How big a threat does the hard right pose to US support for Ukraine?

Vladimir Putin has proven adept at exploiting the US political divide, so the solid bipartisan consensus behind arming Ukraine over the past year may well have come as a surprise to him. The question one year into the war is: how long can that consensus last?

The resolution is sponsored by 11 Republican members of Congress on the far right Freedom Caucus faction, and is highly unlikely to pass. But it marks a shot across the bows of the leadership, which has mostly vowed to stay the course in supporting Ukraine.

Justifying the resolution, Gaetz pointed to the risks of escalation of the Ukraine war into a wider global conflict and to the economic cost to the US.

The influence of this faction is heightened by the fact that the Republicans have a slim nine-seat majority in the House, and the new speaker, Kevin McCarthy, only scraped into the job after 15 rounds of voting among Republican members, during which he gave promises to listen to the concerns of hard-right holdouts like Gaetz.

Frank Luntz, a Republican political consultant, also argued the pro-Russian lobby in the party had been permanently diminished.

However, a recent opinion poll has shown support softening for the continued arming of Ukraine as the war approached its one-year milestone. In the survey by the Associated Press and the National Opinion Research Center, 48% of those questioned said they were in favour of providing weapons, with 29% opposed. Last May, 60% of Americans surveyed supported arming Ukraine.

It is against that backdrop that Biden will fly to Poland on Monday to mark the approach of the anniversary and to restate the case for western solidarity with Ukraine.