Donald Trump’s stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine is motivating some Republicans to abandon their party and vote for Kamala Harris

Immigration and economics loom large on the campaign trail and in the minds of voters, but America’s foreign entanglements could well decide the election.

The Democratic Party is desperately trying to keep debate about the conduct of Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon contained to an intramural row over policy, with marginal electoral impact. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s supporters are engaged in a concerted effort to exploit divisions within the Republican Party to defeat former President Donald Trump.

It’s unclear if either will succeed. But as a result, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza are having outsize impact on key blocs of voters in several swing states, according to voters and analysts interviewed by Rolling Stone.

While both the left and the right are divided over various aspects of foreign policy, the most notable gap between majority public opinion and a candidate’s position is with Trump and his antipathy toward Ukraine.

Despite the fact that Russia invaded Ukraine, Trump inexplicably said in a podcast released last week that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “should never have let that war start. That war is a loser.”

Such views may cost him the election against Vice President Kamala Harris.

“This is the most defining and potentially divisive political issue in the most consequential election in modern times,” says Paul Rieckhoff, a political activist who served in Iraq as a U.S. Army infantry officer, who describes himself as an independent. “I don’t know if there is a single issue where [Trump and Harris] are more clearly different than Ukraine,” he adds.

While statistical models that attempt to predict voter behavior have, perhaps, proven as close to pure science as ornithomancy or astrology, it is clear that this election — like all others for decades — will be decided in a handful of swing states, likely by the narrowest of margins.

In some of those states, voters who in the pre-Trump era formed the moderate Republican center are now abandoning their party’s candidate — and they are doing so over Ukraine.

“Ninety percent of it is because of his ridiculous foreign policy,” says John Feltz, a 58-year-old software engineer in Michigan. Feltz says he is a Republican who refuses to vote for Trump. “He has no discernible principle that I can see, and that’s what the Republican party used to have: principles.”

The vice president’s campaign is pouring resources into attracting voters like Feltz, particularly in Pennsylvania. Last week, Harris began a tour of the battleground state aimed at disaffected Republican voters. She’s particularly hoping to attract backers of former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, whose long-shot bid to secure the GOP nomination showcased her hawkish foreign policy views.

During the only presidential debate between Harris and Trump in Philadelphia in September, the vice president took aim at a bellwether group particularly motivated by the war in Ukraine: Polish-Americans.

“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland,” Harris told Trump. “And why don’t you tell the 800,000 Polish-Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up, for the sake of favor and what you think is a friendship — with what is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch?”

Democrats view Ukraine as an effective lever to move swing-state voters as the issue hits a nerve with many moderate Republicans. Trump’s stance on the war finds resistance even in the deep red South.

Alan Nummy, a 57-year-old EMT from Elmore County, Alabama, says he voted Republican all his life, including for Trump in 2016 and 2020 “with reservations.” This year, Nummy says he “can’t hold his nose any longer,” and will write-in “Nikki Haley” in November because of Trump’s lack of commitment on helping Ukraine and “kicking Russia’s butt.”

“I’m probably 90 percent in line with the policies of his administration, maybe even higher than that,” the Biloxi native assures Rolling Stone. “But I can’t vote for him now because he will not commit to assisting a nation in destroying one of the two largest political enemies of the U.S. — China’s number one, Russia’s number two.”

Ukraine is an obvious vector of attack, because it is an issue where Trump is at odds with the general electorate.

More than 62 percent of Americans say their sympathies lie with Ukraine — including 76 percent of Democrats, but also 58 percent of Republicans and 57 percent of independents, according to research by the University of Maryland.

According to the same study, the number of Americans comfortable supporting Ukraine for “as long as it takes” has been increasing — from 38 percent in March of 2023 to 48 percent in August. A separate study by the University of Chicago and The Associated Press conducted in mid-September shows that people who think the U.S. is providing “too much” support to Ukraine has dropped from 52 percent last year, to 34 percent this year — 60 percent think the aid is “too little” or “the right amount.”

Contrast this with Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and subsequent war in Gaza, where Americans are far more divided. According to the University of Chicago poll, when asked which party they most sympathized with, 25 percent said Israel and 15 percent said the Palestinians — 31 percent are sympathetic to “both equally,” while 26 percent to “neither.”

Further data from the Institute for Global Affairs, a research nonprofit attached to the risk consultancy firm Eurasia Group, indicates regardless of political affiliation, 22 percent of Americans believe the U.S. should end military support for Israel, while 23 percent think it should support Israel unconditionally. The rest of Americans want to see continued military support, but with conditions attached: 34 percent with a ceasefire, and 21 percent dependent on humanitarian aid access.

This lack of consensus on Israel-Palestine is why it has been easy for Harris to simply dodge tough questions about U.S. policy toward the conflict. Her opponent’s other faults — specifically his racism and anti-Muslim bigotry — help explain why it is difficult for motivated Democrats who support Palestine to categorically reject their party’s nominee: They want a shift in policy, not a Trump victory.

“We’re asking for her to commit to enforcing our laws, our international laws on friend and foe alike, which is what we do to Ukraine, which is what we do to everybody else,” Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian-American who serves on Georgia’s state legislature, told NPR on the outskirts of the DNC in Chicago in August. “And that continues to be, and has been, the ask all the time.”

Still, rifts are growing over the Biden administration’s handling of Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon. Arab-Americans, who make up an influential voting bloc in the swing state of Michigan that has traditionally supported Democrats, are now evenly divided on their preferred candidate, according to data from the Arab American Institute.

“In our thirty years of polling Arab-American voters, we have not witnessed anything like the role that the war on Gaza is having on voter behavior,” James Zogby, president of the organization, wrote. “The year-long unfolding genocide in Gaza has impacted every component sub-group within the community.”

History suggests voters motivated by Gaza may find little daylight between the two candidates after the election. Trump — who in 2017 recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel — is fond of claiming, “I did more for Israel than anybody,” and has shown little sympathy toward the Palestinian cause. But while the Biden administration — and by extension the Harris campaign — has at times quietly leaked criticism of Israel’s actions, it has displayed little interest in going to the mat with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over humanitarian aid access or withholding military assistance.

Unlike Gaza, where the two parties differ mostly in how they talk about supporting Israel, there is a deep divergence on Ukraine policy — and that extends to within the Republican Party between MAGA loyalists and GOP hawks.

While most Republicans supported Ukraine at the beginning of the war, as the presidential campaign accelerated so too did discontent with U.S. policy. That’s evident in research showing half of Republicans now think Washington is supplying “too much” aid to Ukraine.

That split has forced GOP politicians to voice mealy-mouthed reservations about aid, primarily focusing on the monetary cost.

“I don’t have an appetite for further Ukraine funding, and I hope it’s not necessary,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) said recently. “If President Trump wins, I believe that he actually can bring that conflict to a close… I think he’ll call Putin and tell him that this is enough.”

Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance, who in 2022 declared “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” has embraced a skeptical role in line with Trump when it comes to Kyiv.

“The problem here vis-à-vis Ukraine is, America doesn’t make enough weapons, Europe doesn’t make enough weapons, and that reality is far more important than American political will or how much money we print and then send to Europe,” Vance said in a visit to the Munich Security Conference in February, where he skipped a meeting with Zelensky, the Ukrainian president.

After becoming Trump’s vice presidential candidate, Vance clarified his stance, describing to an interviewer in September his vision for an end to the war: “What it probably looks like is the current line of demarcation between Russia and Ukraine, that becomes like a demilitarized zone.”

Trump, meanwhile, has promised to end the war “in 24 hours” if he is elected — although he hasn’t provided specific details. But such musings throw into sharp focus his history of undermining Ukraine’s security for personal political advantage.

In 2019, Trump tried to pressure newly inaugurated Zelensky to investigate a number of conspiracies and tie them to Joe Biden, threatening to withhold military aid if he did not. A phone call in which Trump made the demands was reported by a whistleblower on the National Security Council, and formed the core of his first impeachment effort — an attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss resulted in the second.

While the House approved two articles of impeachment, Trump was acquitted by the Senate over the Ukraine affair in a February 2020 vote that split along party lines — with Sen. Mitt Romney being the sole Republican to break with his colleagues. Four-and-a-half years later, and the sordid episode continues to lurk in the background, adding to an uncomfortable atmosphere when Trump met Zelensky last month in New York City.

“We have a very good relationship, and I also have a very good relationship, as you know, with President Putin. And I think if we win, we’re going to get it resolved very quickly,” Trump said in a press conference ahead of the meeting.

“I hope we have more good relations between us,” was Zelensky’s tepid response.

The stench of the Ukraine affair permeates Trump’s legacy on foreign affairs — especially given his repeated and consistent praise of Putin, such as calling the dictator “savvy” and a “genius” on the eve of the 2022 invasion.

Such statements, and Trump’s affinity for a dictator responsible for starting a war that may have already killed more than half a million people, embarrass many Republicans. They also provide fodder for his opponents within the GOP.

“Trump is siding with a dictator who kills his political opponents,” Haley said in South Carolina while still running for the Republican nomination. “Trump sided with an evil man, over our allies who stood with us on 9/11.”

Haley has, of course, ultimately kissed the ring and closed ranks behind Trump. But not every Republican is ready to cast aside principles for their party’s candidate.

Republican Voters Against Trump, a Super PAC started by a group of GOP dissidents and funded by the billionaire venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, has churned out ads and social media posts featuring Republicans talking about Ukraine.

“Why I am extremely against Trump now is his position in Ukraine,” says one ad featuring a voter in Georgia identified as Nikita, a Ukrainian-American. “I’m doing everything in my power to make sure he doesn’t get elected.”

The Super PAC’s founder, Republican strategist Sarah Longwell, says it is spending as much as $45 million to persuade “center-right voters, right-leaning, independent, soft GOP voters, to vote against Trump.”

While such groups are focused on siphoning votes away from the former president, some of Ukraine’s supporters are hedging their bets. They hope to bring the Republican Party back into line with majority opinion, and to do so they are taking aim at two traditionally conservative demographics: veterans and evangelical Christians.

“Republicans by and large support Ukraine. The question you really have to ask is: ‘Who does not support Ukraine?’” says Rieckhoff, who hosts a podcast called Independent Americans and has a long history of political activism. In 2012, Rolling Stone included him in a list of “Leaders Who Get Things Done.”

“People need to understand that J.D. Vance and Donald Trump are in a very radical minority that undermines American national security,” he adds.

The nonprofit Rieckhoff founded in 2004 — Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, more commonly known as IAVA — was essential to the passage of the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, which paid for Vance’s undergraduate studies at Ohio State University. Earlier this year Rieckhoff helped start a new group: American Veterans for Ukraine, or AVU. The goal is to shape American policy toward Ukraine.

“This is the same crew who tried to get people out of Iraq, and out of Afghanistan. It’s a veteran’s Underground Railroad… We want to use our skills and our networks to support and defend democracy,” he says. Although the U.S. has provided billions of dollars in aid to Kyiv and “there is significant philanthropy helping people in Ukraine,” he says, “there is comparatively very little advocacy and lobbying.”

He thinks the lack of behind-the-scenes politicking created the crisis earlier this year, when for nearly six months Republicans in Congress blocked the provision of military aid to Ukraine, taking a cue from Trump.

The former president and his acolytes in Congress were vocal in opposing more money for Kyiv. Despite the dire warnings of the national security and foreign policy establishment, the aid was blocked — with disastrous effects for Ukraine’s defense.

It wasn’t until Johnson met a Ukrainian evangelical named Serhiy Haidarzhy in April, that the newly minted Speaker of the House experienced a Damascene conversion over aid. With Johnson’s backing, Republicans swept away the opposition of MAGA militants, approving a $61 billion Ukraine funding package in a bipartisan show of force.

That meeting with Johnson wasn’t accidental. Ukraine is actively courting America’s conservative Christian right in the hope of strengthening its bulwark of Republican support should Trump regain power in November.

“Speaker Johnson is a great example. He voted nine out of nine times against Ukraine as a rank and file member of Congress. The intelligence briefings gave him the intellectual information to support Ukraine. When he met the Ukrainian evangelicals we brought over, it gave him an emotional and spiritual connection to Ukraine,” says Steven Moore, a 55-year-old GOP operative and Tulsa native, who worked on Capitol Hill for seven years as a Congressional aide — including as chief of staff for former Rep. Pete Roskam, an Illinois Republican.

Moore has a perspective unlike that of most Beltway insiders: After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, he moved to Kyiv and started a nonprofit — one of hundreds of foreigners conducting such grassroots efforts, of varying quality and accountability, that contribute aid to Ukraine’s war effort.

Although he is not a registered lobbyist, he now spends his time networking and connecting Republicans with counterparts in Kyiv. He also works to raise funds for his Ukraine Freedom Project, shooting videos featuring military equipment and sending them to Rotary Clubs across America.

Such outreach is important, Moore says, because “what we find is that for the most part, when you give conservatives accurate information about Ukraine, they come to support Ukraine’s fight for its freedom. Unfortunately, it is difficult to compete with the massive Russian propaganda effort.”

Despite Trump’s claims he can end the war by calling up Putin, any peace deal is outside the power of an American president to accomplish without the cooperation of Ukraine. Ensuring that Kyiv’s calls are picked up in Washington regardless of which candidate sits in the White House is why Ukraine has been trying to build bridges to the GOP.

“I do not see anything surprising if Ukraine is looking for support in all directions,” says Oleksiy Goncharenko, a member of the Verkhovna Rada — Ukraine’s parliament — who is outspoken on foreign affairs.

“Maybe we could have done more, maybe there were mistakes, both with the Republicans and with the Democrats,” concedes Goncharenko. “Our country does not have much experience in promoting itself at such a level. But we welcome the support of the U.S., especially when it comes from both [parties].”

Connecting with American evangelicals has been central to Ukraine’s outreach, as they make up an influential segment of Republicans.

To this end, Zelensky’s government has sought to highlight Russia’s persecution of evangelicals and other religious minorities in the occupied territories under its control. Putin’s regime has kidnapped, tortured, jailed, and even murdered non-Orthodox Christians, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses — regarded as “religious extremists” by Moscow — solely because of their faith, according to findings by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan agency that monitors religious freedom worldwide.

In newly conquered territories in Ukraine, Protestants have paid a terrible price, Moore says, especially evangelical Baptists, who have been singled out for persecution by the Russian military as “American spies.”

“More than half of Republicans identify as evangelical Christians, and 70 percent of evangelical Christians who vote Republican are more likely to support Ukraine when you tell them that Russia is torturing and oppressing Ukrainians like them for their faith,” Moore asserts.

The Zelensky administration has even gone so far as to hold a “National Prayer Breakfast,” similar to the one established in the U.S. in 1953.

The American original is a fixture for Beltway insiders, where global movers-and-shakers rub shoulders in an informal milieu with U.S. lawmakers, who themselves are keen to be seen by evangelicals as visibly straddling the line between church and state. With as many as 3,500 attendees each year, the event is a clearinghouse for influence-peddling.

When the Zelensky administration decided to begin a similar tradition in Ukraine, GOP activists like Moore hoped it would succeed in attracting the conservative Christian right — and it did.

Rolling Stone attended Ukraine’s first National Prayer Breakfast in June, joined by Zelensky and hundreds of people from multiple religious denominations.

The opening speeches were followed by a pre-recorded video address from Speaker Johnson and — much to the surprise of the audience — former Vice President Mike Pence.

Pence’s face suddenly materialized on an array of screens set up around the breakfast hall, his snow-white hair and cold, resolute glare staring out from his pale features. Trump’s former VP delivered a speech praising Ukrainians for their “courage,” reminding the audience of the sacrifices made so that “the blue-and-gold flag still waves over the skies of Ukraine,” as attendees tucked in to their breakfasts and chatted amongst themselves.

“Thank you all for standing with Ukraine… May God bless the people of Ukraine, and freedom-loving people everywhere,” Pence concluded.

Trump’s supporters, of course, erected a gallows and noose while chanting “Hang Mike Pence” during a riot on Jan. 6, 2021, forcing the then-vice president to flee the Capitol.

So while it is unlikely that Pence’s presence at Ukraine’s National Prayer Breakfast convinced any Trump diehards to change their vote, the hope was his presence might help convert less extreme conservative skeptics to Kyiv’s cause. And the effort poured into the event shows that when it comes to a new administration’s policy toward Ukraine — whomever is in the White House — its supporters know victory counts on a lot more than November ballots, or even thoughts and prayers.