Conservative writer praises Biden’s ‘excellent’ handling of the Ukraine crisis: 'We are all Ukrainians'

During the 2020 presidential election, some Never Trump conservatives cited foreign policy as one of the reasons why they were supporting Democrat Joe Biden over Republican Donald Trump. Max Boot, Charlie Sykes, Bill Kristol, Steve Schmidt and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough were among the conservative pundits who found it deeply disturbing that Trump and others in the MAGA movement praised Russian President Vladimir Putin while attacking the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. And Biden campaigned on strengthening NATO while Trump went out of his way to undermine it.

Biden, more than a year into his presidency, now finds himself facing a major foreign policy crisis as a Russian invasion of Ukraine appears likely. And Washington Post opinion columnist Boot praises Biden’s handling of the Ukraine crisis in his February 22 column.

“President Biden has done an excellent job of calling out, even preempting, Russian propaganda about Ukraine,” Boot argues. “The U.S. willingness and ability to respond to Russia’s ‘war of words’ have helped build an impressive facade of Western unity — as seen in Germany’s decision Tuesday to suspend the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia. But even such countermeasures are unlikely to prevent Russian strongman Vladimir Putin from proceeding with an actual, rather than simply an oratorical, war.”

Biden has promised to impose tough economic sanctions on Russia if Putin proceeds with an invasion of Ukraine. Boot fears that Putin will go through with the invasion anyway, no matter how much it hurts Russia economically. But he still gives Biden credit for standing up to the Russian president and being really vocal about it.

“Biden and others have called out Putin’s lies, but in the end, it doesn’t matter,” Boot writes. “Dictators and demagogues revel in making their subjects believe the nonsensical: It is a sign of their strength. The same phenomenon is evident in the United States, where former President Donald Trump — Putin’s No. 1 fan — has convinced most of his followers that he actually won the 2020 election.”

Boot quotes the late Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona in his column, noting that in 2014, McCain declared, “We are all Ukranians.”

“Western resolution in the face of Russia’s threat has never been more important — or more evident,” Boot emphasizes. “But Putin has calculated the cost of sanctions, and he is not deterred…. The West must do whatever it can to support Ukrainian patriots. Ukraine’s fight is our fight, too.”