WP: Russian Propagandists Subverting US Support for Ukraine

Internal Kremlin documents show that Russian trolls have been stoking “anti-Ukraine sentiment” among US lawmakers to undermine public support for Ukraine, which Congress has delayed since fall 2023, a Washington Post (WP) article said on April 8.

The publication also cited political strategists who’ve contributed to writing “thousands of fabricated news articles, social media posts and comments that promote American isolationism.”

WP said it based its reporting on “a trove of internal Kremlin documents” that it had obtained from a European intelligence service.

Those documents are dated between May 2022 and August 2023.

Ukraine has ceded territory since US security assistance has stalled and has had to ration weaponry, including air defense capacity, to withstand Russia’s ongoing invasion, which is benefiting from supplies from Iran and North Korea, as well as auxiliary support from China. 

Restrictive measures imposed by the West, Australia and Japan on Russia for war mongering have proven ineffective at stopping its war machine.

WP’s report came on the eve when Congress is scheduled to reconvene after a two-week recess. House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) promised to bring a Senate bill to the floor that includes some $60 billion in funding for Ukraine.

It has been collecting dust for 55 days. 

"Johnson claims to support assisting Ukraine," former US Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer wrote in an opinion piece in Washington-based The Hill. "He has multiple paths to make that happen. But he needs to take action."

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However, more far-right Republicans in the lower legislative chamber are calling for his ouster, most notably, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who is a believer in QAnon conspiracy theories.

“We are losing our country to the illegal invasion – that’s happening every single day at our southern border,” she told former Fox News anchorman Tucker Carlson’s show on X, about the Central and South American migrants that have been crossing the US border by the thousands.

One political strategist the WP cited instructed a “Russian troll farm employee” to post comments posing as a suburban resident of a major city to say that President Joe Biden’s policies are leading the US “toward collapse.”

The strategist also told the alleged troll to “oppose further military aid to Ukraine” and promote that “the money should be spent on America’s border and not Ukraine’s.”

British Foreign Affairs Minister David Cameron is scheduled to visit Washington on April 9 on the day that the House convenes again. 

His office a week ago said that Cameron would meet with his counterpart, Antony Blinken, and press the bicameral legislature to approve more aid for Ukraine. 

A meeting is expected with Johnson as well. 

"Success for Ukraine and failure for [Kremlin leader Vladimir] Putin are vital for American and European security," Cameron said in a statement while adding that it was paramount for Putin to understand that "aggression doesn't pay."

Republicans in the House have a slim two-seat majority who could easily topple Johnson from the speakership, like his predecessor Kevin McCarthy.

Johnson for months has insisted he won’t pass a bill that includes aid for Ukraine without first passing border policies.

“Any funding of the President’s supplemental request [in Congress] should be premised on meaningful policy to help the American people and finally address the invasion at our southern border,” Johnson said in response to Greene’s criticism.

The legislative situation poses a “dilemma,” Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) told NBC News because it is “an existential urgency to get aid to Ukraine…They’re running out of ammo.”

Russian propaganda has "infected" a portion of the Republican Party base, House Foreign Affairs Committee Michael McCaul (R-Tx) told CNN's Jake Tapper on April 7.