WASHINGTON -

The Republican Party has not reached a full consensus on the degree to which Russia's invasion of Ukraine should be condemned, at a time when many of the party's leaders have been widely critical of President Joe Biden's performance in the face of the ongoing crisis.

Although the Republicans did not follow the example of former President Donald Trump in directing a torrent of praise to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Republicans unanimously agreed on the weakness of President Biden and the inability of his administration to rise to the level of the severity of the current crisis.

While most Republicans have dismissed Putin's actions in Ukraine and called for swift and sharp sanctions, others close to former President Trump echoed a much less hostile view of President Putin.

And the Republicans took their position by attacking Biden, taking advantage of his low popularity to record levels, and in anticipation of the midterm elections in Congress less than 9 months from now.


The criminal Putin and the weak Biden

Many traditional Republicans blamed Biden's "weak" foreign policy for encouraging Putin to launch the invasion, but they retained their harshest rebukes of Russian President Putin.

South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham tweeted, criticizing President Biden and attacking President Putin at the same time, and said, "The Biden administration continues to misread this moment. A war criminal, we ask our allies to join us."

Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader in the Senate, criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin in the wake of his country's invasion of Ukraine, and McConnell criticized the sanctions imposed by President Biden during the past days and hours as insufficient.

McConnell attacked President Biden, and on Thursday told reporters that the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan last year was "a call to dictators around the world that perhaps this is the time to do something."


Trump supporters, America first

Although the supporters of this current adopted an isolationist position in support of ending the US military involvement abroad and in the endless battles, a number of Republicans attacked President Biden for his failure to commit to full military intervention in defense of Ukraine.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine provided an opportunity for a number of Republican members of Congress who do not deny their full loyalty to former President Donald Trump, and the invasion provided an opportunity for them to attack the Russian President without fear of angering President Trump, especially as they severely attack President Biden at the same time.

Right-wing lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Green tweeted, "It's no surprise to anyone that Putin invaded Ukraine, Biden gave him the green light by saying the United States would not go to war against Russia."

Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri said - in a statement - that "Russia's brutal attack and invasion of Ukraine must be met with strong American determination. President Biden must act now to harm President Putin, starting with Russia's energy sector, and the Biden administration must Sanctions and halts Russian energy production, and helps arm Ukrainians to defend themselves."


US Energy Weapon

Republicans also attacked Biden against the backdrop of his decisions taken in his first week in office related to closing and reducing conventional energy production from gas and oil, in addition to closing the giant Keystone pipeline, and banning the extraction of oil from shale.

Republicans considered that Biden's policies allowed the doubling of the power of Russia's energy weapon in the face of Washington's main allies in Western Europe.

Stephen Miller, a former political advisor to President Trump, tweeted and attacked Biden's energy policies, which he saw as implicitly supporting President Putin.

"The decision to shut down his country's energy production will be remembered as one of the biggest self-inflicted mistakes in history," Miller said. "It's tantamount to sinking your warships. The Republican Party should press for a vote to get America's energy resources back on and off immediately."

Miller added that former President Trump knew that a strong, self-confident, energy-independent America - whose economy is booming, whose citizens are proud of their country and of themselves, and whose interests and unparalleled military might - means the world lives in peace.

Miller mocked Biden, saying that "a sleepy and weak Biden brings war."

Andy Biggs, a Republican from Arizona, agreed with Miller's vision, and said in his tweet, "I wrote an article about how Obama and Biden's vision of weakness by refusing to maintain energy independence in the United States, which paved the way for Russian aggression, has come." Time to wake up, recall our strength and end our dependence on Russian energy."

Republicans believe that the US administration can reduce the high oil prices due to the Russian invasion immediately, by authorizing the restart of the Keystone pipeline, the expansion of local oil exploration, and the return of shale oil extraction.


A departure from party traditions

While Elise Stefanik (the third in the ranking of Republican leaders in the House of Representatives and one of Trump's most important supporters) chose to focus on criticizing President Biden and holding him responsible for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Stefanik issued a statement saying, "After just one year of a weak, helpless and unfit American president and commander-in-chief, the world is less safe. Instead of peace through strength, we are witnessing Joe Biden's foreign policy of war through weakness. The world is evaluating and measuring Biden’s leadership on the global stage, and he has failed miserably on every metric, from kinetic and lethal attacks on our allies and partners, to the catastrophic withdrawal and surrender in Afghanistan, to cyber-attacks crippling American industry and infrastructure, to the Russian invasion of Ukraine today. Biden and his administration, America and the world.

While Stefanik described Putin as a "war criminal" and "a deranged thug", the bulk of her statement was devoted to denouncing and defaming President Biden, breaking with the well-established partisan tradition of not attacking the commander-in-chief of the US armed forces in moments of foreign military crisis.