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       Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Washington on Tuesday hoping to win one of the more important fights in his country’s struggle against invading Russian forces: cajoling U.S. legislators to vote to provide additional financial and military support to his nation.

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       It is Zelensky’s third visit to the United States since the war began and probably his most challenging. That Ukraine has managed to hold Russia at bay since the full-scale invasion began more than 20 months ago is remarkable, but it also means that his country has an ongoing need for support that would have been hard to anticipate. It also means that the American public has turned its attention elsewhere — and is getting a familiar sense of spending a lot of money on a war that isn’t being won.

       Zelensky’s message to American lawmakers will be clear: A collapse or constriction of U.S. support will lead to a Russian victory. But he faces a challenge that wasn’t as acute when he visited one year ago. Stoked in part by hard-right rhetoric, Republican voters have increasingly begun to support pulling back aid to Ukraine — and are putting pressure on legislators to make that happen.

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       Polling from YouGov shows that shift. In December 2022, about a third of Republicans favored a reduction in aid to Ukraine. By the time of Zelensky’s second wartime visit to the United States — for the U.N. General Assembly meeting in September — that had risen to 50 percent. Since then, support for decreasing funding has wavered around the 50 percent mark.

       There has not been a similar shift among Democrats. The percentage of Democrats in favor of reducing aid to Ukraine is lower now than it was among Republicans at the beginning of YouGov’s data.

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       This is in large part because Republicans face that pressure from their right flank. This pressure has manifested in various ways, including from prominent voices like Tucker Carlson questioning basic elements of Ukraine’s position (to Russia’s glee) and legislators like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) arguing explicitly against providing support.

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       Over the past 18 months, Republican opposition to new funding has increased. A funding measure introduced in the House in April 2022 had only 4 percent of Republican legislators (who cast up-or-down votes) opposed. By May 2022, nearly 3 in 10 were opposed. After Zelensky’s December 2022 visit, Congress passed a large spending package along party lines that included more aid to Ukraine. This July, though, an amendment offered by Greene that would strip aid to Ukraine had the support of 4 in 10 Republicans. Two months later, more than half of the GOP conference opposed a funding proposal.

       The Republicans opposing Ukraine aid were more conservative (according to Voteview’s measure of ideology) than those who didn’t oppose it. The Greene amendment was supported by legislators with an average ideology score of 0.62, where higher numbers indicate a more-conservative legislator; it was opposed by legislators with an average score of 0.44. The numbers were similar for the legislation that passed in September.

       Zelensky to tell Congress Ukraine aid is ‘a matter of life and death’

       Zelensky’s visits are directed at those legislators, in hopes that he can make convincing personal appeals for increased or continued aid. But his visits don’t appear to be generating much attention outside Capitol Hill. Cable-news channels mentioned Zelensky about 2,500 times in the three weeks following his visits in December 2022. In the three weeks after his September visit, they did so about 1,700 times. The pattern in Google search interest shows a similar drop.

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       Most of those cable-news mentions, it’s worth noting, were on CNN and MSNBC, which accounted for 4 in 5 mentions a year ago and 9 in 10 earlier this year. In other words, Zelensky’s visits aren’t generating the same level of coverage on Fox News — the channel that has a disproportionately large influence over Republican voters.

       It remains to be seen how much attention Zelensky’s visit this week will generate and how successful it will be, when measured against the benchmark of American aid to his nation’s military struggle. But he has a longer-term problem, particularly as 2024 looms.

       In November polling by YouGov, self-identified conservatives were more likely to support scaling back aid to Ukraine than were Republicans overall. In a few months, Republican legislators in the House will gear up their reelection bids, in some cases hoping to win primaries that skew more heavily to conservative voters. It’s safe to assume that they will face increased pressure to oppose new funding for the conflict.

       If there’s one thing Zelensky should be used to by now, though, it’s winning small, short-term battles even as a long-term victory remains elusive.

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