华盛顿-美国国会以罕见但脆弱的结盟，在很大程度上支持乔·拜登总统的决定，即因俄罗斯2010年危机而对其实施可能不断升级的制裁乌克兰国会议员们正准备应对这一代人以来美国可能面临的最严峻的外交政策危机。
但接下来的步骤非常不稳定——在俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京周四早些时候宣布对乌克兰采取军事行动，基辅、哈尔科夫、敖德萨和乌克兰其他城市传出爆炸声后，情况就更不稳定了。
“我们必须拒绝袖手旁观，眼睁睁地看着无辜的乌克兰男人、女人和孩子受苦，”参议院外交关系委员会主席、新泽西州民主党参议员鲍勃·梅嫩德斯(Bob Johnson)在普京的部队进攻乌克兰后发表声明说。他说，他“致力于确保美国坚持我们的责任，让普京、俄罗斯经济以及那些支持和推动践踏乌克兰主权的人付出最大代价。”
随着国内孤立主义情绪的高涨，国会对战争没有兴趣。然而，美国人似乎也对美国维护和平的努力持矛盾态度。美联社和NORC在普京宣布之前进行的新民调显示，只有26%的美国人希望美国在俄乌冲突中发挥主要作用。
美国众议院议长南希·佩洛西(Nancy Pelosi)周三表示，俄罗斯对乌克兰的侵略是“对民主的攻击”，并誓言美国将与世界各地的盟友团结一致，迅速对俄罗斯实施制裁，并确保对独立的乌克兰的财政和政治支持。
佩洛西从海外外交之旅返回国会大厦，将俄罗斯对乌克兰的侵略与2016年大选期间对美国民主进程的干预联系在一起。
“弗拉基米尔·普京将会付出代价，”她说，身旁的议员们和她的代表团一起参加了在慕尼黑举行的年度安全会议。
尽管批评拜登政府的共和党人——甚至一些民主党人——希望白宫对俄罗斯采取更强硬、更迅速、更严厉的制裁，但大多数人对白宫的战略给予了不同程度的支持，包括拜登周三制裁建设俄罗斯至德国Nord Stream 2天然气管道的公司。
外交关系委员会(Foreign Relations Committee)最高共和党人、爱达荷州参议员吉姆·里施(Jim Risch)表示，对北溪2号的制裁“早就应该实施，但我不能夸大它们对向普京表明侵犯一个国家的主权会有什么后果有多重要。”
Risch多年来一直与两党同事合作，试图结束管道，他说:“很高兴看到拜登总统做了正确的事情。”
共和党领导人试图将对话引向他们喜欢的术语，因为该党的国防鹰派曾在国家安全方面引领全国。但目前还不清楚今天的共和党能否阻止共和党人利用唐纳德·特朗普的“美国第一”方针所释放的慷慨激昂的不干涉主义压力。
正是特朗普试图从共和党2016年大选的政纲中剥夺对乌克兰的保护，他在2020年竞选前向乌克兰总统施压，挖出拜登的丑闻后，被众议院以滥用权力的罪名弹劾。
本周，特朗普为普京欢呼，因为他在乌克兰边境附近集结军队，并承认其分离主义地区的独立，拜登和其他人警告说，此举是入侵乌克兰的开始。作为总统，特朗普一直对北约持批评态度，努力让美国远离历史性的伙伴关系，并斥责盟友为国防投入更多资金。
参议院共和党领袖米奇·麦康奈尔(Mitch McConnell)是北约的长期支持者，他本周高度评价了西方联盟，但他党内的一些人正在远离传统的共和党立场，转而支持特朗普的观点。
麦康奈尔说，他希望看到拜登实施“最严厉的制裁”。
不过，其他共和党人，最著名的是可能成为共和党总统候选人的密苏里州参议员乔希·霍利(Josh Hawley)说，美国应该更密切地关注他认为由中国构成的更大挑战。
尽管如此，大多数共和党参议员支持拜登对普京的制裁，即使一些人要求更多的制裁，并对拜登进行政治打击，因为他看起来太温和了。
南卡罗来纳州的共和党参议员林赛·格雷厄姆(Lindsey Graham)有时是特朗普的盟友，也是该党主要的国防鹰派人物之一，曾与共和党参议员约翰·麦凯恩(John McCain)一起周游世界，他本周援引了他已故的同事，敦促拜登更有力地对抗普京。
格雷厄姆说，当议员们下周恢复工作时，国会应该对普京及其政权实施“来自地狱的制裁”。
参议员特德·克鲁兹曾独自阻止拜登提名的国务院各职位人选，以阻止俄德管道，他表示，随着新制裁的宣布，他将解除封锁。“拜登总统现在已经采取了积极的步骤，”德克萨斯州共和党人克鲁兹在一份声明中说。“但仍需要做更多的事情来阻止和反击普京对我们在乌克兰和整个欧洲的盟友构成的威胁。”
佩洛西说，俄罗斯人需要理解他们的领导人在做什么。佩洛西说:“在这个时代，看到一个暴君统治一个国家令人震惊。”。“这是2016年攻击我们民主的同一个暴君，”
目前还不清楚国会还会采取什么措施来对抗俄罗斯，因为在拜登与美国盟友在更全球化的战略中进行接触的同时，议员们保留了他们对普京的立法回应。
参议院获得了两党对强有力的制裁方案的支持，但在回应的范围和时间上出现分歧后，参议院决定搁置投票，因为白宫在寻求自己的方法。
格雷厄姆提出了一个针对乌克兰的补充支出方案，乌克兰已经从美国获得了资金和防御设备，但目前看来还没有考虑额外的资金。
Congress backs Biden on Russia sanctions, clamors for more
WASHINGTON -- With rare but fragile alignment, the U.S. Congress is largely backing President Joe Biden’s decision to confront Russia with potentially escalating sanctions for the crisis inUkraineas lawmakers brace for perhaps the most daunting foreign policy crisis the nation has faced in a generation.
But the next steps are highly volatile — even more so after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced early Thursday a military operation in Ukraine and explosions were heard in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa and other cities there.
“We must refuse to stand by and watch innocent Ukrainian men, women, and children suffer,” the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., said in a statement after Putin's forces moved against Ukraine. He said he was “committed to ensuring that the United States upholds our responsibility to exact maximum costs on Putin, the Russian economy, and those who enabled and facilitated this trampling of Ukraine’s sovereignty.”
With isolationist impulses rising at home, Congress has no appetite for war. Yet Americans also appear ambivalent about the U.S. working to keep the peace. New polling from The Associated Press and NORC — taken before Putin's announcement — says just 26% of Americans want the U.S. to play a major role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that Russia's aggression toward Ukraine is “an attack on democracy,” vowing that the U.S. will stand united with its allies around the world in swiftly imposing sanctions on Russia and ensuring financial and political support for an independent Ukraine.
Pelosi, who returned to the Capitol from a diplomatic overseas trip, situated the aggression from Russia toward Ukraine alongside intervention in the United States' own democratic process during the 2016 election.
“There will be a price to pay for Vladimir Putin," she said, flanked by lawmakers who had joined her delegation at the annual security conference in Munich.
While Republican critics of the Biden administration — and even some Democrats — want the White House to go even tougher with swifter and more severe sanctions on Russia, most have given varying degrees of support for the White House strategy, including Biden’s move Wednesday to sanction the company building the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
The top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, said sanctions on Nord Stream 2 are “long overdue, but I cannot overstate how critical they are to showing Putin that violating a nation’s sovereignty has consequences.”
Risch, who has worked with colleagues on a bipartisan basis for years trying to end the pipeline, said: “It is good to see President Biden do the right thing.”
Republican leaders have sought to steer the conversation to their preferred terms, as the party whose defense hawks once led the nation on the national security front. But it's not at all clear whether today's GOP can keep Republicans from tapping into an impassioned non-interventionist strain unleashed by Donald Trump's “America First” approach.
It was Trump who sought to strip protections for Ukraine from the Republican Party platform for the 2016 election, and who was impeached by the House for abuse of power after he pressured the Ukrainian president to dig up dirt on Biden ahead of the 2020 campaign.
This week, Trump cheered on Putin as he massed military forces near Ukraine's border and recognized the independence of its separatist regions in a move Biden and others warned was the start of an invasion of Ukraine. As president, Trump had been critical of NATO, working to distance the U.S. from the historic partnership and berating allies to contribute more money to defense.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, a longtime champion of NATO, spoke highly of the Western alliance this week, but some within his party are gravitating away from that traditional Republican position and toward Trump's views.
McConnell said he wants to see Biden impose the “toughest possible sanctions.”
Other Republicans, though, most notably Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, a potential Republican presidential hopeful, has said the U.S. should be paying closer attention to the greater challenges he believes are posed by China.
Still, most Republican senators are backing Biden's sanctions on Putin, even if some are clamoring for more and taking political punches at Biden for seeming too tepid.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a sometimes Trump ally who is also one of the party's leading defense hawks and who used to globetrot with fellow GOP Sen. John McCain, invoked his late colleague this week in urging Biden to confront Putin more forcefully.
Graham said Congress should impose “sanctions from hell” on Putin and his regime when lawmakers return to work next week.
Sen. Ted Cruz, who had single-handedly blocked Biden's nominees for various State Department posts to halt the Russia-to-Germany pipeline, said with the announced new sanctions he would lift his blockade. “President Biden has now taken positive steps,” Cruz, R-Texas, said in a statement. "But much more still needs to be done to deter and counter the threat that Putin poses to our allies in Ukraine and across Europe.”
Pelosi said Russians need to understand what their leader is doing. “It’s stunning to see in this day and age a tyrant roll into a country,” Pelosi said. “This is the same tyrant who attacked our democracy in 2016,”
It's unclear what more, if anything, Congress will do to confront Russia, as lawmakers hold back their own legislative response to Putin while Biden engages U.S. allies in a more global strategy.
The Senate has bipartisan support for a robust sanctions package but after running into differences over the scope and timing of the response decided to shelve a vote as the White House pursued its own approach.
Graham has suggested a supplemental spending package for Ukraine, which already receives money and defensive equipment from the U.S., but it does not yet appear that additional funds are being considered.
