Firefighters clear rubble after a Russian air strike in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Sept. 24.Nikoletta Stoyanova/Getty Images
After 2½ years of fighting the Russian army, Ukrainians will watch nervously next week as a bitter electoral battle in the United States shapes what happens next in the war for their country.
The outcome of Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election will have implications around the globe. While Vice-President Kamala Harris is expected to largely continue the policies of President Joe Biden if she wins, the possibility of Donald Trump returning to the White House has many foreign governments on edge. China is bracing for an escalated trade war, Mexico for the introduction of fresh border controls. Israel hopes a Trump win will give it an even freer hand to destroy its enemies, while Iran, Lebanon and the Palestinians fear exactly that.
But it’s in Kyiv that the fork in the road ahead seems starkest. A Harris presidency likely means stability in Kyiv’s most important relationship – and a continuation of the U.S. military and financial support that has enabled Ukraine to resist the Russian invasion. A win for Mr. Trump, meanwhile, means four years of dealing with a U.S. leader who openly admires Russian President Vladimir Putin and whose surrogates have spoken of cutting off aid to Ukraine, a country some believe Mr. Trump has a personal animus toward.
“My understanding of Trump is that he doesn’t like Ukraine as a country. He believes it stands in his way to make big deals, as he likes to say, and have good relations with other countries,” former Ukrainian foreign affairs minister Dmytro Kuleba said in an interview Friday with The Globe and Mail. That dislike, Mr. Kuleba said, was mollified somewhat by the fact that Mr. Trump had developed respect for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “as a fighter, because Trump considers himself as a fighter and he sees these qualities in Zelensky as well.”
Mr. Kuleba, who served as foreign affairs minister from 2020 until he was dismissed by Mr. Zelensky in September, said Ukraine was “blessed” to have had Mr. Biden – someone who had been involved with Ukraine since it gained independence in 1991 – in the White House when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February, 2022. Mr. Biden has signed off on more than US$174-billion in military and economic support to Ukraine since then.
Mr. Kuleba said Ms. Harris was often present at meetings between Mr. Biden and Mr. Zelensky and sometimes met with Ukrainian officials on her own, though largely as what Mr. Kuleba called “a messenger” for Mr. Biden, as the President made decisions about Ukraine himself.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. President Joe Biden, in Fasano, Italy, on June 13.Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
“We hope that if she gets elected, she will uphold this new standard of keeping the Ukrainian file in her hands and not delegating it to the vice-president,” Mr. Kuleba said. “And we hope if Trump gets elected, he will do the same.”
The possibility of JD Vance, Mr. Trump’s vice-presidential nominee, making decisions about Ukraine is of particular concern in Kyiv.
Mr. Vance last month outlined a peace plan for Ukraine that sounded a lot like what Mr. Putin is seeking: freezing the conflict along its current front lines, meaning Russia can keep the roughly 18 per cent of Ukrainian territory it occupies, while giving Moscow a guarantee that Ukraine would never be allowed to join the NATO military alliance.
Such a “peace” would represent a disaster for Ukraine and likely mark the end of the political career of any Ukrainian leader who signed onto it. But the message from Mr. Zelensky’s office is of the artificially calm we’ll-work-with-whoever-wins variety.
“It’s the choice of the American people. We believe both candidates support Ukraine,” said Serhiy Leshchenko, an adviser to Mr. Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. The last thing the Zelensky administration wants, Mr. Leshchenko said, is for U.S. support for Ukraine to become even more of a partisan issue than it already is.
Some in Kyiv fear Mr. Trump may harbour ill will toward their country because of the 2019 scandal – dubbed “Ukrainegate” – that hung over the latter part of his presidency. It led to Mr. Trump’s impeachment by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, which found him guilty of strong-arming Mr. Zelensky’s administration to launch an investigation into the Ukrainian business activities of Mr. Biden’s son Hunter, though Mr. Trump was later acquitted by a Republican-dominated Senate.
Mr. Leshchenko, a former investigative journalist, played a background role in that affair by publicizing documents that showed Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had received undeclared payments from a pro-Russian political party. Mr. Leshchenko doesn’t want to talk about that history now, even as Mr. Manafort – who was convicted on eight counts of tax and bank fraud in 2018 and pardoned by Mr. Trump in 2020 – has re-emerged as an unofficial Trump spokesperson in recent days.
“We’re being super careful about what we say,” Mr. Leshchenko acknowledged. “I think everyone’s nervous. The world’s nervous. But it’s not our election.”
Ukrainians are nonetheless openly agitated about the ideas Mr. Vance floated regarding how to potentially end the conflict. There’s fear that a re-elected Mr. Trump could use U.S. economic and financial leverage to force Ukraine to accept a one-sided deal.
Many Ukrainians believe any peace with Mr. Putin would only be temporary, giving Russia time to rest and rearm before launching a new campaign to capture the rest of their country, which the long-time Kremlin boss has always viewed as a renegade Russian province rather than an independent state.
“Mr. Trump says he can stop this war in a few days, and everyone understands he would do it by stopping the military and financial aid to Ukraine. Everyone is afraid of this situation,” said Anatoliy Amelin, the founder of the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, a Kyiv-based think tank.
Oleksandr Merezhko, an MP from Mr. Zelensky’s Servant of the People party who chairs the parliamentary committee on foreign policy and international relations, said Mr. Zelensky – or any Ukrainian leader – would be unable to accept a peace that involved territorial concessions, such as the plan proposed by Mr. Vance.
“Politically, it’s impossible because any government who will even try to do something like that will be deposed, will be toppled,” Mr. Merezhko said, adding that Ukrainians would also insist on NATO membership or some other security guarantee as part of an agreement to end the war.
Mr. Merezhko said the Ukrainian government viewed the peace framework mooted by Mr. Vance – and other statements Mr. Trump and his allies have made about Ukraine – as populist campaign rhetoric aimed at winning votes.
The Ukrainian government’s task, Mr. Merezhko said, is to convince the next U.S. president, whoever they are, that it remains a vital American interest to support Ukraine – and that standing up to Russian aggression will only get more expensive if Mr. Putin wins this war and shifts his sights to other neighbours.
That’s an easier task if Ms. Harris wins Tuesday’s election, Mr. Merezhko conceded. “But we have to be prepared for Trump. We have to be ready so that it’s not a complete shock to us.”