While the United States is a staunch ally of Ukraine and has provided financial and military support to that country, Tulsi Gabbard does not appear to support American positions. This raises fears of a change in dynamics towards Ukraine in the future. For example, in 2022, when Russia had just invaded Ukraine, Tulsi Gabbard published on X: “This war and this suffering could have been avoided if the Biden administration and NATO had simply taken into account the Russia’s legitimate concerns about Ukraine’s possible entry into NATO. In 2017, Gabbard also faced criticism after holding secret meetings, as a congresswoman, with Bashar al-Assad, a close ally of the Kremlin and Iran.
Democrats have also expressed their concerns about the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard. “The American intelligence community has identified her as having troubling relationships with America’s enemies. And so I’m concerned that she won’t be able to pass a background check,” Senator Tammy Duckworth told CNN on Sunday. a Democrat from Illinois.
‘Kremlin favorite’: who is Tulsi Gabbard, the next director of national intelligence of the United States?
Republicans did not wait long to react to these comments. Markwayne Mullin, a Republican from Oklahoma, returned to Tammy Duckworth’s claims: “For her to say ridiculous and downright dangerous words like that is wrong. To say that a lieutenant colonel of the US military is compromised and is an asset for Russia is the most dangerous thing they can say.” Democrat Adam Schiff qualified the remarks, telling NBC that he would not describe Gabbard as “a Russian asset but that she has very questionable judgment. The problem is, if our foreign allies don’t trust the head of our intelligence agencies, they will stop sharing information with us.”
Many Republicans claim that the attacks on Gabbard are linked to the fact that she left the Democratic Party to join Trump. This American of Samoan origin was actually elected as a Democrat from Hawaii from 2013 to 2021. After her failure in the 2019 primaries, she supported Trump, even joining his campaign team.
Democratic defector critical of Ukraine Tulsi Gabbard named intelligence director by Trump
A Russian celebration
Following Trump’s appointment of Tulsi Gabbard as intelligence director, Russian media seemed to rejoice. The Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda had drawn a portrait of the Republican, writing “The CIA and the FBI are trembling” and specifying that Ukrainians see her as an “agent of the Russian state”. Rossiya-1, state media, called Gabbard a “Russian comrade.” The New York Times reports the analysis by the company FilterLabs, emphasizing that Russian media generally highlight Gabbard’s desire to improve American relations with Moscow. Jonathan Teubner, general director of FilterLabs, also affirmed that “Gabbard corresponds to a general model of Trump’s rupture with a large part of the post-Cold War consensus. She is, for Russia, the one who can embody -be most perfectly the changes they were hoping for from the United States”
