Kyiv Must Convince the President-Elect That a Russian Victory Could Hurt Him

As with many other aspects of their war against Russia, Ukrainians have reacted to the outcome of the U.S. presidential election with a certain dark humor. The morning after the election, Ukrainian social media was full of jokes, including by soldiers commenting that they are “preparing to go home soon, since the war will end in 24 hours.” They were referring, of course, to President-elect Donald Trump’s long-standing claim that he could stop the war in a day if he were elected.

Ukraine has many reasons to be concerned about a second Trump presidency. Trump has not said how he would end the war, or even under what conditions. In his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, in September, he refused to say that he wanted Ukraine to win. He has also repeatedly complained about the amount of military assistance that the United States has been giving Kyiv. In the background, there is his longtime admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, who was one of the first Republicans to embrace indifference to Ukraine as a policy position: “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other,” he said in 2022. And in polling before the election, where a clear majority of Democrats agreed that the United States had a responsibility to support Ukraine, only about a third of Republican voters said that it did. All this has led many to fear that Washington—by far Kyiv’s biggest arms supplier—might cut off the flow of aid, or even allow Moscow to dictate the terms of peace.

But the reality of the war has made Ukrainians pragmatic: the situation can always get worse, but they still need to adjust and search for a way out to survive. Setting aside Trump’s campaign rhetoric, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is preparing to work with him. After all, Ukrainians lived through the first Trump administration and have some sense of what they are getting: dealmaking and attempts to flatter Putin, but also, eventually, a major sale of lethal arms, including Javelin antitank weapons, which have been critical in the fight against Russia. Zelensky’s task is and will remain to find ways to receive what his government needs to defend the population in the long run.

For Ukraine, then, the meaning of a second Trump administration is complicated. Even if the initial phase of Trump’s return to power is full of speculations, leaks, and disappointments—and even if Washington decides to slow or freeze military aid, causing even more casualties and losses of territory—Kyiv knows that Washington is unlikely to simply cede victory to Putin. It is indisputable that Trump dislikes long and expensive foreign wars. And Ukrainians themselves are ready to end the war—but from a position of strength.

READING THE CROWD

Throughout the war, Kyiv has never taken American support for granted. In sheer magnitude, the United States has provided more military assistance than any other country, and in some crucial areas, such as cyberwarfare, advanced air defense systems, and intelligence, U.S. resources cannot be substituted. Yet even a year ago, Ukraine began planning for a future of waning U.S. support. Following the unsuccessful counteroffensive in the summer of 2023, Ukrainian officials interpreted the increasingly negative assessments of the war in the U.S. media as a sign that Washington’s military assistance might shrink.

To prepare for this, the Zelensky government accelerated efforts to expand domestic weapons production and strengthened relations with other partners in Europe, as well as with Canada and Japan. Kyiv also began stepping up its efforts to sell the international community on its so-called peace formula—Ukraine’s multilateral initiative, first announced in September 2022, that aims at recruiting a large group of countries around key issues that will need to be addressed at the end of the war, including food security and environmental damage, as well as the restoration of energy infrastructure and nuclear safety. (So far, some 90 countries have endorsed the formula.) 

Ukrainian officials have also tried to ensure that if they are forced to negotiate with Russia, they will not be alone and that the Ukrainian vision of peace will already be on the table. Ukraine has made clear, for example, that humanitarian issues such as the return of Ukrainian children taken to Russia and the exchange of prisoners of war could become the basis for future negotiations.

But whatever the future of U.S. aid, Kyiv has long recognized the need to retain the support of both major parties in the United States. That lesson was learned during Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2019, when Trump’s phone call to Zelensky, asking the Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Biden, became a primary focus of the inquiry. For close to two years, the first Zelensky cabinet had worked with Trump. At the time of the impeachment, Trump was still in the White House, but Ukrainians understood that they needed to engage with Democrats. Conversely, after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, despite the fact that the Democrats were now in power and were their primary interlocutors, Kyiv continued to reach out to Republicans, as well.

That understanding of U.S. politics has been particularly important in obtaining continued military assistance; none of the five Ukraine aid bills could have been passed without Republican votes in Congress. In late 2023, as the Republican-controlled House of Representatives held up a further aid bill, Kyiv began reaching out to even more legislators and others from the Republican camp. In November of that year, Zelensky welcomed Fox News Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch for a meeting in Kyiv. And Ukraine pursued these contacts until the long-delayed aid package was finally approved by Congress in April 2024. In the end, Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who had been a skeptic of more U.S. support, was fully persuaded: “I think providing aid to Ukraine right now is critically important,” he said, in announcing his endorsement of the bill.

Kyiv’s courtship continued throughout the presidential campaign. In July, following the Republican National Convention, Zelensky had his first call with Trump since he left the White House, in 2021. (At the time, Trump called it a “very good phone call.”) That month, Zelensky also visited Utah for a National Governors Association meeting, where he engaged with a large group of Republican politicians. Then, in September, Zelensky received Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, and other members of Congress in Kyiv. After the meeting, Graham called for delivering more weapons to Kyiv, noting that Ukrainians are “trying to stop the Russians so we don’t have to fight them.”

These efforts culminated in late September, when Zelensky again visited the United States and met with both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. As some analysts have noted, Trump’s willingness to meet with Zelensky during the final weeks of his campaign was not a given, and the fact that he did so shows that he was taking Ukraine seriously. By this point, Kyiv had an additional priority: with the war situation becoming increasingly tough and some Western allies beginning to show signs of war fatigue, Ukraine wanted to show that it had a viable strategy for winning. Thus, Zelensky took the opportunity to present his “victory plan” not just to the Biden administration but to both presidential candidates, as well.

Although its most important parts remain confidential, the victory plan outlined, among other things, how Ukraine would use more sophisticated kinds of weapons to change the reality on the battlefield: by waging a more high-tech war, Ukraine would be able to destroy Russia’s logistics hubs, thereby preventing Russia’s control of airspace along the front and decreasing pressure on Ukraine’s infantry. So far, the U.S. reaction to the Zelensky plan—whether from the Biden administration or Trump’s team—has been hard to assess, but for Kyiv it was another way to make clear that it could work with whoever captured the White House.

LEARNING FROM REALITY

After two years and nine months of fighting, Ukrainians hold few illusions about the limits of U.S. backing. They have long since recognized that the Biden strategy—massive amounts of military assistance, but with many constraints on kinds of weapons and how they can be used—has allowed them to sustain the fight but fallen short of letting them change the direction of the war. At the same time, they are not engaging in wishful thinking or expecting radical breakthroughs with Trump.

Of course, what is said by a head of state must be taken seriously. When Putin repeats that he is planning to destroy the Ukrainian state, it is naive for Ukrainians to think he doesn’t mean it. With Trump, however, it is unclear what he really means when he vows to end the war in 24 hours. For one thing, it does not appear that he has much leverage with Russia, and there is also little indication that Russia is prepared to listen—unless Trump agrees to allow Moscow to occupy the rest of Ukraine, which seems highly unlikely.

But Ukrainians have something else to go on: how Trump dealt with Russia and Ukraine during his previous term in the Oval Office. Consider the recollections of former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. In a meeting with the American Ukrainian community in Pittsburgh just a few weeks before the 2024 election, Yovanovitch described Trump’s press conference in 2018 when he said that he would trust the Russian president more than his own intelligence community. According to Yovanovitch, Trump also refused to push back on Russia over its attack on a Ukrainian ship in international waters in the Black Sea; later, he also canceled joint U.S.-Ukrainian naval exercises. (In 2019, Yovanovitch herself was recalled from her post by Trump.)

In 2024, the Trump campaign was hardly more reassuring. At Trump and Vance campaign rallies that I attended in Pennsylvania and Michigan in late October, neither mentioned the war in Ukraine, but their recurring promises to stop “financing foreign wars” was loudly cheered by the audience. Nonetheless, Trump supporters themselves show a range of views about Ukraine, and even include a sizable number of Ukrainian Americans. In those two swing states, Ukrainian Americans supporting Harris were terrified by the possibility that the United States might end support for Ukraine. 

But many others I spoke with supported Trump. Father Jason Charron of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Pittsburgh, who offered a benediction at Trump’s rally in Butler before the assassination attempt, is a vocal supporter of the former president. Many echo the arguments that Trump himself makes: the war didn’t start under Trump, and it was Trump who provided Ukraine with its first lethal weapon—the Javelins.

Many in Kyiv hope that Trump and his team will become more pragmatic once they start getting security briefings. During Trump’s first term, there was no visible breakthrough, but the level of U.S. support for Ukraine did grow little by little, mainly because over time there was a better understanding of the situation on the ground. That could apply again: once Trump is confronted with what Russia is doing on the battlefield, how deeply North Korea and Iran (a hated enemy of Trump) are involved, and how effective Ukraine can be at destroying Russian weapons, he may see that it is crucial for the United States to do everything possible to prevent a Russian victory.

But in a larger way, Ukraine also understands that Trump’s ultimate policy direction will depend on which people become most prominent in his administration. Trump’s announcement on November 11 that the Republican congressman and retired Green Beret Mike Waltz would be his national security adviser sets down one marker. In the United States, Waltz has been called a Ukraine skeptic, and he is known for questioning U.S. aid packages to Ukraine and claiming that Europe should share more of the burden. He has also said, in the run-up to the election, that there should be some kind of “diplomatic resolution” to end the war.

But Waltz’s precise views may be more complex. During the early stages of the war, Waltz was engaged with Ukrainian civil society members and was adamant in his criticism of Moscow. He also said that Biden was not doing enough to support Ukraine, even arguing, in July 2022, that the United States should send military advisers into Ukraine. “Let’s win this damn war!” he said at the time. More recently, he has said that if Moscow did not want to negotiate, Trump might try “taking the handcuffs off of long-range weapons we provided Ukraine,” thus allowing Ukraine to raise the cost to Russia.

Also important may be Elon Musk, who in Ukraine remains an ambivalent figure. On the one hand, his Starlink satellite network has been crucial to Ukraine’s war effort. But in the fall of 2022, he denied a Ukrainian request to use Starlink over Crimea, at a time when Ukrainians were targeting Russian warships in the area with no remorse. Musk claimed that he wanted to prevent a scenario in which Putin might use a nuclear weapon. Musk’s move hindered Ukrainian operations, but Ukrainian forces nonetheless managed to make successful strikes on Russian targets in Crimea. 

At first, the Ukrainian government held back criticism of Musk, but Zelensky challenged the tech billionaire later that fall, after Musk outlined his own version of a “peace plan” in which he seemed to echo Moscow’s own narratives about the war and suggested that Russia should be allowed to keep Crimea. According to an October report in The Wall Street Journal, it was also in late 2022 that Musk began to have occasional contacts with Putin. (Moscow has denied any contacts beyond a single phone call in which they discussed “space as well as current and future technologies.”) Still, Musk briefly joined Trump’s call with Zelensky after the election, and, according to reports, told the Ukrainian president that he would keep sending Starlink ground stations to Ukraine.

HARD JUST GOT HARDER

There have been many attempts to decipher what Trump means when he talks about ending the war in 24 hours. Apparently, he would persuade Putin to negotiate, although it is unclear how he would do this. (It is possible that Musk, who brags about talking to Putin directly, or Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is friendly with both Trump and Putin, could be potential brokers of such talks.) Even if such a channel were opened, however, it is far from clear what, if anything, it might yield.

Many Ukrainians view the prospect of Putin-Trump talks in the light of Trump’s attempts during his first term to deal with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. In the end, the special rapport that the former president cultivated didn’t lead to any substantial agreement. And Putin, over whom Washington has even more limited leverage, is a stronger leader than Kim. Already, in the immediate aftermath of the election, leading Russian propagandists have asserted that Moscow doesn’t care about any peace initiatives and warned the United States not to issue ultimatums. They also reiterated that Putin intends to destroy Ukraine. In the end, there is no reason to have the U.S. president be the broker of peace if that role is reduced to pressuring Kyiv to submit to Moscow’s conditions.

In September, I talked to a group of Ukrainian soldiers close to the Russian border. They freely admitted how tired they were of the war, but they also were unanimous in opposing negotiations with Putin. As they saw it, the Kremlin would use a cease-fire to arm itself, strengthen Russia’s war economy, and prepare for an even more devastating invasion of towns such as Dnipro, Kharkiv, and Poltava in the near future. And if that happened, Russian retaliation against the families of Ukrainian soldiers would be extreme. This has already been shown in Russian-occupied territories, where Russian forces have targeted anyone who served in the Ukrainian Armed Forces before 2022. By now, almost every Ukrainian has a family member engaged in the war effort, so every Ukrainian would be a target.

To deal with an uncertain American future, Ukraine’s strategy is straightforward: to explain that a Russian victory would be extremely dangerous for the United States. Not only would it strengthen China, Iran, and North Korea; it would also tempt other autocracies to invade their own neighbors. At the same time, Kyiv can remind Washington that a very large portion of the military aid that the United States has provided to Ukraine is largely spent at home: the American defense industry receives government funds to produce ammunition on American soil by American workers.

From afar, the Zelensky government’s rush to embrace the incoming administration may look like sheer opportunism. But Kyiv is also being strategic. It knows that the Biden administration will have little window for action in the time it has left and that Ukraine must quickly prepare for a different world. What the Biden administration has presented to the press as a final financial package—$6 billion in additional security assistance—was planned a while ago. (In fact, it is simply the remaining part of the $61 billion aid package passed in April.) In the months before the election, Zelensky tried to persuade Biden to support a formal NATO invitation for Ukraine, arguing that it could form a part of his foreign policy legacy. After Trump’s election victory, it is hard to imagine that Biden will try anything so significant. And under Trump, joining NATO will likely be off the table.

Yet the fact is that throughout all the hardest moments of Ukraine’s history, the United States has stood up for the country and its people, making it possible for the nation to survive. Thus far, this has been true under both Republican and Democratic presidents, even when they have differed significantly on policy. It is also true that prolonged war is not something Ukrainians like. Instead of supporting the country “as long as it takes,” as Biden has often said, they would prefer more decisive measures. Whatever happens after January 20, 2025, it will be critical for Ukraine to get further funds and weapons in the remaining weeks of this year. If Trump does try to talk to Putin, Ukraine will need to be in the strongest position possible on the battlefield. Ukrainians know that it won’t be easy to ensure Washington’s continued support. But nothing has been easy up to this point, either.

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