Are there four brave GOP House members with the courage to save Ukraine?

Wanted: Four GOP House members with a tiny fraction of the courage of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.

Saturday marks the second anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine. It comes one week after Navalny died in an icy Siberian prison for his fight for democracy and opposition to the Ukraine war.

Yet, the United States is on the verge of surrendering Ukraine into Putin’s hands because House Republican leaders refuse to allow members to vote for urgent military aid for Kyiv, a vote that would most likely pass (as it did in a bipartisan vote in the Senate).

Pressed by Donald Trump and extremist MAGA members, Congress may doom brave Ukrainians to destruction by a Russian dictator who despises the West — and is armed by Iran and North Korea. Nothing like this has been seen since British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain conceded part of Czechoslovakia to Adolf Hitler in 1938 in hopes of dissuading him from occupying more European lands.

» READ MORE: A bad case of Putin-envy prevents Trump from calling out death of Navalny | Trudy Rubin

Whether Trump and GOP extremists succeed in gifting Ukraine to Putin may depend on whether four GOP House members have the courage to stand up to MAGA appeasement and defend America’s long-term security.

Here’s how it could work.

The best chance to skirt House Speaker Mike Johnson’s refusal to permit a vote on Ukraine aid would be via a discharge petition. That is a parliamentary maneuver that effectively bypasses the speaker to bring a bill before the full House for a vote — if a majority of members agree to do so. If all Democrats signed on, it would only require four Republicans to get the Ukraine supplemental aid bill to the floor.

The battle wouldn’t end there. The bill would still have to be passed, and Republicans might try to add hard-line amendments on border security beyond the huge border concessions the White House has already agreed to. Some progressive Democrats might vote nay because the bill also contains military aid for Israel.

But the best guess of legislators with whom I have spoken is that the bill has a decent chance of passing if it can only reach the floor.

There is something truly sickening about the fact that Johnson — and so many GOP supporters of aid for Ukraine — are too scared to allow Congress to vote on such a key measure. Johnson fears being ousted from his speakership by the MAGA clique, as was the previous speaker, Kevin McCarthy. House members fear that if they buck the Trump line, a MAGA candidate will run against them in the GOP primary. And above all hangs the threat of physical danger to them or their families by deranged MAGA supporters who take Trump’s ugly rhetoric to heart.

Yet, surely, among more than 200 GOP House members, there are four whose belief in democracy and U.S. security would embolden them to take the risk.

For inspiration, they need only look to Navalny, or his mother, who is fighting Russian officials in Siberia to return her son’s body. She is being told by morgue officials that she can only have it if she promises the funeral will be private. So great is the Kremlin’s fear of this dead hero that they worry about mass demonstrations if a public burial is held.

Or look to the bravery of the Ukrainians fighting two years on the front line without rotation despite a severe lack of ammunition since U.S. aid has shriveled. Only last week, they had to abandon the town of Avdiivka to Russian troops because they were running out of bullets.

Moreover, MAGA arguments against aid run hollow.

Send the aid to the border? Trump sank a tough bipartisan Senate border bill (linked to Ukraine aid) that had the support of some of the most conservative GOP senators.

Europeans don’t pay their fair share? Trump makes up numbers out of thin air. In reality, the European Union and its members have committed twice as much aid to Ukraine as the U.S. has, along with sheltering millions of Ukrainian refugees. Eighteen of 31 NATO members meet the organization’s goal of spending 2% of GDP on defense. But the U.S. makes key weapons systems, in bulk, that the Europeans don’t have.

Negotiate now? Putin has made clear he has no interest unless Ukraine capitulates totally. With U.S. aid frozen, he thinks he is winning — and is waiting for a victory by Trump, who has made clear he will back Putin against Ukraine.

Moreover, contrary to many media reports, Ukraine was not “losing” before the ammo ran out.

Although Kyiv has been stymied on land, the Ukrainians have made incredible progress at sea. Ukraine has no navy, yet it has driven Russian ships back to home ports and reopened Black Sea corridors for its exports by using European-made long-range missiles and homemade sea drones.

» READ MORE: U.S. government paralysis scares allies even more than possible Trump victory | Trudy Rubin

If President Joe Biden would finally supply the longest-range ATACMS missiles with single warheads, then the Ukrainians could put occupied Crimea under siege. Yet, the White House won’t give the green light, even though Iran is now sending Russia hundreds of ballistic missiles.

While it waits on ATACMS, Ukraine knows its future depends heavily on what happens in the U.S. Congress in the next few weeks.

“If Ukraine loses to Putin, a big reason will be because the U.S. turned its back,” said Philadelphia’s Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle, who just returned from the Munich Security Conference and a meeting at NATO headquarters.

“This is not just about Ukraine, it is about our security,” Boyle told me. “Putin is evil on the same level as Hitler. It is a lot less expensive to stand up to him now; if we wait until later, it will be much more costly in money and lives.”

Let us hope there are four GOP stalwarts, in the mold of Ronald Reagan, who want to be able to look in the mirror and know they opposed appeasement. They may be all that stands between repelling Putin and an ugly, self-inflicted, defense debacle that will haunt the United States for years.