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President Trump vowed to end the war in Ukraine before he even took office, but that has proven to be harder than he predicted. Ukraine has agreed to the unconditional ceasefire the United States proposed, but Russia has not. As Trump tries, with difficulty, to get a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, public opinion about the conflict has been shifting. NPR's senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson reports.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Public opinion polls show a majority of Americans still favor Ukraine over Russia by big margins. A March Economist/YouGov poll showed 60% sympathize with Ukraine, only 3% with Russia. Dina Smeltz is the vice president of public opinion and foreign policy at the Chicago Council of Global Affairs. Her latest poll on support for aid to Ukraine found something similar. But over time, she says, she's noticed some shifts.
DINA SMELTZ: A majority still want to support Ukraine, but it has slipped. And the reason it's slipped is because the Republicans have tanked, so that's drawing down the overall average.
LIASSON: Republican pollster Bill McInturff says there's a good reason for the softening in Republican support for Ukraine - Donald Trump and Trump's perceived hostility to Ukraine and its leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
BILL MCINTURFF: On this and just multiple other issues, the Republican Party is consolidated. They are enormously supportive of President Trump. President Trump has had the capacity to move and shift the Republican Party to support his views.
LIASSON: But there's a big contradiction in the polling. McInturff says in his survey for NBC, Vladimir Putin continues to be one of the most reviled figures in the U.S. Putin's rating is 84% negative and just 3% positive. That means there are lots of Republicans who love Trump and loathe Putin at the same time. And that's despite Trump's insistence that Putin is a trustworthy negotiating partner, even a kind of foxhole buddy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch hunt, where they used him and Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia - you ever hear of that deal? That was a phony...
LIASSON: Trump is referring to his long-held grievance about the investigation into Russian election interference in 2016. Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, was just as positive about Putin after meeting with the dictator in Russia. Here's Witkoff on Tucker Carlson's podcast.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "THE TUCKER CARLSON SHOW")
STEVE WITKOFF: I don't regard Putin as a bad guy. That is a complicated situation, that war.
LIASSON: Despite all the praise for Putin from the White House, some Republicans in Congress are still willing to express a different view.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
JAMES LANKFORD: Putin is a murderous KGB thug that murders his political enemies and is a dictator.
MIKE JOHNSON: Agent - and he's not to be trusted, and he is dangerous.
ROGER WICKER: Putin is a war criminal and should be in jail for the rest of his life, if not executed.
LIASSON: That was Oklahoma Republican Senator James Lankford on NBC and House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker on CNN. These opinions from Republicans are a rare break with Trump. Right now, there's a widely held view that Trump is eager to force Ukraine but not Russia to make concessions. The fear is that Trump will make a peace deal that would allow Russia to rearm and return in a few years' time to subjugate Ukraine. Marc Thiessen, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, says that analysis is all wrong.
MARC THIESSEN: There's a lot of lazy, conventional-wisdom thinking about Donald Trump that doesn't understand where he is on Ukraine. He doesn't want Ukraine to surrender.
LIASSON: Thiessen says it's more accurate to view Trump's apparent affinity for Putin as a negotiating tactic, and he points to the U.S. proposal to develop Ukraine's mineral resources.
THIESSEN: Look, the fact that he's engaged in this minerals deal and an infrastructure deal is an investment in a sovereign and free Ukraine. And he has an incentive to create a peace deal that will protect that sovereignty and independence 'cause he's going to invest a lot of money in Ukraine. He's not going to pour that all into a country that he thinks is going to get conquered.
LIASSON: Ukraine, Russia, the United States and, yes, even Europe will all have some kind of say in a peace deal, if there is one, and so may public opinion. According to Bill McInturff, this could be one of the rare times that Americans' opinions about foreign policy matter politically.
MCINTURFF: I've spent a long time in my career saying foreign policy matters when American lives are lost or we're in combat.
LIASSON: But, McInturff says, the Ukraine-Russia war may have changed that paradigm because there's been so much engagement and interest in this issue. That means Trump has to decide how much he wants to negotiate a deal between Russia and Ukraine that is broadly acceptable at home. Right now, the Republican base is devoted to Trump but also overwhelmingly negative about Putin. That's a factor Trump may have to take into account as he tries to end a war he says should never have started. Mara Liasson, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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