Opinion: The US Congress, Slovakian voters just threw Ukraine under the bus

Editor’s Note: David A. Andelman, a contributor to CNN and twice winner of the Deadline Club Award, is a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor and author of “A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen.” He blogs at SubStack’s Andelman Unleashed. He was formerly a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.

Supporters of Russian President Vladimir Putin got a big boost this weekend from the US Congress and from voters in the nation of Slovakia, once among Kyiv’s most fervent European backers.

Both appear to have thrown Ukraine and its war with Russia under the bus.

Robert Fico, leader of the pro-Russian Smer party, cruised to a win in a national parliamentary vote, election results showed on Sunday, and will immediately seek to form a coalition government in the critical, frontline nation of Slovakia.

Fico based much of his campaign on ending all military support to Ukraine and promoting an early ceasefire alongside peace talks with Russia. Nationwide, Fico himself was the largest single vote-getter, while three of the top five are members of his anti-Ukraine party.

Speaking after the election, Michal Šimečka, leader of Slovakia’s pro-Ukraine Progresivne Slovensko party, which finished in second place, called the result “bad news for the country.”

But it was also bad news for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, coming at an especially challenging moment, as the US Congress approved a new stopgap budget bill that dropped military assistance to Ukraine.

The vote in Congress late Saturday came despite a major lobbying effort by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin — and just days after Zelensky himself personally lobbied officials in  Washington, following a stem-winding speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

The White House has vowed to seek quick passage of a stand-alone Ukraine aid bill totaling $20.6 billion that the administration has said is essential to fight Russian aggression – but it will likely continue to face determined opposition, particularly from Republicans in Congress.

On Sunday, US President Joe Biden urged lawmakers – especially House Republicans – to stay the course on Ukraine funding. “I hope my friends on the other side keep their word about support for Ukraine. They said they’re going to support Ukraine in a separate vote,” Biden said. “We cannot, under any circumstance, allow American support for Ukraine to be interrupted.”

It is the vote in Slovakia,  however, that could have the most far-reaching consequences in the anti-Ukraine campaign being waged in a growing number of European nations.

One of seven frontline states bordering Ukraine, Slovakia has sent considerable quantities of weapons from its own stockpiles, including its own air defense system from the capital, Bratislava. It also has a prodigious ammunition manufacturing industry that has been in the service of Ukraine from the start of the Russian invasion. Just last April, the government pledged to expand the critical artillery ammunition production five-fold to meet Ukraine’s requirements in the conflict.

More broadly, Fico himself is a close ally of other Putin-friendly European leaders, most notably Viktor Orban, prime minister of neighboring Hungary, who was one of the first to tweet his congratulations to Fico late Saturday. “Guess who’s back! Congratulations to Robert Fico on his undisputable victory at the Slovak parliamentary elections. Always good to work together with a patriot. Looking forward to it,” Orban wrote.

Fico, for his part, has parroted many of Putin’s core beliefs since the start of the Russian invasion. “The war in Ukraine didn’t start a year ago, it started in 2014, when Ukrainian Nazis and fascists started murdering Russian citizens in the Donbas and Luhansk,” Fico told a campaign rally recently.

Together, Fico and Orban — both leaders of nations which are members of the European Union and NATO — could be joined by Poland if elections later this month result in a new mandate for the Law and Justice Party, which has also recently been a thorn in the side of the EU, veering away from its long-standing pro-Ukraine position.

Late last month, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, the party’s leader, told local Polsat News, “we are no longer transferring any weapons to Ukraine because we are now arming ourselves with the most advanced weapons.” Poland’s president later clarified that Poland would respect existing arms supply contracts.

Polish opposition leader Donald Tusk, himself former president of the European Council, has called this “the most important election since 1989 and the fall of communism.”

Could these shifts provide comfort to a number of anti-Ukraine forces in other European nations, whose voters will be going to the polls next June to elect a new European Parliament? The EU’s Public Opinion Monitoring Unit still reports 86% approval for continuing humanitarian aid to Ukraine, but other measures of support are far softer.

Only 52% of French voters and 49% of German voters are in favor of offering EU membership to Ukraine. In terms of military support, barely 57% of EU citizens are supportive of purchase and supply of military equipment and training for Ukraine forces. And a majority of German voters oppose the delivery of cruise missiles to Ukraine.

This suggests the possibility of anti-Ukraine parties winning a substantial bloc of votes in the next European Parliament. This could impact efforts to abolish the rule of unanimity required for major EU decisions, particularly on Europe-wide sanctions against Russia when every EU member nation must approve of such a measure.

Hungary by itself has successfully blocked or delayed such sanctions, even winning itself carve-outs to allow it to receive Russian oil supplies via pipeline. Now, allied with Slovakia — where Fico has also declared his opposition to Russian sanctions — and potentially with Poland, pro-Ukraine efforts by the rest of the EU could be further complicated.

Among other leading European nations, there are suggestions of similar trends. In Germany, the potent far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has hit a record 21% popularity, above that of the still-ruling Social Democratic party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. AfD’s core platform, in addition to opposing immigration and warning that rising inflation is squeezing pensions, includes opposition to arming Ukraine and fomenting the view that Putin has been unfairly maligned.

In France meanwhile, although far-right leader Marine Le Pen has sought to distance herself from outright pro-Russian views, a cross-party parliamentary commission found that her National Rally party has supported Russian annexation of Ukraine and functioned as a “communication channel” for Kremlin views.

But beyond the EU, within NATO there is an equivalent fear of the consequences of an expanding anti-Ukraine bloc. Hungary has still not approved Sweden’s membership in NATO, well after longtime holdout Turkey agreed to Sweden joining the alliance. And both Hungary’s Orban and Slovakia’s Fico have declared themselves adamantly opposed to any move to welcome Ukraine into the alliance, though it’s clear that many other NATO members, even the United States, also have reservations.

The reality is the Ukraine counteroffensive, which will have to diminish with the advent of winter, has so far achieved little substantive progress on the battlefront.

The arrival of newly empowered anti-Ukraine parties in frontline states, together with waffling by leading Kremlin foes like the United States, all comprise a truly toxic mix. Quick action by Congress is needed to stem further erosion — or even the possible collapse — of determined support for Ukraine across the western democracies.