The turning tide of U.S. support for Ukraine

As the war in Ukraine approached its third anniversary last month, the tide began to turn — not on the battlefield, but in the White House. President Trump appeared to flip U.S. policy on its head, praising Russia and falsely saying Ukraine was to blame for the conflict.

Late last week, the battle made it to the Oval Office. Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as Trump told Zelenskyy he was “gambling with World War III.”

A global fight is exactly what Ukrainian allies have tried to prevent. So far, the U.S. has contributed $122 billion to this effort, and Europe even more. What has happened in Ukraine that’s been worth so much money – and why are the stakes so high?

60 Minutes has been reporting on the war since Russia’s unprovoked full-scale invasion. Here’s what we have seen:

“Ukraine is not asking American soldiers to fight for us. This is our country, and we will defend it.” That’s what Dmytro Kuleba told Lesley Stahl back in February 2022. At the time, he was Ukraine’s foreign minister.

“But, dear Americans,” Kuleba went on, “what happens here matters to you as well because if Russia prevails here, other malicious powers across the globe will realize that the collective West is unable to defend its principles and what it stands for.”

Four days later, Russian tanks rolled in, sending one million Ukrainians fleeing within two weeks.

In April of 2022, Scott Pelley spoke with Ukraine’s president for the first time.

“Ukraine depends on the support of the United States,” Zelenskyy said at the time. “And I, as the leader of a country at war, I can only be grateful.”

While in Ukraine, 60 Minutes saw the remnants of a massacre. In a suburb of Kyiv called Bucha, Russian forces had executed 458 civilians and left their bodies where they fell. They were killed within their homes, too, gunned down in kitchens and basements, some tied up and blindfolded. The Russians killed so many so fast that there was nowhere to put all the bodies but a temporary mass grave.

On another trip to Ukraine, 60 Minutes saw how the Russians had targeted schools — even those with the word “children” written on the windows. Many were being used as bomb shelters when they were hit.

As the year wore on, 60 Minutes watched as Vladimir Putin launched air assaults on Ukraine’s power grid, forcing 44 million people to go without heat, light, or water for hours — or even days — at a time.

For those captured by the Russians and held as prisoners of war, the situation was even worse. The released prisoners 60 Minutes spoke with told of the physical and psychological torture they endured.

For many lawmakers in the U.S., sending money and weapons to Ukraine meant that Russia could be contained and American allies defended. In the fall of 2023, Zelenskyy told Pelley he was grateful for the U.S. support.

“If Ukraine falls, Putin will surely go further,” Zelenskyy said at the time. “What will the United States of America do when Putin reaches the Baltic states? When he reaches the Polish border? He will. This is a lot of money. We have a lot of gratitude. What else must Ukraine do for everyone to measure our huge gratitude? We are dying in this war.”

For Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham at the time, U.S. support for Ukraine amounted to a “great deal for America.”

Graham was one of the lawmakers who spoke with 60 Minutes in Kyiv in September 2023. He said the U.S. support for the war was crucial to American interest and security — the best money the country has ever spent “[s]ince we helped Churchill stand up to the Nazis.”

“You don’t end wars by giving territory to the aggressor,” Graham continued. “You’ll never convince me this is not a good investment for America. We have a chance to make the world a better place. And if Putin wins, you’re going to be spending a lot more on war, and Americans will die.”

These days, such public, unequivocal support for Ukraine is harder to come by in Congress. On Friday, Graham, who is now chair of the Senate’s budget committee, said he was proud of the way Mr. Trump and Vance handled the Oval Office dressing down, which possibly threatens all U.S. support for Ukraine.

This past week, 60 Minutes knocked on the doors of congressmen and women, trying to find someone who would go on the record about Ukraine and asking what they thought of the U.S siding with Russia and North Korea at the U.N. in a vote against Ukraine.

“Made me mad as hell. We all were,” said Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican Congressman representing Omaha and a retired Air Force brigadier general. 60 Minutes spoke to him last week, before Friday’s explosive meeting in front of the press in the Oval Office.

“The Republican party, even those who don’t want to talk about it, they were all mad,” Bacon said. “I mean, with a few exceptions. I’m more vocal. I just feel like I got to that point in my life it’s all right just to be who I am. But there is a lot of folks who are more silent that were furious. How did we get on that side when it comes to the Russia-Ukraine war?

Bacon said Republicans in Congress are reluctant to support Ukraine in public because the party is divided.

“There’s a whole ecosystem out there in the social media that, if you stand up for Ukraine, they come after you. Or you get the president mad and he’ll criticize you. But in the end, we’ve got to stand up for what’s right.”

Bacon said he was not concerned about retribution after making his support for Ukraine public.

“I’ve already done 30 years in the Air Force. I’ll have ten years in Congress. I’d rather be the guy that was honest, defended the values of our party. And if I have to get a new job someday, it’s all right. I’d rather go down in history for standing up for what I believe.”

The video above was produced by Brit McCandless Farmer and edited by Scott Rosann.