Ukraine, which depends on U.S. military aid to survive, has long sought to maintain bipartisan support within the United States. That has never been easy, but it is becoming especially difficult with the increasing likelihood that Donald J. Trump, who is no good friend of Ukraine, will return to the White House.
In nearly every interview, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is asked what a second Trump administration would mean for Ukraine. Zelensky chooses his words carefully, but sometimes the emotional weight of the assumption behind the question — that Trump would end U.S. military aid and that Russia might succeed in destroying the Ukrainian state — bubble up.
In an interview with Britain’s Channel 4 News, the Ukrainian president said he was “a little scared” by Trump’s claim during last week’s debate with Biden that he alone knew the path to peace.
“I’ve seen a lot of casualties,” Zelenskiy said, “but it’s making me a little bit stressed.”
“If there is a risk to Ukraine’s independence, if we lose our statehood, we want to be prepared for this and we want to know,” Zelenskiy said in an interview with Bloomberg last week. “We want to understand whether we will have strong U.S. support in November or whether we will be completely isolated.”
Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, in remarks at the summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, appeared to rejoice at the prospect of President Trump returning to the White House.
“The fact that candidate Trump says he wants to stop the war in Ukraine is something we take very seriously,” Putin said Thursday. “I haven’t heard his ideas on how to do that specifically, and that’s the key question. But I have no doubt that he says it sincerely, and we support him in that.”
Putin often pretends he is interested in negotiating an end to the war he started, but on Thursday he underscored his intention to force Ukraine to surrender, saying that as a prerequisite for any ceasefire, Ukraine must agree to irreversible “demilitarization” measures.
Ukrainian officials, both publicly and privately, said the combination of the hyper-partisan environment in the United States, Russia’s ongoing efforts to stomp down its divisions, a troubled presidential election and a chaotic White House creates extremely difficult diplomatic challenges.
“To put it bluntly, we are in a pretty fragile situation right now,” Oleksandr Mereshko, chairman of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said in an interview.
“It shouldn’t be a shock to us if Trump becomes president,” he said, pointing to a stack of books about Trump’s presidency that he is reading for insight. But reaching out to people close to Trump “would have to be done carefully so as not to antagonize the Democrats,” he said.
“We are being very careful not to get caught up in political battles in the United States,” he said. “We don’t want to damage our relationships with anyone.”
Disappointment over Ukraine is bipartisan: It’s just as common to hear frustration over the slow delivery of U.S. aid and indignation over the Biden administration’s demands for Western arms restrictions as it is to hear concern about Trump.
Ukrainian officials say privately that Biden administration policies have left Ukraine in brutal limbo, without the weapons it needs to win or the full U.S. support for Ukraine’s efforts to begin peace talks on terms favorable to Kiev. Biden did not attend a peace summit hosted by Ukraine in Switzerland last month, despite a request from President Zelensky; Vice President Kamala Harris attended instead.
Ukrainian officials have taken some solace from Trump’s brief statement during the debate that he would not accept Russia’s terms to end the war, and many say they hope that Ukraine has deep support within the Republican Party that can help influence Trump.
More importantly, they said, Trump is unpredictable and likely to step up support if he fails to get a deal with Putin and feels weakened in the process, making him far less likely to worry about escalation.
“It’s a paradox,” Mereshko said. “He’s predictable in the unpredictable.”
The most immediate concern for Ukrainians is that the swirling debate over Biden’s political future will disrupt meetings in Washington this week, just as NATO is moving toward a larger role in coordinating the supply of arms and ammunition to Ukraine.
The Biden administration is trying to avoid giving Trump any opening to accuse it of pumping huge amounts of money into Ukraine over the long term, and the new French and British governments both face significant economic challenges.
Ukraine’s Western allies have taken incremental steps to ensure their military assistance continues regardless of the outcome of the U.S. election, but domestic politics complicate collective action.
For example, NATO ambassadors agreed last week to set up an office in Kyiv staffed by senior civilians, NATO officials said, but efforts to get member states to commit to multiyear financial assistance for Ukraine have so far failed.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg initially proposed setting up a five-year, $100 billion fund for Ukraine to encourage some member states to contribute more, but Washington and other key allies questioned the idea, saying it would duplicate bilateral efforts and could face vetoes from countries skeptical of supporting Ukraine, such as Hungary and Slovakia.
Instead, NATO allies agreed to give Ukraine about $40 billion next year, roughly the same amount they have contributed in past years, but made no explicit commitments about future aid.
Michael Kofman, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said military aid already promised should enable Ukraine to defend itself through the end of the year and build up for the future.
“The question is, what for?” he asked.
For many Ukrainian civilians and soldiers who are weighed down by a sense of loss, bracing for a winter without heat or electricity as Russia continues to attack critical infrastructure and under no illusions about the battle ahead, the spectacle of the US presidential election has compounded the uncertainty that is part of everyday life.
“The planet is trembling with the last sobs of gerontocracy, the power of the elderly,” wrote Ukrainian journalist Ostap Drozdov. After skimming through a list of world leaders over the age of 70, a group that includes not only Presidents Biden and Trump but also Putin, he lamented that “a set of secrets hidden in the closet rules the world.”
“Trump and Biden are equally sad and suspicious spectacle,” he wrote. “Whether Ukraine survives depends on those who already have one foot in the coffin.”
Andrew E. Kramer He contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine.
