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KYIV — Ukrainians reacted with a mix of trepidation and grim resolve to the news that Donald Trump will likely be reelected U.S. president, after he vowed to “stop wars” in a victorious speech Wednesday morning.
After almost three years of war, officials in Kyiv acknowledged that Ukraine would now likely have to look to its allies elsewhere in the West for support as it seeks to fend off a renewed Russian offensive, backed up by thousands of North Korean troops. Trump has repeatedly claimed he would end the war in Ukraine in one day and vowed to stop aid to Kyiv. The U.S. is Ukraine’s top backer when it comes to funding.
In a pragmatic statement on social media Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recalled his “great meeting” with Trump in September and praised the Republican’s “commitment to the ‘peace through strength’ approach in global affairs.” But in a telling line, he added: “We rely on continued strong bipartisan support for Ukraine in the United States.”
Despite the Ukrainian government’s repeated insistence over the course of the U.S. election campaign that it has bipartisan support in Washington, it was clear the prospects of a Trump victory weighed heavily on Kyiv. Trump’s Republican Party blocked aid to Ukraine for over nine months from October 2023 to April 2024, forcing Kyiv to deplete its wartime budget and leading to the loss of some of its most capable fighters. The mood in Kyiv on Wednesday was grim but resolved.
Tymofiy Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics, said in a Facebook post: “We’ll have to live in Trump’s world now. I am very skeptical that the war will end in 24 hours, as he promised. But we definitely won’t get bored.”
Trump’s unpredictability has left Ukrainians uncertain about what to expect from his second presidency.
The Republican has repeatedly claimed to have a good relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and derided Zelenskyy as “the greatest salesman in history.” But he has also claimed that he’d told Putin the U.S. would bomb Moscow if he tried to attack Ukraine.
Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the foreign relations committee in the Ukrainian parliament, took a relatively optimistic view, saying a Trump presidency required a change of approach from Kyiv.
“I do not think that his presidency will be bad for Ukraine — maybe difficult, challenging, but not necessarily bad,” Merezhko told POLITICO. “Trump is a pragmatic businessman” who “thinks in terms of costs and benefits,” he added, meaning Ukraine will need to work hard to convince him to continue backing Kyiv.
