America’s new team Donald Trump has promised peace between Moscow and Kyiv. Meduza reviews what the president’s cabinet-level nominees have said about Russia and Ukraine.

In his September debate with Kamala Harris, Donald Trump described Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “a war that’s dying to be settled.” In that exchange, Trump declined to say “yes” when asked if he wanted to see Ukraine victorious. When asked a second time, he said, “I think it’s in the U.S.’s best interest to get this war finished and just get it done. Negotiate a deal. Because we have to stop all of these human lives from being destroyed.” Harris pounced on Trump, calling Vladimir Putin “a dictator who would eat [him] for lunch.” She said that “Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now” if Trump had won reelection in 2020. 

Harris lost to Trump two months later by more than two million votes.

The war in Ukraine is not a top policy concern for most Americans. In his inauguration address, Trump found time to talk about “plant[ing] the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars” and changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” but he didn’t mention Ukraine or Russia. Nevertheless, the war remains one of Washington’s most pressing foreign policy challenges, and Trump has promised a rapid timeline for reaching a peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv. In the first days of President Trump’s second term, it’s still unclear what he can manage in Ukraine, but we do know the team he’s assembled for this and other ambitions. Meduza examines what Trump’s cabinet-level nominees have said about Russia and Ukraine.

Marco Rubio (Secretary of State)

A Transatlantist ready for negotiations

At the time of this writing, Marco Rubio is the first and only confirmed cabinet-level appointment in the Trump administration. After he won a unanimous Senate vote on January 20, Secretary Rubio announced, “It’s going to be the official policy of the United States that the war in Ukraine needs to come to an end.” He explained that the Trump administration wants to bring “stability” to Ukraine to prevent the conflict from “restart[ing] in two, three, or four years.”

As a senator, Rubio cosponsored James Risch’s resolution on “Recognizing Russian Actions in Ukraine as a Genocide,” and he repeatedly co-sponsored bills to strengthen U.S. entanglement in NATO, endorsing a requirement that Congress approve any U.S. exit from the alliance. 

Rubio has also described the Ukraine war in terms more in line with Donald Trump’s rhetoric, saying the conflict should be ended through peaceful negotiations rather than through continued large-scale military aid. For example, in October 2022, Rubio warned that the West’s supply of NATO weapons to Ukraine could lead Russia to attack a distribution point in an alliance country, raising the prospect of a Third World War. 

At his Senate confirmation hearing on January 15, Rubio complained that President Biden’s goals in Ukraine were “never clearly delineated,” arguing that “however much it takes for however long it takes” is “not a realistic or prudent position.” Rubio reasoned that both Kyiv and Moscow will need to agree to concessions because, on the one hand, “there’s no way Russia takes all of Ukraine” (the Ukrainians are “too brave and fight too hard,” and the country is “too big”), and on the other hand, “there’s no way Ukraine is also going to push these people all the way back to where they were on the eve of the invasion” (again, because of the “size dynamic”), “no matter how incompetent and no matter how much damage the Russian Federation has suffered as a result of this invasion.”

Rubio did not clarify the nature of the “concessions” he anticipates, but he noted that a peace settlement will be challenging “unless both sides have leverage,” testifying that Putin seeks to “impose neutrality” on Ukraine while Russia “retrofits” in order to invade again “in four or five years.” 

Rubio also echoed several other cabinet nominees when he argued that “we may never have had that invasion” if Europe had depended less on Russia for its energy supply. Five days later, in his inauguration speech, President Trump vowed to “export American energy all over the world,” saying “that liquid gold under our feet” will help make the U.S. “a rich nation again.” 

Commenting on Donald Trump’s efforts to acquire Greenland, Rubio argued that the area grows critical to the world economy “as more navigable space is opening up in the Arctic, particularly this northern passage that goes from Russia to Asia.” According to Rubio, the next century of global trade and commerce will depend increasingly on the freedom of navigation in the region.

Peter Hegseth (Defense Secretary nominee)

He ain’t ‘shipping off’ his son to Ukraine

During a broadcast on Fox News in March 2022, Peter Hegseth called Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” and praised Volodymyr Zelensky:

Two and a half years later, however, Hegseth appeared to defend Putin, calling Moscow’s annexation of Crimea a “minor incursion” and framing Ukraine as “shit” in the Russian president’s rational calculations:

Hegseth also dismissed the threat of a Russian nuclear attack in Ukraine as “overinflated from the beginning,” reasoning that Putin is not a “suicidal maniac.”

Though Washington has not pledged American troops on the ground, interviewer Shawn Ryan asked Hegseth if he would support his oldest son being “shipped off” to fight in Ukraine. “Yeah, no, I’m not for that,” the defense secretary nominee answered.

In that November 2024 interview, Hegseth also argued that Vladimir Putin “knows enough to realize that he’s probably not going much farther than Ukraine,” saying it’s not realistic that Russia will “go all the way to Poland” if the invasion isn’t halted in Ukraine. Hegseth warned that “American intervention driving deep into Europe” could make Putin “feel like he’s so much on his heels that he does have to escalate.”

Earlier this month, during his Senate confirmation hearing, Hegseth dodged two questions specifically about the Ukraine war: “What role should the U.S. Defense Department play in the conflict?” And “Should the U.S. keep providing security assistance to Ukraine, and if so, for how long?” Both times, Hegseth responded that he would “ensure that the Department of Defense plays a key role in the whole-of-government effort to support the president’s special envoy for Ukraine-Russia.” 

Hegseth expressed more conventional American views when senators asked him about Russian threats to U.S. national security and global interests. Specifically, he singled out Moscow’s expanded nuclear arsenal, as well as Russian “cyber and information operations, undersea warfare, and ambitions in Space and the Arctic.” He also flagged “Russia’s ability to operate extra-regionally using mercenaries like the Wagner Group.” 

Hegseth also seemed to modify his assessment of Vladimir Putin’s territorial ambitions, arguing that he believes the Russian president “has designs for [the] expansion of Russian territory and influence and the degradation of the NATO alliance.” “If confirmed, I would support a broader interagency effort to counter malign influence as part of an integrated national-level Russia strategy,” Hegseth told the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 14.

John Ratcliffe (Director of the Central Intelligence Agency nominee)

He stood in the breach

During his brief tenure as Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence in 2020, Ratcliffe publicly warned of potential election interference, highlighting efforts by Russia, Iran, and China to sway the 2020 U.S. election. The New York Times reports that subsequent intelligence assessments by the Biden administration supported the warnings, but CIA officials objected to Ratcliffe’s declassification of some intelligence related to Russia’s activities in 2016, warning that the release could harm sources and collection methods. “Republican allies of Mr. Trump had sought the material, believing it undermined the case that Russia had tried to interfere in the 2016 election on behalf of Mr. Trump,” explained the Times.

In his Senate confirmation hearing last week, Ratcliffe recalled his opposition to the dozens of U.S. intelligence officials who signed a letter in 2020 claiming emails found on a laptop owned by Hunter Biden bore the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign. “I stood in the breach. I stood alone. And told the American people the truth about that,” Ratcliffe said on January 15, 2025. (A week later, to remedy what he called “an egregious breach of trust reminiscent of a Third World country,” President Trump revoked the security clearances of 51 former intelligence officials who signed the letter.)

In his confirmation hearing, Ratcliffe described Russia as a U.S. “adversary,” noting Moscow’s “very large nuclear stockpile.” At the same time, he emphasized Russia’s smaller economy (“[it’s] roughly the same size as my home state of Texas”), arguing that this weakness forces the Kremlin to compete with America only in “areas where there are significant equalizers.” “They’ve chosen areas like hypersonics and other fields, but that comes at a cost,” Ratcliffe said. “I think we saw some of that cost in terms of their troop readiness as they engaged in their aggression against Ukraine.”

At the same time, Ratcliffe pledged to cooperate with Russian officials when countering common threats, namely terrorism. “There are occasions where information or intelligence can be shared, or things can be done to the mutual benefit of our countries,” he acknowledged. 

Russell Vought (Office of Management and Budget Director nominee)

He’s withheld Ukraine funding before

Donald Trump has renominated Russell Vought to head up the Office of Management and Budget. Last week, Vought refused during his Senate confirmation hearing to commit to releasing $3.8 billion in congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine after President Biden failed to allocate it before leaving office.

In a heated exchange with Senator Richard Blumenthal, Vought announced that the Trump administration rejects the constitutionality of the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which requires congressional approval to rescind spending. “Senator, I'm not going to get ahead of the president on a foreign policy issue of [this] magnitude,” Vought said.

Moments earlier in the hearing, Vought sparred with Senator Gary Peters, who accused him of freezing $214 million in military aid for Ukraine in 2019, an event that led to Trump’s first impeachment. “We did not withhold funds inappropriately. We were engaged in a policy process regarding how funding would flow to Ukraine. We released the funding by the end of the fiscal year,” Vought said, defending himself.

Between Donald Trump’s administrations, Russell Vought worked as president of the Center for Renewing America. As the head of this conservative think tank, Vought has argued against further U.S. intervention in Ukraine, bristling at allegations that he is a “Putin apologist.” He’s also rejected concerns that Russia is capable of “march[ing] through Western Europe.” 

Elise Stefanik (U.N. Ambassador nominee)

From ‘do everything’ to ‘it’s a politicized issue’

As a congresswoman, Elise Stefanik has called Vladimir Putin a “bloodthirsty thug and authoritarian.” In 2022, she advocated NATO membership for Ukraine, arguing that Russia’s invasion constitutes a direct attack on Europe itself. Like Marco Rubio, Stefanik has accused Russia of “genocide” in Ukraine and said the U.S. “must do everything” to send weapons to Kyiv.

Today, however, the Republicans for Ukraine lobbying project gives Stefanik a “D” grade, citing her votes against multiple bills to allocate additional U.S. government funds to aid Ukraine. “That’s not going to be tied into this bill. We think that is a very politicized issue. The [Biden] White House has not answered questions as to how those dollars are going to be spent and what is the ultimate goal when it comes to Ukraine,” Stefanik said in November 2023. Five months later, when she voted against a $60-billion aid package for Ukraine, Stefanik again cited fiscal concerns and advocated for prioritizing issues at the U.S. southern border instead. 

At her Senate confirmation hearing on January 21, Stefanik said her goal as America’s U.N. ambassador would be to give President Trump “maximum flexibility” to resolve the Ukraine war. When pressed on details, she vowed, like Peter Hegseth, to “support President Trump’s approach with his special envoy [to Ukraine and Russia].” Speculating on the causes of the Ukraine war, Stefanik said Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine was an “aftereffect” of President Biden’s “catastrophic withdrawal” from Afghanistan, which she says led to America’s “cascading weakness around the globe.” 

Asked if she will continue to support “critical humanitarian operations” in Ukraine and Moldova, Stefanik pledged to work with Secretary of State Rubio to “look at all of our U.N. entities and all of our U.N. agencies to make sure they deliver results and represent our values.” 

Tulsi Gabbard (Director of National Intelligence nominee)

Biolabs, billions wasted, and nuclear Armageddon

Among Donald Trump’s national security cabinet nominees, Gabbard is the most consistently outspoken critic of America’s Ukraine policies. On X and Fox News, she has repeatedly expressed talking points so at odds with conventional U.S. foreign policy that critics accuse her of spreading Russian propaganda.

For example, in the first hours of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Gabbard ignored NATO troops stationed in the Baltic states (and NATO’s presence in Poland near Kaliningrad) when she tweeted:

Four days later (now sensitive to “non-Baltic borders”), Gabbard called on Putin, Zelensky, and Biden to “put geopolitics aside and embrace the spirit of aloha” by agreeing to make Ukraine a neutral country without military alliances — one of Moscow’s key capitulation demands. (As a congresswoman, Gabbard represented Hawaii in the House of Representatives, and she served in the Hawaii Army National Guard.)

In March 2022, Senator Mitt Romney tweeted that Gabbard was “parroting false Russian propaganda” and spreading “treasonous lies” that “may well cost lives” when she drew attention to “25+ US-funded biolabs in Ukraine” that she warned could “release & spread deadly pathogens to US/world” if breached. 

Gabbard’s message followed news that the World Health Organization had advised Ukraine to destroy high-threat pathogens housed in the country's public health laboratories to prevent “any potential spills" that could spread disease among the population. Ukraine owned, operated, and managed the labs, which also received $200 million in U.S. military investments after 2005 to support their research into reducing threats posed by pathogens. The Pentagon’s involvement and the panic about “pathogen spills” fueled unverified claims from Moscow that America was developing biological weapons in Ukraine for use against Russia.

A day after her initial “US-funded biolabs” tweet, Gabbard said critics like Romney were conflating “biolabs,” “bioweapons labs,” and “bioweapons.” “I'm not convinced there are biological weapons labs or biological weapons in Ukraine — that's not what I'm concerned about,” she explained. 

As the war has dragged on, Gabbard’s concerns have grown more apocalyptic. Months after the start of the invasion, she blamed “Biden/NATO” for provoking Russian aggression and “putting us on a path to nuclear Armageddon.” She’s also become more openly hostile to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. For example, in November 2023, she argued that Ukraine is no longer a democracy:

More recently, anonymous former campaign staff told ABC News that Gabbard’s “unorthodox media consumption habits” (namely, her fondness for Russia Today) have shaped her unconventional views on Russia and Ukraine. 

Lee Zeldin (Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency nominee)

Eager to serve America’s own Navalny

If you’ve heard anything about Mr. Zeldin’s comments related to Russia, it may have been his tweet on February 16, 2024, when he compared Alexey Navalny’s death in a Siberian prison to Joe Biden’s supposed effort to “ensure [that Donald Trump] dies in prison.” 

Zeldin was slightly more charitable to Barack Obama in December 2016 when he said Vladimir Putin was “outsmarting” the White House in the wake of Russian interference in America’s 2016 presidential election.

As a congressman, Zeldin voted multiple times against providing aid to Ukraine, demanding greater accountability for how the funds are spent. “What we don’t want to do is end up in a neverending conflict overseas to the extent that our own resources to protect ourselves become depleted, and we are unprepared because we got into something without a clear enough objective to achieve from the get-go,” he said in an interview in July 2024.

Like others nominated to serve in Trump’s next cabinet, Zeldin has expressed concerns about Vladimir Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons, saying the danger “should be taken seriously.” In September 2022, he called on President Biden to deliver a strong message to Putin (whom Zeldin describes as “homicidal, not suicidal”). “I’m always rooting for the U.S. president,” he added.

Douglas Burgum (Secretary of the Interior nominee)

Stand together and sell energy

As governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum repeatedly and forcefully argued for American solidarity with Ukraine. In an interview in June 2023, he said the U.S. is now “at war” with Russia and appeared to leave the door open to future deployment of American troops: “We’re in a cold war with China, and we’re actually at war with Russia — we just haven’t sent troops yet. We’re sending material, we’re sending funding, we’re sending advisors.” Burgum has also argued that Ukraine is “essentially doing NATO’s work.”

While Burgum has said the U.S. shouldn’t offer a “blank check” to Ukraine, he’s characterized American aid as a “bargain” and rejected claims that such spending is irresponsible. “When we’re fighting against Russia, we can’t even think about it as a country in the way we think about ourselves,” he explained. “It’s really more accurate to conceive of Russia as a large criminal enterprise. It’s run more like a mafia state.”

Burgum has also pushed back on claims by many in Donald Trump’s orbit when it comes to prioritizing U.S. border security over support for Kyiv. “The idea that some people are saying, ‘Oh, we shouldn’t send money to Ukraine because we need to spend it on our own border,’ is misguided. America can do both of those things at the same time, and it’s not that hard,” he complained in October 2023. (In the same interview, Burgum managed to bend a response to another question into a brief rant about the Ukraine conflict being “Hunter Biden’s War.”)

One of the most consistent themes in Doug Burgum’s comments about the Ukraine war is his view that unshackled American energy production and expanded oil and gas exports are needed to break Europe’s dependence on Russian energy. “This international crisis underscores the importance of U.S. energy security and increasing American production so we can sell energy to our friends and allies versus buying it from our enemies,” Burgum said on day one of the invasion. “You need to ensure that all of our allies in Western Europe — and in the Pacific, like Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea — are not overly dependent on foreign oil,” he argued in July 2023.

Scott Bessent (Treasury Secretary nominee)

Ready to rumble

On January 22, 2025, President Trump threatened Russia with “high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries” if Moscow refuses to “make a ‘deal,’ and soon.”

If confirmed by the Senate, investor and hedge fund manager Scott Bessent will be the man to execute Trump’s “TTS” response. In fact, when testifying last week before the Senate Finance Committee, Bessent promised to do exactly this:

Sean Duffy (Secretary of Transportation nominee)

The man who didn’t trust Vindman’s origins

Several cabinet-level nominees distinguished themselves by demonstrating great loyalty to Trump during his first impeachment trial. In October 2019, Congressman Sean Duffy earned his stripes with the president by questioning the patriotism of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman when the decorated soldier testified as part of the impeachment inquiry. In comments that were widely criticized as xenophobic, Duffy argued that Vindman’s birth in Kyiv made him an unreliable witness:

Roughly five years earlier, however, it was Duffy who advocated concern for Ukraine’s defense, arguing in the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and proxy war in the Donbas that President Obama needed to supply Kyiv with arms. “If we’re not going to step up and help Ukraine push back against the Russians, what’s to tell the Russians they can’t go back and take back the territory they had when it was the Soviet Union?” Duffy reasoned.

Pamela Bondi (Attorney General nominee)

She’s got unfinished business with Hunter

In 2020, Bondi stepped away from her lobbying work to defend President Trump during his first impeachment trial against allegations that he abused the power of his office when he pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate then-presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, ahead of America’s upcoming election. 

In nearly 30 minutes of remarks on January 27, 2020, speaking on the Senate floor during the impeachment trial, Bondi delved into the minutiae of Hunter Biden’s involvement with Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company that he joined as a board member. She argued that “the appointment of the vice president’s son to a Ukrainian oil board looks nepotistic at best, nefarious at worst.” 

Two Republican-led Senate committees later concluded that Hunter Biden’s work for Burisma raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest with the U.S. government, but they found no evidence that then-Vice President Joe Biden acted improperly in pushing for the dismissal of Ukraine's top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin (who claims he was fired because he was actively investigating Burisma, potentially threatening Hunter Biden's position on the board). 

Lori Chavez-DeRemer (Secretary of Labor nominee)

Ukraine’s ace ally

The Republicans for Ukraine lobbying project gives Chavez-DeRemer an “A” grade, approving of all her Ukraine-related votes in the U.S. Congress and endorsing her pro-Ukraine statements, like this tweet from last September:

Last year, Chavez-DeRemer also co-led a bipartisan bill to provide defense assistance to Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel. At a joint press conference on March 6, 2024, one of her co-sponsors, Congressman Jared Golden, argued that funding Ukraine “is a critical national interest,” saying that their legislation would reduce “the risk that a future Congress will have to send American troops to fight on European battlefields tomorrow.”

Douglas Collins (Veterans Affairs Secretary nominee)

Russia guilty, Trump innocent

In July 2019, as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, Doug Collins acknowledged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election:

In a book released two years later, Collins said “revenge for beating Hillary Clinton” and the desire to keep Trump off the presidential ballot are what drove the Democrats’ first impeachment effort.

Kristi Noem (Homeland Security Secretary nominee)

Thoughts, prayers, and more drilling, baby, for ‘contained fighting environments’

In March 2014, in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Congresswoman Kristi Noem said, “I’m not going to be the one to go out and criticize the president at this point. We should be united in our stance that we are willing to take action.” 

Ten years later, now the governor of South Dakota, Noem wrote in a Fox News op-ed that Joe Biden’s energy policies were largely to blame for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Noem even repeated the “sinister theory” that Biden’s pre-war approach to sanctions on Russia was meant to enrich his son, Hunter. She specifically criticized the president for waiving some of Trump’s sanctions designed to prevent the completion and operationalization of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline:

In March 2023, in responses to a questionnaire from the right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson, Noem warned that Americans had “already over-extended ourselves in our largesse to Ukraine.” She also said the U.S. was “propping up a corrupt regime [in Ukraine] to our own financial detriment.” At the same time, she expressed relatively little concern about the risk of nuclear war:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Health and Human Services Secretary nominee)

Sputnik V is his existential crisis

RFK Jr.’s unconventional political views are notorious, and his frequent criticisms of U.S. efforts in Ukraine rival Tulsi Gabbard’s penchant for sympathy with Moscow’s perspective. Despite this tendency, RFK Jr. is the only cabinet-level nominee in Trump’s new administration with a son who claims to have fought (albeit briefly) alongside Ukrainian troops against Russia’s invasion.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s controversial claims related to Ukraine include assertions that the U.S. promised not to expand NATO eastward, condemnations of the CIA and USAID’s supposed overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, and comparisons between contemporary American military installations in Europe and Cold-War-era Soviet missiles in Cuba.

Like Gabbard, RFK Jr. has questioned Volodymyr Zelensky’s legitimacy, arguing that “Ukraine is probably the least democratic and most corrupt government in Europe.”

Kennedy also argues that defense contractors are America’s “real stakeholders” in the Ukraine war. He claims that the West “sent Boris Johnson to scuttle a tentative peace agreement” early in the war, arguing that Moscow negotiated in good faith until Washington “forced Zelensky to sabotage that agreement.” 

In June 2024, while live-streaming a “parallel debate” during Joe Biden’s disastrous faceoff with Donald Trump, RFK Jr. claimed that Putin “didn’t even want to take Ukraine” until NATO expansion supposedly forced his hand.

In April 2024, Kennedy said uncritically in an interview that one of the Kremlin’s objectives in Ukraine is to “de-Nazify” the country’s leadership. “There’s a huge Nazi problem [in Ukraine],” explained RFK Jr., before accusing the Ukrainian government of killing 14,000 ethnic Russians in the Donbas prior to Russia’s invasion. (Kennedy appears to have taken the U.N.’s estimate of all people killed in Donetsk and Luhansk between April 2014 and December 2021 and attributed the entire number to Kyiv.)

RFK Jr. has said he “abhor[s] Russia’s brutal and bloody invasion,” but he believes Americans “must understand that our government has also contributed to its circumstances through repeated deliberate provocations of Russia going back to the 1990s.” 

Last October, Kennedy said he believes Russian troops’ slow but gradual advance westward across the Donbas has vindicated his view throughout the conflict that “Ukraine has zero chance of winning the U​.S​. proxy war against Russia.” RFK Jr. also claimed that Washington’s supposed dishonesty prevented Kyiv from accepting Moscow’s “peaceful, generous settlement” offer earlier in the war. “If [the mainstream media] had been truthful from the outset, […] 600,000 Ukrainian kids might have grown white hair,” Kennedy tweeted.