the House Armed Services Committee before joining the Senate in 2025.
“And then you have problem with this administration that I don’t think wants Ukraine to win. This is my personal opinion. … Ukraine is winning right now, and we should make the decisions to make sure that happens.”
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Bacon, who is a member of the House Armed Services Committee, noted that polling shows 70% of Americans support Ukraine in that war.
“America has moral clarity on this,” Bacon said. “I can’t figure out why the White House doesn’t.”
Gallego said he is troubled that the Trump administration is applying pressure to Ukraine to accept what he called “a bad peace deal.”
That, he predicted, would not be honored by Russia and “would really cause the collapse of American leadership around the world.”
Taiwan, Gallego said, would feel pressure to strike some type of deal with mainland China after seeing the U.S. allow Kiev to bend to Moscow. Closer to Ukraine, Moldova and the Baltic states could be the next targets of Russian aggression, he said.
Bacon traces the poor U.S. response in Ukraine back to presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, who were “weak” when Russian President Vladimir Putin entered Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022. Trump, Bacon said, “did a lot better” in his first term on Ukraine, but “he is totally failing right now.”
“There is a moral blind spot here. I don’t understand it,” Bacon said. “It’s pretty clear the president and his team favor Putin. I think that’s just a fact.”
The panel discussion included former Kurt Volker, the former U.S. ambassador to NATO and the founding executive director of the institute at Arizona State University.
“We need to see what the stakes are. It is the fight of all of our generations, of freedom versus tyranny, and we’re not doing our part,” he said.
“I would argue that has been through President Obama, President Biden, President Trump. We are still not living up to this, but I would also say that it’s not too late.”
Volker has played several roles in Ukraine, most notably when he was among those encouraging Trump in his first term to provide the $400 million in military support to Ukraine that Congress had authorized.
In a 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump tried to condition that aid on the announcement of an investigation of Biden and his son’s work with a Ukrainian energy concern. The public revelation of that conversation led to Trump’s first impeachment.
Evelyn Farkas, the institute’s current executive director and the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Ukrainian region in the Obama administration, said U.S. aid to Ukraine has consistently provided “too late, too little.”
“On the other side of the equation, the Russians are incredibly weak. We have a huge opportunity right now,” she said.
America’s international allies in Europe and Asia have started to build up their militaries in response to concerns that the United States is no longer a reliable partner, Farkas said.
“We tell them, don’t give up on us. Don’t give up on us entirely. I do think that our allies understand that there is a debate here in the United States. There’s a political struggle going on about the future of our alliances. … Hopefully they will stay and wait for us.”
The discussion was part of conference themed around “Challenges to American Dominance.” Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Arizona, referenced some of the same ideas as the panel May 1 during his remarks at the conference.
“We’re also entering a new era that will test our leadership in different ways,” he said, citing artificial intelligence and competition from China as examples.
“Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine continues to test the strength of democratic alliances and the principle that sovereign nations have the right to choose their own destiny and their own future,” Kelly said.
“Through all of this, our allies don’t view us the same way they used to. It’s not an exaggeration. They’re asking if we are the reliable partners that they have known.”
Gallego
