Sen. Sullivan says he ‘can’t guarantee’ Ukraine aid will continue if Trump wins reelection

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) on Sunday said he cannot “guarantee anything” when asked if the U.S. would continue to support Ukraine if former President Trump wins reelection in November.

Asked on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” whether he can guarantee the U.S. will stay with Ukraine should Trump return to the White House, Sullivan said, “Well, listen, I can’t guarantee anything, but it’s actually good that … President Zelensky mentioned Afghanistan because … this gets lost too much.”

Sullivan was referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s comments earlier Sunday on NBC News, where he said the House’s recently passed funding for Ukraine will send a signal that “it will not be a second Afghanistan and the United States will stay with Ukraine.”

“I think we got to look at how we got to the situation of Ukraine. I believe strongly that the weakness coming out of the Biden White House, they cut defense spending, you know … every year in terms of the president’s budget,” Sullivan continued. “Their energy policies exude weakness, and the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan emboldened [Russian President Vladimir Putin] to undertake the invasion of Ukraine.”

The Senate is expected to take up a massive foreign aid bill passed by the House over the weekend that will allocate about $61 billion to Ukraine, along with funds for Israel and U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific. The bill also includes a package of other national security measures, including a potential ban on the TikTok app.

The bill followed months of warnings from the Biden administration that Ukraine will struggle against Russian forces without any supplemental aid passed by Congress. The aid was left in limbo for more than a year amid sharp divisions among lawmakers.

Ahead of the weekend vote, former President Trump questioned why European nations were not providing more aid for Ukraine, without directly weighing in on the House package.

A tracker by the Institute for the World Economy shows that total European aid for Ukraine has actually overtaken U.S. assistance, though much of that is in the form of financial and humanitarian aid. The U.S. has provided significantly more military aid to Kyiv, per the tracker.

Trump has expressed hesitation about the U.S. providing aid to Ukraine in recent months, arguing support for the country is not a vital American interest. However, during a meeting with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, the former president suggested an openness to Republicans approving aid for Ukraine in the form of a loan.